Hurrah for pollution

[Vastator]

Phony alarmist post...

Dumb fuck liar.

Typical coming from an ignoramus like you... Just tantrums and name calling. Go pour yourself a cup of warm milk, and cozy up in your safe space. The next 8 years are going to be hard on you...

I don't think the orange clown will make 100 days.

You didn't think he'd win either... Your track record speaks for itself...

 

[mamooth]

All water from Coal operations is put through a cleaning plant. Sediment and heavy metals are required to be removed and have been for over 20 years..

Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill - Wikipedia

Billy says it couldn't have happened, because it was all so sparkling clean.

 

[Old Rocks]

Yeah, Silly Billy stated that the El Nino did not exist even when it was at it's peak. LOL I think Silly Billy's credibility is about nil.

 

[initforme]

Hey let coal companies poison people and streams. Makes sense. Man o man southern folk are plain dumb...simp!y dumb. They are too dumb to know its wrong to poison water. Let em got sick. They want it.

 

[Billy_Bob]

No need to now. The price of wind and solar are going to put coal right out of business in the near future, and gas in a generation.

LOL

What a load of Bull Shit.

We all know that Solar and Wind gets .32 cents per Kwh of its .38 cent cost per Kwh.. If its do god dam good then you don't need the subsidy given to them and they should now be held responsible for the cost of the Fossil Fuel plants that must run 24/7/365 in case they fail to take the load.. They need to pay their own dam way..

Cut the subsidies.. Pay for your power plant back up.. ON YOUR OWN..

 

[Billy_Bob]

All water from Coal operations is put through a cleaning plant. Sediment and heavy metals are required to be removed and have been for over 20 years..

Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill - Wikipedia

Billy says it couldn't have happened, because it was all so sparkling clean.

Yeah, Silly Billy stated that the El Nino did not exist even when it was at it's peak. LOL I think Silly Billy's credibility is about nil.

TO Funny;

Two retards who have never set foot in a mining operation and don't have a dam clue on how its done or what safety's are in place..

Ignorance is you game..

Talk about two morons who lie out of their asses over and over again.

 

[Old Rocks]

pictures of mountaintop removal mining - Google Search:

Yessirreeeeeee........................................... Silly Billy thinks that this is so beautiful.

 

[flacaltenn]

Photo by Luke Sharrett/Getty Images


With everything that Republicans want to do — repeal Obamacare, overhaul the tax code — it might seem odd that one of Congress’ very first acts would be to kill an obscure Obama-era regulation that restricts coal companies from dumping mining waste into streams and waterways.

But that is indeed what’s going on. On Thursday, the Senate voted 54-45 to repeal the so-called “stream protection rule” — using a regulation-killing tool known as the Congressional Review Act. The House took a similar vote yesterday, and if President Trump agrees, the stream protection rule will be dead. Coal companies will now have a freer hand in dumping mining debris in streams.

Killing this regulation won’t really help Trump fulfill his goal of reversing the coal industry’s decline; that decline has more to do with cheap natural gas than anything else. Instead, Republicans are mostly focusing on this rule because they can. Because the stream protection rule wasn’t finished until very late in 2016, it’s much, much easier to kill than most of the other Obama-era rules around coal pollution. It was an easy target, so long as the GOP acted fast.

Why Congress just killed a rule restricting coal companies from dumping waste in streams

How many times have we seen PC, Tiny Dancer, and Mr. Westwall state that they are against pollution. Well, here is their chance to condemn a Senate act that increases pollution to our waterways. Bet they pass up the opportunity. LOL

The stream protection rule requires the restoration of the physical form, hydrologic function, and ecological function of the segment of a perennial or intermittent stream that a permittee mines through.

So basically if runoff forms a trough during a heavy rainstorm, it magically becomes an "intermittent" stream, and creates a whole new layer of regulation.

Just regulate the point sources at the main, actual stream.

This is an example of regulation designed to stop a given industry, not regulate it, by exponentially increasing costs. Also it increases uncertainty, thus making companies liable for fines when they don't actually know they are breaking a rule.

In other words, killing streams and rivers is fine with you. Well, nice to know how the "Conservatives" stand on that.

Again, just regulate discharges to actual streams, and not intermittent streams that may, or may not exist. Regulate something that gives certainty, not something that is open to interpretation, such as if some runoff trough is a stream or not.

My, my, how you 'Conservatives' love your 'alteranative facts. What a lying asshole you are. Here is the reality of what is happening;

Plundering Appalachia - The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining :: The Issue

Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production, and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.

More than 470 mountains in the southern Appalachians, which are among the oldest mountains on Earth, have already been sheared off. Vast areas of wildlife habitat, the most biologically diverse forest in North America, have been obliterated. Roughly 2000 miles of streams have been filled or severly degraded by mining waste, all in pursuit of coal. And coal is a lousy way to power a society.

From mining to burning to disposing the combustion waste, it’s a dirty business. Unfortunately, in our reductionist age, too often people looking at the coal problem don’t consider the whole problem. Only by contemplating the entire life cycle of fossil energy—coal extraction, preparation, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal of by-products—can one fully understand the enormity of coal’s toxic legacy.

See how coal’s toxic legacy stretches from blown-up mountains to a dangerously warming planet to coal ash dumps polluting air and water:

The most profitable way to decapitate a mountain. Blow its top off, section by section, and then move the rubble with heavy equipment. Sometimes the forest cloaking the condemned mountain is clear-cut; more often the trees are simply scraped away, bulldozed into a pile, and burned. A pad is leveled, and a large drilling rig bores a series of holes. Into them goes a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—the same type of explosive that homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prior to detonation, warning whistles sound. When the charge explodes, the earth shudders. The explosions may shake and crack house foundations, startle wildlife, and spray a large area with dust and flying rock. Coal mining is far and away the largest industrial consumer of explosives in the United States. According to government figures for 2005, more than 1.8 billion pounds of high explosives were used in West Virginia and Kentucky alone, primarily in surface-mining operations.

The most ancient mountains in North America, plundered for profit. The forest covering these venerable ridges and valleys is a global hotspot of biological diversity. An estimated 800,000 acres of that forest have already been destroyed—and more than 470 mountains sheared off—by surface-mining operations. Sometimes hundreds of feet of elevation are lost as a mountain’s original contour is blasted away. The topsoil, foundation of the landscape’s exceptional diversity of life, is wasted. Broad, plateau-like mesas remain. Federal law does not require formerly forested mine sites to be reforested during “reclamation.” Even when operators meet their legal obligations to reclaim mined areas, the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream.

Mountaintop removal is strip-mining on steroids. Massive dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and ten-story-high draglines can undo in months what geological processes took millions of years to build. Typically, multiple coal seams are exposed as a mountaintop-removal operation dismantles the landscape, piece by piece. The earthmoving equipment requires only a handful of operators. Mine- related employment in the Appalachian coalfields has plummeted in recent decades because of increasing mechanization, and because production has shifted from underground to surface mining—“taking the miner out of mining,” as local residents say. These radical strip-mining operations not only obliterate the former habitat and homes of innumerable wild creatures, they also reshape the very contour of the horizon. The familiar curves and folds of the landscape, the mountains that have anchored communities for generations, are simply gone.

Awwwwwww ... Such a sad story. How come you only told HALF of it and left out the happy ending???

http://mining.state.co.us/Programs/Abandoned/Reclamation/Pages/AwardsandAccolades.aspx

Or in Virginia.

Geez.. You'd think that REAL environmentalists -- even lefty ones --- would be smart enough to find ways to address the problem OTHER than crying and throwing hissy fits..

 

[martybegan]

Photo by Luke Sharrett/Getty Images


With everything that Republicans want to do — repeal Obamacare, overhaul the tax code — it might seem odd that one of Congress’ very first acts would be to kill an obscure Obama-era regulation that restricts coal companies from dumping mining waste into streams and waterways.

But that is indeed what’s going on. On Thursday, the Senate voted 54-45 to repeal the so-called “stream protection rule” — using a regulation-killing tool known as the Congressional Review Act. The House took a similar vote yesterday, and if President Trump agrees, the stream protection rule will be dead. Coal companies will now have a freer hand in dumping mining debris in streams.

Killing this regulation won’t really help Trump fulfill his goal of reversing the coal industry’s decline; that decline has more to do with cheap natural gas than anything else. Instead, Republicans are mostly focusing on this rule because they can. Because the stream protection rule wasn’t finished until very late in 2016, it’s much, much easier to kill than most of the other Obama-era rules around coal pollution. It was an easy target, so long as the GOP acted fast.

Why Congress just killed a rule restricting coal companies from dumping waste in streams

How many times have we seen PC, Tiny Dancer, and Mr. Westwall state that they are against pollution. Well, here is their chance to condemn a Senate act that increases pollution to our waterways. Bet they pass up the opportunity. LOL

The stream protection rule requires the restoration of the physical form, hydrologic function, and ecological function of the segment of a perennial or intermittent stream that a permittee mines through.

So basically if runoff forms a trough during a heavy rainstorm, it magically becomes an "intermittent" stream, and creates a whole new layer of regulation.

Just regulate the point sources at the main, actual stream.

This is an example of regulation designed to stop a given industry, not regulate it, by exponentially increasing costs. Also it increases uncertainty, thus making companies liable for fines when they don't actually know they are breaking a rule.

In other words, killing streams and rivers is fine with you. Well, nice to know how the "Conservatives" stand on that.

Again, just regulate discharges to actual streams, and not intermittent streams that may, or may not exist. Regulate something that gives certainty, not something that is open to interpretation, such as if some runoff trough is a stream or not.

My, my, how you 'Conservatives' love your 'alteranative facts. What a lying asshole you are. Here is the reality of what is happening;

Plundering Appalachia - The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining :: The Issue

Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production, and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.

More than 470 mountains in the southern Appalachians, which are among the oldest mountains on Earth, have already been sheared off. Vast areas of wildlife habitat, the most biologically diverse forest in North America, have been obliterated. Roughly 2000 miles of streams have been filled or severly degraded by mining waste, all in pursuit of coal. And coal is a lousy way to power a society.

From mining to burning to disposing the combustion waste, it’s a dirty business. Unfortunately, in our reductionist age, too often people looking at the coal problem don’t consider the whole problem. Only by contemplating the entire life cycle of fossil energy—coal extraction, preparation, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal of by-products—can one fully understand the enormity of coal’s toxic legacy.

See how coal’s toxic legacy stretches from blown-up mountains to a dangerously warming planet to coal ash dumps polluting air and water:

The most profitable way to decapitate a mountain. Blow its top off, section by section, and then move the rubble with heavy equipment. Sometimes the forest cloaking the condemned mountain is clear-cut; more often the trees are simply scraped away, bulldozed into a pile, and burned. A pad is leveled, and a large drilling rig bores a series of holes. Into them goes a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—the same type of explosive that homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prior to detonation, warning whistles sound. When the charge explodes, the earth shudders. The explosions may shake and crack house foundations, startle wildlife, and spray a large area with dust and flying rock. Coal mining is far and away the largest industrial consumer of explosives in the United States. According to government figures for 2005, more than 1.8 billion pounds of high explosives were used in West Virginia and Kentucky alone, primarily in surface-mining operations.

The most ancient mountains in North America, plundered for profit. The forest covering these venerable ridges and valleys is a global hotspot of biological diversity. An estimated 800,000 acres of that forest have already been destroyed—and more than 470 mountains sheared off—by surface-mining operations. Sometimes hundreds of feet of elevation are lost as a mountain’s original contour is blasted away. The topsoil, foundation of the landscape’s exceptional diversity of life, is wasted. Broad, plateau-like mesas remain. Federal law does not require formerly forested mine sites to be reforested during “reclamation.” Even when operators meet their legal obligations to reclaim mined areas, the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream.

Mountaintop removal is strip-mining on steroids. Massive dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and ten-story-high draglines can undo in months what geological processes took millions of years to build. Typically, multiple coal seams are exposed as a mountaintop-removal operation dismantles the landscape, piece by piece. The earthmoving equipment requires only a handful of operators. Mine- related employment in the Appalachian coalfields has plummeted in recent decades because of increasing mechanization, and because production has shifted from underground to surface mining—“taking the miner out of mining,” as local residents say. These radical strip-mining operations not only obliterate the former habitat and homes of innumerable wild creatures, they also reshape the very contour of the horizon. The familiar curves and folds of the landscape, the mountains that have anchored communities for generations, are simply gone.

Awwwwwww ... Such a sad story. How come you only told HALF of it and left out the happy ending???

http://mining.state.co.us/Programs/Abandoned/Reclamation/Pages/AwardsandAccolades.aspx

Or in Virginia.

Geez.. You'd think that REAL environmentalists -- even lefty ones --- would be smart enough to find ways to address the problem OTHER than crying and throwing hissy fits..

Most damage can be fixed if there is a will and enough $$.

I have no issue with forcing companies that break things to fix them, but using regulations as an excuse to kill an industry under the guise of regulating it is dishonest.

 

[flacaltenn]

All water from Coal operations is put through a cleaning plant. Sediment and heavy metals are required to be removed and have been for over 20 years..

Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill - Wikipedia

Billy says it couldn't have happened, because it was all so sparkling clean.

PERFECT !!! WHO exactly OWNS the Kingston plant there Squidward? Did you know the owners are the LARGEST fixed site polluter in the entire country? Do you know WHY they get waivers and "give-mes" from the EPA ?? WHO ARE these awful polluting people with such unethical connections to the Govt saviors???

 

[flacaltenn]

So basically if runoff forms a trough during a heavy rainstorm, it magically becomes an "intermittent" stream, and creates a whole new layer of regulation.

Just regulate the point sources at the main, actual stream.

This is an example of regulation designed to stop a given industry, not regulate it, by exponentially increasing costs. Also it increases uncertainty, thus making companies liable for fines when they don't actually know they are breaking a rule.

In other words, killing streams and rivers is fine with you. Well, nice to know how the "Conservatives" stand on that.

Again, just regulate discharges to actual streams, and not intermittent streams that may, or may not exist. Regulate something that gives certainty, not something that is open to interpretation, such as if some runoff trough is a stream or not.

My, my, how you 'Conservatives' love your 'alteranative facts. What a lying asshole you are. Here is the reality of what is happening;

Plundering Appalachia - The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining :: The Issue

Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production, and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.

More than 470 mountains in the southern Appalachians, which are among the oldest mountains on Earth, have already been sheared off. Vast areas of wildlife habitat, the most biologically diverse forest in North America, have been obliterated. Roughly 2000 miles of streams have been filled or severly degraded by mining waste, all in pursuit of coal. And coal is a lousy way to power a society.

From mining to burning to disposing the combustion waste, it’s a dirty business. Unfortunately, in our reductionist age, too often people looking at the coal problem don’t consider the whole problem. Only by contemplating the entire life cycle of fossil energy—coal extraction, preparation, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal of by-products—can one fully understand the enormity of coal’s toxic legacy.

See how coal’s toxic legacy stretches from blown-up mountains to a dangerously warming planet to coal ash dumps polluting air and water:

The most profitable way to decapitate a mountain. Blow its top off, section by section, and then move the rubble with heavy equipment. Sometimes the forest cloaking the condemned mountain is clear-cut; more often the trees are simply scraped away, bulldozed into a pile, and burned. A pad is leveled, and a large drilling rig bores a series of holes. Into them goes a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—the same type of explosive that homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prior to detonation, warning whistles sound. When the charge explodes, the earth shudders. The explosions may shake and crack house foundations, startle wildlife, and spray a large area with dust and flying rock. Coal mining is far and away the largest industrial consumer of explosives in the United States. According to government figures for 2005, more than 1.8 billion pounds of high explosives were used in West Virginia and Kentucky alone, primarily in surface-mining operations.

The most ancient mountains in North America, plundered for profit. The forest covering these venerable ridges and valleys is a global hotspot of biological diversity. An estimated 800,000 acres of that forest have already been destroyed—and more than 470 mountains sheared off—by surface-mining operations. Sometimes hundreds of feet of elevation are lost as a mountain’s original contour is blasted away. The topsoil, foundation of the landscape’s exceptional diversity of life, is wasted. Broad, plateau-like mesas remain. Federal law does not require formerly forested mine sites to be reforested during “reclamation.” Even when operators meet their legal obligations to reclaim mined areas, the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream.

Mountaintop removal is strip-mining on steroids. Massive dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and ten-story-high draglines can undo in months what geological processes took millions of years to build. Typically, multiple coal seams are exposed as a mountaintop-removal operation dismantles the landscape, piece by piece. The earthmoving equipment requires only a handful of operators. Mine- related employment in the Appalachian coalfields has plummeted in recent decades because of increasing mechanization, and because production has shifted from underground to surface mining—“taking the miner out of mining,” as local residents say. These radical strip-mining operations not only obliterate the former habitat and homes of innumerable wild creatures, they also reshape the very contour of the horizon. The familiar curves and folds of the landscape, the mountains that have anchored communities for generations, are simply gone.

Awwwwwww ... Such a sad story. How come you only told HALF of it and left out the happy ending???

http://mining.state.co.us/Programs/Abandoned/Reclamation/Pages/AwardsandAccolades.aspx

Or in Virginia.

Geez.. You'd think that REAL environmentalists -- even lefty ones --- would be smart enough to find ways to address the problem OTHER than crying and throwing hissy fits..

Most damage can be fixed if there is a will and enough $$.

I have no issue with forcing companies that break things to fix them, but using regulations as an excuse to kill an industry under the guise of regulating it is dishonest.

Exactly. It's used as excuse. The damage is NOWHERE NEAR permanent if it's addressed and if there was the WILL -- companies and jobs would be created to move Mother Nature back into place. Better than before.

Not costly to plant stuff and regrade. Not at all.

 

[Old Rocks]

New Bill Would Clean Up Abandoned Coal Mines And Jump Start The Appalachian Economy

Coal’s downturn is hitting economies in Appalachian states hard, but a new bill hopes to energize these economies, while also helping communities clean up old, abandoned mines.

The RECLAIM Act, introduced Wednesday by five representatives from Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, would make $1 billion available to coal communities that “have traditionally relied on the coal industry for employment or have recently experienced significant coal job losses,” according to a release from bill sponsor Hall Rodgers (R-KY). That $1 billion would come from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation (AML) Fund, which is headed up by the Department of the Interior.

“In Kentucky alone, we’ve lost more than 11,000 coal mining jobs since 2009. Instead of allowing those funds to go unused, now is the time to help our coal producing states reinvest in the coalfields with projects that can create new jobs and reinvigorate our economy,” Rep. Rogers said in a statement. “Many coal communities in Appalachia simply do not have the resources to reclaim the abandoned mine sites within their borders. This bill allows these communities to be proactive in restoring these sites and utilize them to put our people back to work.”

Coal has been declining in Central Appalachia for the past few decades. In 2008, coal production in the region — which includes parts of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee — fell to 235 million tons, a decrease of 20 percent from 1997’s peak production in the region.

And Peabody Coal joins them. So, once again, corporations get to privatize the profits, and socialize the costs. And our 'Conservatives' think that is just fine. But speak of spending government money on a sick child, oh God help us, the Constitution is in danger!

 

[Old Rocks]

Can coal companies afford to clean up coal country?

A worsening financial crisis for the nation’s biggest coal companies is sparking concerns that U.S. taxpayers could be stuck with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in cleanup costs across a landscape of shuttered mines stretching from Appalachia to the northern Plains.

Worries about huge liabilities associated with hundreds of polluted mine sites have mounted as Peabody Energy, the world’s largest publicly traded coal company, was forced to appeal to creditors for an extra 30 days to pay its debts. Two of the four other biggest U.S. coal companies have declared bankruptcy in the past six months.

Under a 1977 federal law, coal companies are required to clean up mining sites when they’re shut down. But the industry’s plummeting fortunes have raised questions about whether companies can fulfill their obligations to rehabilitate vast strip mines in Western states — many of which are on federally owned property — as well as mountaintop-removal mining sites in the East.

A number of smaller companies have defaulted or skimped on cleanup obligations, leaving behind abandoned strip mines and denuded mountains. Some are simply eyesores, unhealed scars on the landscape that can be seen for miles. Others are perpetual sources of water pollution, slowly leaking acidic and otherwise toxic wastes into streams and groundwater supplies.

Now coal giants are facing outcomes similar to those experienced by some of the smaller companies. Several are struggling to make payments on debts for ill-timed multibillion-dollar acquisitions of their rivals in recent years. On top of that, they have been financially squeezed by competition from cheap natural gas and declining U.S. and Chinese demand for coal.

The coal companies never intended to clean these areas up. We, the taxpayers of the US will pay for that. Of course, the present President won't be affected, for he knows only little people pay taxes. He has proven that with his refusal to release his taxes.

 

[Old Rocks]

In other words, killing streams and rivers is fine with you. Well, nice to know how the "Conservatives" stand on that.

Again, just regulate discharges to actual streams, and not intermittent streams that may, or may not exist. Regulate something that gives certainty, not something that is open to interpretation, such as if some runoff trough is a stream or not.

My, my, how you 'Conservatives' love your 'alteranative facts. What a lying asshole you are. Here is the reality of what is happening;

Plundering Appalachia - The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining :: The Issue

Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production, and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.

More than 470 mountains in the southern Appalachians, which are among the oldest mountains on Earth, have already been sheared off. Vast areas of wildlife habitat, the most biologically diverse forest in North America, have been obliterated. Roughly 2000 miles of streams have been filled or severly degraded by mining waste, all in pursuit of coal. And coal is a lousy way to power a society.

From mining to burning to disposing the combustion waste, it’s a dirty business. Unfortunately, in our reductionist age, too often people looking at the coal problem don’t consider the whole problem. Only by contemplating the entire life cycle of fossil energy—coal extraction, preparation, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal of by-products—can one fully understand the enormity of coal’s toxic legacy.

See how coal’s toxic legacy stretches from blown-up mountains to a dangerously warming planet to coal ash dumps polluting air and water:

The most profitable way to decapitate a mountain. Blow its top off, section by section, and then move the rubble with heavy equipment. Sometimes the forest cloaking the condemned mountain is clear-cut; more often the trees are simply scraped away, bulldozed into a pile, and burned. A pad is leveled, and a large drilling rig bores a series of holes. Into them goes a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—the same type of explosive that homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prior to detonation, warning whistles sound. When the charge explodes, the earth shudders. The explosions may shake and crack house foundations, startle wildlife, and spray a large area with dust and flying rock. Coal mining is far and away the largest industrial consumer of explosives in the United States. According to government figures for 2005, more than 1.8 billion pounds of high explosives were used in West Virginia and Kentucky alone, primarily in surface-mining operations.

The most ancient mountains in North America, plundered for profit. The forest covering these venerable ridges and valleys is a global hotspot of biological diversity. An estimated 800,000 acres of that forest have already been destroyed—and more than 470 mountains sheared off—by surface-mining operations. Sometimes hundreds of feet of elevation are lost as a mountain’s original contour is blasted away. The topsoil, foundation of the landscape’s exceptional diversity of life, is wasted. Broad, plateau-like mesas remain. Federal law does not require formerly forested mine sites to be reforested during “reclamation.” Even when operators meet their legal obligations to reclaim mined areas, the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream.

Mountaintop removal is strip-mining on steroids. Massive dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and ten-story-high draglines can undo in months what geological processes took millions of years to build. Typically, multiple coal seams are exposed as a mountaintop-removal operation dismantles the landscape, piece by piece. The earthmoving equipment requires only a handful of operators. Mine- related employment in the Appalachian coalfields has plummeted in recent decades because of increasing mechanization, and because production has shifted from underground to surface mining—“taking the miner out of mining,” as local residents say. These radical strip-mining operations not only obliterate the former habitat and homes of innumerable wild creatures, they also reshape the very contour of the horizon. The familiar curves and folds of the landscape, the mountains that have anchored communities for generations, are simply gone.

Awwwwwww ... Such a sad story. How come you only told HALF of it and left out the happy ending???

http://mining.state.co.us/Programs/Abandoned/Reclamation/Pages/AwardsandAccolades.aspx

Or in Virginia.

Geez.. You'd think that REAL environmentalists -- even lefty ones --- would be smart enough to find ways to address the problem OTHER than crying and throwing hissy fits..

Most damage can be fixed if there is a will and enough $$.

I have no issue with forcing companies that break things to fix them, but using regulations as an excuse to kill an industry under the guise of regulating it is dishonest.

Exactly. It's used as excuse. The damage is NOWHERE NEAR permanent if it's addressed and if there was the WILL -- companies and jobs would be created to move Mother Nature back into place. Better than before.

Not costly to plant stuff and regrade. Not at all.

Then why are they not doing it, except for a few Potemkin Villages.

 

[martybegan]

Again, just regulate discharges to actual streams, and not intermittent streams that may, or may not exist. Regulate something that gives certainty, not something that is open to interpretation, such as if some runoff trough is a stream or not.

My, my, how you 'Conservatives' love your 'alteranative facts. What a lying asshole you are. Here is the reality of what is happening;

Plundering Appalachia - The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining :: The Issue

Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production, and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.

More than 470 mountains in the southern Appalachians, which are among the oldest mountains on Earth, have already been sheared off. Vast areas of wildlife habitat, the most biologically diverse forest in North America, have been obliterated. Roughly 2000 miles of streams have been filled or severly degraded by mining waste, all in pursuit of coal. And coal is a lousy way to power a society.

From mining to burning to disposing the combustion waste, it’s a dirty business. Unfortunately, in our reductionist age, too often people looking at the coal problem don’t consider the whole problem. Only by contemplating the entire life cycle of fossil energy—coal extraction, preparation, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal of by-products—can one fully understand the enormity of coal’s toxic legacy.

See how coal’s toxic legacy stretches from blown-up mountains to a dangerously warming planet to coal ash dumps polluting air and water:

The most profitable way to decapitate a mountain. Blow its top off, section by section, and then move the rubble with heavy equipment. Sometimes the forest cloaking the condemned mountain is clear-cut; more often the trees are simply scraped away, bulldozed into a pile, and burned. A pad is leveled, and a large drilling rig bores a series of holes. Into them goes a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—the same type of explosive that homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prior to detonation, warning whistles sound. When the charge explodes, the earth shudders. The explosions may shake and crack house foundations, startle wildlife, and spray a large area with dust and flying rock. Coal mining is far and away the largest industrial consumer of explosives in the United States. According to government figures for 2005, more than 1.8 billion pounds of high explosives were used in West Virginia and Kentucky alone, primarily in surface-mining operations.

The most ancient mountains in North America, plundered for profit. The forest covering these venerable ridges and valleys is a global hotspot of biological diversity. An estimated 800,000 acres of that forest have already been destroyed—and more than 470 mountains sheared off—by surface-mining operations. Sometimes hundreds of feet of elevation are lost as a mountain’s original contour is blasted away. The topsoil, foundation of the landscape’s exceptional diversity of life, is wasted. Broad, plateau-like mesas remain. Federal law does not require formerly forested mine sites to be reforested during “reclamation.” Even when operators meet their legal obligations to reclaim mined areas, the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream.

Mountaintop removal is strip-mining on steroids. Massive dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and ten-story-high draglines can undo in months what geological processes took millions of years to build. Typically, multiple coal seams are exposed as a mountaintop-removal operation dismantles the landscape, piece by piece. The earthmoving equipment requires only a handful of operators. Mine- related employment in the Appalachian coalfields has plummeted in recent decades because of increasing mechanization, and because production has shifted from underground to surface mining—“taking the miner out of mining,” as local residents say. These radical strip-mining operations not only obliterate the former habitat and homes of innumerable wild creatures, they also reshape the very contour of the horizon. The familiar curves and folds of the landscape, the mountains that have anchored communities for generations, are simply gone.

Awwwwwww ... Such a sad story. How come you only told HALF of it and left out the happy ending???

http://mining.state.co.us/Programs/Abandoned/Reclamation/Pages/AwardsandAccolades.aspx

Or in Virginia.

Geez.. You'd think that REAL environmentalists -- even lefty ones --- would be smart enough to find ways to address the problem OTHER than crying and throwing hissy fits..

Most damage can be fixed if there is a will and enough $$.

I have no issue with forcing companies that break things to fix them, but using regulations as an excuse to kill an industry under the guise of regulating it is dishonest.

Exactly. It's used as excuse. The damage is NOWHERE NEAR permanent if it's addressed and if there was the WILL -- companies and jobs would be created to move Mother Nature back into place. Better than before.

Not costly to plant stuff and regrade. Not at all.

Then why are they not doing it, except for a few Potemkin Villages.

Because you idiots push more for destroying their way of living than to make them fix what they mess up. It's about ending their way of life first for you, and fixing the environment 2nd.

 

[Olde Europe]

Then why are they not doing it, except for a few Potemkin Villages.

You wouldn't be suggesting they care more for their bottom line, and bet on their ability to saddle taxpayers with their cost of doing business (while crowing about how cheap and competitive a source of energy coal is), than for the concerns of liberal-lefty environmental wackos' bleeding-heart concerns? Or would you?

 

[mamooth]

PERFECT !!! WHO exactly OWNS the Kingston plant there Squidward?

TVA.

So, your point is that coal pollution isn't really pollution if it was from TVA land?

You seem absolutely shocked that a government agency wasn't perfect. Modern libertarians tend to all be like that, having these meltdowns when their vision of a perfect government is shown to be a myth. You didn't see any rational people having such meltdowns.

 

[flacaltenn]

Again, just regulate discharges to actual streams, and not intermittent streams that may, or may not exist. Regulate something that gives certainty, not something that is open to interpretation, such as if some runoff trough is a stream or not.

My, my, how you 'Conservatives' love your 'alteranative facts. What a lying asshole you are. Here is the reality of what is happening;

Plundering Appalachia - The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining :: The Issue

Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production, and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.

More than 470 mountains in the southern Appalachians, which are among the oldest mountains on Earth, have already been sheared off. Vast areas of wildlife habitat, the most biologically diverse forest in North America, have been obliterated. Roughly 2000 miles of streams have been filled or severly degraded by mining waste, all in pursuit of coal. And coal is a lousy way to power a society.

From mining to burning to disposing the combustion waste, it’s a dirty business. Unfortunately, in our reductionist age, too often people looking at the coal problem don’t consider the whole problem. Only by contemplating the entire life cycle of fossil energy—coal extraction, preparation, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal of by-products—can one fully understand the enormity of coal’s toxic legacy.

See how coal’s toxic legacy stretches from blown-up mountains to a dangerously warming planet to coal ash dumps polluting air and water:

The most profitable way to decapitate a mountain. Blow its top off, section by section, and then move the rubble with heavy equipment. Sometimes the forest cloaking the condemned mountain is clear-cut; more often the trees are simply scraped away, bulldozed into a pile, and burned. A pad is leveled, and a large drilling rig bores a series of holes. Into them goes a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—the same type of explosive that homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prior to detonation, warning whistles sound. When the charge explodes, the earth shudders. The explosions may shake and crack house foundations, startle wildlife, and spray a large area with dust and flying rock. Coal mining is far and away the largest industrial consumer of explosives in the United States. According to government figures for 2005, more than 1.8 billion pounds of high explosives were used in West Virginia and Kentucky alone, primarily in surface-mining operations.

The most ancient mountains in North America, plundered for profit. The forest covering these venerable ridges and valleys is a global hotspot of biological diversity. An estimated 800,000 acres of that forest have already been destroyed—and more than 470 mountains sheared off—by surface-mining operations. Sometimes hundreds of feet of elevation are lost as a mountain’s original contour is blasted away. The topsoil, foundation of the landscape’s exceptional diversity of life, is wasted. Broad, plateau-like mesas remain. Federal law does not require formerly forested mine sites to be reforested during “reclamation.” Even when operators meet their legal obligations to reclaim mined areas, the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream.

Mountaintop removal is strip-mining on steroids. Massive dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and ten-story-high draglines can undo in months what geological processes took millions of years to build. Typically, multiple coal seams are exposed as a mountaintop-removal operation dismantles the landscape, piece by piece. The earthmoving equipment requires only a handful of operators. Mine- related employment in the Appalachian coalfields has plummeted in recent decades because of increasing mechanization, and because production has shifted from underground to surface mining—“taking the miner out of mining,” as local residents say. These radical strip-mining operations not only obliterate the former habitat and homes of innumerable wild creatures, they also reshape the very contour of the horizon. The familiar curves and folds of the landscape, the mountains that have anchored communities for generations, are simply gone.

Awwwwwww ... Such a sad story. How come you only told HALF of it and left out the happy ending???

http://mining.state.co.us/Programs/Abandoned/Reclamation/Pages/AwardsandAccolades.aspx

Or in Virginia.

Geez.. You'd think that REAL environmentalists -- even lefty ones --- would be smart enough to find ways to address the problem OTHER than crying and throwing hissy fits..

Most damage can be fixed if there is a will and enough $$.

I have no issue with forcing companies that break things to fix them, but using regulations as an excuse to kill an industry under the guise of regulating it is dishonest.

Exactly. It's used as excuse. The damage is NOWHERE NEAR permanent if it's addressed and if there was the WILL -- companies and jobs would be created to move Mother Nature back into place. Better than before.

Not costly to plant stuff and regrade. Not at all.

Then why are they not doing it, except for a few Potemkin Villages.

Because the EPA is spending too much money on Climate Change and wants to KILL the coal industry rather than make it look pretty?? C'mon man. Think !!!! They WANT the ugly pictures.. They HAVE the power and money to fix it. It's a drop in the freaking bucket if they were motivated to help coal clean up it's image.

 

[flacaltenn]

PERFECT !!! WHO exactly OWNS the Kingston plant there Squidward?

TVA.

So, your point is that coal pollution isn't really pollution if it was from TVA land?

You seem absolutely shocked that a government agency wasn't perfect. Modern libertarians tend to all be like that, having these meltdowns when their vision of a perfect government is shown to be a myth. You didn't see any rational people having such meltdowns.

It's not so much they're perfect. It's more they feel above the responsibilities that the GOVT operations REQUIRE of other companies. You know that. Look at the ongoing MAJOR enviro disasters at the Govt Nuclear weapons sites. It's CRIMINAL and heartbreaking. Or the avoidance of enviro regs at military installations leaving a gooey sucky mess when they bug out and close. The GOVT -- like in East Germany -- is EXEMPT from scorn and accountability when it comes to silly ole environmental stewardship.. Dontcha know this? All Libertarians do...

 

[Olde Europe]

It's a drop in the freaking bucket if they were motivated to help coal clean up it's image.

Why on earth would they do that? What on earth would motivate the EPA to clean up the image of the filthiest of polluters in the energy business, second only to exploding nuclear plants? Apparently, you misread "EPA" to mean Environmental Polluter-Protection Agency.

As to "drop in the bucket":

There are an estimated 4,000 orphan mines in the Commonwealth, 69% of which have been inventoried (2013). Once identified, an orphaned mine site is evaluated for its potential hazards to the environment and the public’s health and safety. This evaluation includes soil and water investigations, studies on the feasibility of reclaiming the site, cost analysis, and seeking the landowner’s consent to allow reclamation to proceed.

The first orphaned land site was reclaimed in 1981. Since then, 125 orphaned land projects have been completed encompassing 650 acres at a cost of $3,715,301 (2013). The average cost of reclamation per acre has been $5,715.84.​

That's mineral mining sites (excluding coal, for whatever reason) in Virginia alone, and just the "orphaned" ones (how's that for lying with words, concealing corporations saddling the taxpayers with the costs of cleaning up their messes), just as a vague indicator of the costs. Four fricking thousand of them, and no idea whether that's all of the freaking mess, and neither how many not-yet-orphaned mines will suddenly be "orphaned" once exploitation ends. If that's a "drop in the bucket", why can't the operators of the mines be required to share some of their ample profits to get it done?

Naw, instead of having them clean up behind themselves, let government help them clean up their image instead, and bleed taxpayers dry to remedy the toxic eyesores. Typical "libertarian".