Mountaintop removal coal mining and the "clean coal" oxymoron Stop mountain top removal coal mining - Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
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This article originally published by The Charleston Gazette

May 25, 2007

(Note: The OpeEd below was written by a man who profits handsomely from selling the huge machines that replace miners and drive communities away and destroy the families' homeplace and our land and water.  Also see: Groups want responsible mining 

Roger Lilly

Mountaintop mining not destructive to W.Va.

I SERIOUSLY doubt the coal industry “forced” Denise Giardina from McDowell County (May 22). I suspect her desire for education and writing simply placed her in more convenient and opportune surroundings. Historically, she has used the randomness of her birthplace in attempting to elevate some level of empathy and credibility for her ramblings, rants, and writings of coal and southern West Virginia. I don’t buy it. To use her term, I find her views as “reprehensible” as those she ascribes to coal. As we review the hateful tone of her disgusting response, consider:

  • Perdue and Roberts were “spot on” in every respect. They were not “making it sound like” environmentalists are trying to shut down the coal industry. Anyone with half a brain knows that enviros truly are shutting down the coal industry. Their “Unofficial Rule Book of Coal PR” just won’t allow them to be honest about it.
  • Deep mining is profoundly affected by mountaintop mining. Many companies simply cannot afford to do one without the other. The enviro-eco-terrorist’s judicial attacks, utilizing the Clean Water Act guise, are as indiscriminate among underground and surface mining as an atom bomb and will have a similar effect on West Virginians.
  • The 35 percent of West Virginia coal production from mountaintop mining is not the result of robotic machines. It is a community of miners, vendors, business, and labor working as an economic force. Connecting the dots of an economy is apparently irrelevant to her world view or beyond Ms. Giardina’s understanding.
  • Talk about an attack on human decency. Give me a break! To equate business leaders and coal miners as the equivalent of drug dealers and prostitutes is ignorant, irresponsible and morally unconscionable.
  • Finally, invoking her views as those of God is a real stretch. Speaking for God is the height of hubris and vanity. God will be God without any direction from Ms. Giardina or anyone else. Some might feel mankind ranks high on his favorites list also. Utilizing our resources with responsibility, as our coal miners do, is decent and right.

    Yes, let us be clear. Mountaintop mining is not destructive. It is a regulated, responsible, and an absolutely necessary activity balancing energy, national security, jobs and the environment. Those with extremist and hidden agendas are demagogues of the worst kind and care nothing about the human condition, much less the environment. Electricity from coal has done more for this nation than we can ever express. It was produced from the ingenuity and sweat of very decent people, not the sharp tongue and fountain pen of those who would destroy thy neighbor.

    Lilly is the marketing manager of Walker Machinery.

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