What happens when you've encouraged mining companies to evade existing law?  What happens when you greatly reduce fines, tolerate huge slurry spills, and become inured to such spectacles as a judge vacationing in Monaco on an indicted coal executive's dime?  What happens when you make it easy for companies to expand mountaintop removal operations, and acknowledge beforehand that public comments will be ignored?  What happens when mine safety officials walk out in the midst of a congressional hearing?

What happens is that companies get the message.  This administration doesn't care about the mountains, the environment in general, or the rule of law.  And companies then take the next logical step.

In Pike County, Kentucky, Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Company conducted mountaintop removal operations in an area near Fish Trap Lake, destroying the mountaintop and dumping the waste not only into nearby streams, but into Fish Trap Lake itself -- a lake which provides recreation, tourist revenue, and the water supply for the town of Pikeville.

They did all of this without bothering to pick up the required federal Clean Water Act permit.

Local Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth members discovered the damage, which was later confirmed by the Army Corps of Engineers.  On questioning the damage, they learned that Clintwood Elkhorn had apparently operated with the same kind of logic immediately understood by any three-year old -- act first, then fess up later.

The Corps told us that Clintwood Elkhorn went ahead and mined and then contacted the Corps to tell them what they had done, reported Sierra Club official Oliver Bernstein.

The Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth have sent Clintwood Elkhorn a notice of their intent to sue, but suing someone after the fact won't put the mountaintop back.  

There are dozens of MTR permits moving quickly through the well-greased pipeline, and in an atmosphere of lawlessness, where coal spot prices are soaring and those charged with enforcing the law are looking the other way, there may be many more Clintwood Elkhorns out there ready to tear down the mountain now, worry about permits later.  It's not know if the EPA or Office of Surface Mines intends to take any action in this case.

Clintwood Elkhorn is owned by TECO Energy, whose PAC and officers have contributed to the campaigns of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, KY-2 Representative Ron Lewis, KY-5 Representative Hal Rogers, and KY-1 Representative Ed Whitfield.  Maybe they thought that was plenty to provide political cover for a practice that's consistently been coddled by conservatives.

Update [2008-6-11 18:0:57 by Devilstower]:Sierra Club now has more info on their site.

After the site visits, Sierra Club officials contacted the local Sassafras office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to obtain information, and a Corps official confirmed that the mining had taken place without the required permit. The Corps official noted that the company had "self-reported" the violation back in March, but to date neither the Corps nor state agencies have taken any enforcement action.

Talk about loose change . . .

If the internets are, in part, the emancipation of decades of isolated control of the means of mass communication, shouldn't we pay homage and take seriously the messages of those who fought year after year to tell the stories the masters forbade, by telling and earnestly considering them now?

For more on "The Only Blacklisted American Film," check out:

http://www.imdb.com/...

http://www.archive.org/...

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/...

http://www.historynet.com/...

For those that haven't seen "Blue Planet" or other shows about the nature of our oceans, it's probably worth your time to do so.  "Black Smokers" exist at the heart of their own ecosystems at the base of both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean, following the depths like threads.  These vents are thought as part of the start of life, and the continuation of life on our planet.  And now, organizations are looking at something new for the vents: Mining them.

The 2008 winner of the $100,000 Buckminster Fuller Challenge is John Todd with his Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World, a blueprint for a post coal era and carbon neutral economy in the coal land regions of Appalachia.

The plan includes
detoxifying the trillions of gallons of coal slurry with eco-machines designed to render the material harmless to the environment and local populations as well as to create beneficial products from the treated slurry solids

and
replacing Appalachian coal with renewable resources like Appalachian wind and woody biomass for power and products in a regional agro-forestry ecological land management system that includes all the various sectors of society.

The plan is replicable and scalable, designed to  be carbon neutral if not carbon (and methane) clearing through the use of basic ecological design principles.

John Todd was one of the founders of New Alchemy Institute and has been building eco machines and living structures for forty years.

Worried that NASA's plans for getting men to Mars are going to take too long or cost too much?  Don't fret yourself.

If you can't take people to Mars, you can certainly bring Mars to the people.  

This is a place where "moving mountains" is no longer a figure of speech. Here, among the steep green Appalachians, mining companies are moving mountains off their pedestals to get the kind of coal that Washington needs.

...

"It used to be West Virginia," said Vivian Stockman, an environmental activist. "And now it's Mars."

you know, you have funny eyes.' I was shocked he said that to me, Mom, really surprised by that."  

My 25 year old daughter came over to my place so we could watch the David Wilson film on MSNBC together.  Suddenly, we found ourselves in the middle of a conversation we had never had before.  

J has hired a nicely diverse group of workers while in her management capacity.  She told me last night that they have started to refer to her as "the white girl."  She said that they make many assumptions and cliches about her and her "privileged" upbringing.  She then confided in me that it is painful to her, but she tries to respond in the spirit of good humor, despite the ache in her heart.  J went on to say that it bothered her they would presume certain things because of her white heritage from me, things that were not true, but it bothered her even more because it denied utterly her paternal heritage.  You see, although I'm of Irish lineage and, yes, white, her father is a Native American.

Crosposted from UNBOSSED

Well, this is good news:

A federal judge has blocked a British mining company from exploring for uranium near the Grand Canyon, agreeing with environmental groups which sued the U.S. Forest Service for approving the plan without full environmental reviews.

We all need a little beauty in our lives. Memories and gilded reminders of places and times that capture the splendor of the natural world. Simple times and quiet places that sleep in our memories of wonder and longing.

I remember a time when all the roads out of Denver were winding dirt roads over the high mountain tundra passes sliced with glaciers and snow fields in July... alpine flowers and sweeping mountain vistas flowing down to the old mining towns of Dillon and Breckenridge. Steep gravel roads that switch backed across cascading streams and fluttering aspen groves alongside magnificent stands of pine and fir forests disappearing down to the empty desert valleys of the Eagle and Colorado rivers near Gypsum Colorado.

The dry valleys and eroded hills of Pinon pines, sagebrush and cheatgrass offer no clue to the lush meadows, temperate forests and alpine gardens of the Flat Tops Mountains of western Colorado. I often marvel at the concealed beauty of these mountain wilderness islands. Unnoticed and unrecognizable to the motorists whizzing down todays I-70 Interstate, it is always surprising to newcomers to wander off the beaten path to a place of verdunt beauty.

(Cross-posted at the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog)

Beth Vorhees interviewed Senator Hillary Clinton on West Virginia Public Broadcast (audio), this morning and asked her a direct question about her position on mountaintop removal coal-mining.

Hillary's answer below the fold.

Keep in mind, mountaintop removal:

1.  Has destroyed 1 million acres of the most biodiverse temperate forest in the world

2. Has led to a 90% reduction in mining jobs in WV because of the automation of labor

3. Has leveled 470+ of the oldest mountains on the continent.

As the Earth careens through space, our species stops at nothing to extract fuel from its thin crust.
We all know that.

Our energy recklessness is creating a growing threat to our physical well-being, perhaps our survivabilility.
We all sense that.

But some words can speak to the hollowness in our hearts. The passage below the fold is the powerful opening from the motion filed by Appalachian Voices and the Canary Coalition to stop coal plants now in line to be subsidized by some sad Act passed by Congress in 2005.    

Read it - and weep.

Conserve your energy. Take a breather from candidate bashing diaries. Let's talk about ISSUES...shall we?  Now...ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS TO USE!

Radioactive remains: The forgotten story of the Northwest's only uranium mines. One of the world's largest mining companies is trying to wash its hands of responsibility for a costly cleanup of the Northwest's only uranium mines. Seattle Times

Your sewer on drugs. Sewage is more than just filth. It’s evidence of our worst habits, everything from caffeine to cocaine, all ingested and flushed down the toilet. Now scientists are using wastewater to drug-test entire cities, and the results are sobering. Popular Science.

Man...what a week. I'm pooped. Without further adieu, stories on the topic that dare not speak it's name within either Party...ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS to USE! (P.S. No candidates were bashed in the making of this diary...)

Is cabin air making us sick? More and more pilots are reporting that air polluted by engine fumes is making them ill and even incapable of handling their aircraft. So why are passengers not being told? London Daily Telegraph

4 nations, 4 cities take 'climate neutral' pledge. Four nations and a clutch of cities and corporations unveiled a Web-based information hub on Thursday to help meet a pledge to radically cut carbon levels in their economies in coming decade. Agence France-Presse.

crossposted from unbossed

Under the Bush years, the mining industry has been in the news with disaster after disaster. Many of these problems have been discussed at unbossed. Now  Richard Stickler claims he has gotten to the bottom of the problem and is going to do something about it. Whose to blame? Well, start with 1995.

We have already seen Hillary take money from News Corp. It appears now that Bill has even more interesting bedfellows.

You be the judge:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

Bob Murray is an easy target.  He is the ugly face of the mining company that co-owns and operates the Crandall Canyon Mine, which we all know about.  Kossacks Devilstower and jlms qkw have already done an amazing job discussing Murray's recently revealed role at the Crandall Canyon Mine.  

But in light of the minutes of the co-owners that were obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune, I think the focus can be expanded, as the mine was co-owned by Murray's company with the Intermountain Power Agency, which is a Utah public entity with strong ties to Southern California local governments.  As explained below, the minutes raise questions for both the residents of Utah and Los Angeles and other Southern Californian municipals as to what their public officials knew and when they knew it.

What do they all have in common? Well it’s not a fairy tale or a fantasy or a hope or a dream.  It’s not about sitting around a cozy fire at the city club and sparring over the economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes.  It’s not about dissing opponents at a dinner party in Georgetown.   What all these folks have in common is that the whole Americas has been screwed over since the Europeans first arrived and then again when Milton Friedman arrived in the 1950's  with his flim flam feudalism.  That bunch of baloney passed off as theory continued through every presidency and is rock and rolling today.

Naomi Klein maps the way Friedman, his Chicago School economists, and the C.I.A. brought free market fundamentalist capitalism to the Americas in the 1970’s thru shock and awe and are still trying to wield their wickedness there today. (Although they did manage to detour through Poland, South Africa, Russia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Baghdad and New Orleans).

So it is no surprise that this story hit this weekend.

Mexican Authorities Move to Crush Copper Strike by David Bacon Mexican Authorities Move to Crush Copper Strike