Checklist: What You Can Do To Help Stop Mountaintop Removal (MTR)

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Write your Representative today!
The Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2719) will restore the intent of the Clean Water Act by prohibiting coal companies from burying our streams with mining waste. Please contact your congressional representatives today and urge them to co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act.

Making contact:
LETTER: Please write your Representatives and Senators at their district offices, as mail delivery to DC Congressional offices continues to be slowed by security measures. For district office addresses and more info on your Congress people, see: www.Congress.org.
PHONE: Call the Congressional switchboard at 202-225-3121.
EMAIL: Find your Representative's email at www.Congress.org.

Points to make in your letter, phone call or e-mail:

• The Clean Water Act of 1977 is meant to protect, not bury, our rivers and streams.
• About 500,000 acres in West Virginia alone have been leveled, and mountaintop removal mining has destroyed an estimated total of a million acres of Appalachia's mountains.
• Across the Appalachian coalfields, more than 1,200 miles of streams are now buried or otherwise destroyed by mountaintop removal mining practices.
• The Clean Water Protection Act is necessary to protect clean water and the lives of Appalachian coalfield residents who are threatened by catastrophic flooding due to filling streams with mining waste.
• Please cosponsor HR 2719, the Clean Water Protection Act.

If you have any questions or need more information, please feel free to contact Lenny Kohm or Christina Wulf at Appalachian Voices - Call 877-277-8642 or email apptreasures@appvoices.org.

Cut your electricity consumption

Easy: Switch to Wind Power at Home and at Work   
For Southern States

Not that Hard: Do All You Can to Conserve Energy 
Change your incandescent light bulbs to energy-saving compact fluorescent or halogen light bulbs.  Urge local, state and national governments to adopt conservation policies for their buildings. Learn more.

Harder and Pricey (for now): Go Off-Grid--Local Solar / Wind System
Learn More about Solar and Wind and Energy in general.

Educate yourself and others   

Write letters to the editors of local, statewide and out-of-state newspapers. Tell them about mountaintop removal. See  http://newslink.org/ to find the address for about any paper in the country. Find almost all West Virginia media at: http://www.wvmediaguide.com/.  

Write state and national politicians.  Tell them about mountaintop removal and why you think it should be banned (eco-cide, loss of water, loss of communities, forests, our very futures!). Ask Senator Byrd to create a stunning legacy by bucking the Fossil Fuel presidency by helping to bring alternative energy R & D and manufacturing to West Virginia. We need lawmakers who can lead us into the post-coal era, into the new hydrogen economy.

Gov. Joe Manchin III
1900 Kanawha Boulevard, E.,
Charleston, WV 25305
Toll-Free: 1-888-438-2731
E-mail: Governor@WVGov.org 

Tell your friends about mountaintop removal and what they can do to help stop MTR!

Know What Mining Impacts Surround Your Home  View OVEC’s maps.

Share our maps with students, legislators, your neighbors.

Stay Informed by E-mail  Join OVEC’s Action Alert! e-mail list by sending an e-mail with “join list” in the subject line to StopMTR@ezwv.com.  This is not a discussion list, so you won’t be swamped with e-mails. You’ll probably get 4-10 Action Alerts! per month, chock full of useful info.

Stay Informed by Phone  If you don’t have or don’t like e-mail, call the OVEC office at 304-522-0246 and ask to be put on our Call List. We’ll need your name and phone number. Don’t worry –  we will only call to let you know about major events or actions.

Stay Informed by Web  See www.ohvec.org frequently for news and action updates.

Join OVEC

OVEC is a non-profit group. Our dues are on an “as can pay” basis and donations are always welcome.  Our suggested yearly membership dues are $10-$30. Call us at 304-522-0246, or send us a note, telling us you’d like to join and you’d like to receive our newsletter.  

OVEC
PO Box 6753
Huntington, WV 25773-6753

OVEC’s mission is to organize and maintain a diverse grassroots organization dedicated to the improvement and preservation of the environment through education, grassroots organizing and coalition building, leadership development and media outreach.

Together We Can Stop Mountaintop Removal!