Other Miscellany

OVEC supports the West Virginia Environmental Council's letter on wind energy to the Public Service Commission. WVEC supports wind power, but insists that the PSC develop and implement a policy of objective siting criteria for wind turbines. Public recreation, bird migration and rare habitats should be considered, as should appropriate ecological studies and public input, before wind farms are given permission to build.

What Do They Know That We Don't?

At this summer’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the prime minister of Iceland, one of only two countries actively pursuing a hydrogen economy, said, "Energy conservation is not an impediment to economic advancement. It is a precondition for long-term growth."

Also at the summit, the Costa Rican president announced that he would no longer allow coal mining or oil exploration. "Economic development based on the destruction of nature is suicide. God first created plants and the animals and then man. If the plants and animals are dying, guess who is next," he said.

Coal companies call it flyrock. We call it fly boulder. Jerry Pinson calls himself lucky to be alive. He was not home on August 12 when blasting at Lodestar Energy's strip mine sent an 11-foot boulder hurtling 1,000 feet down the mountain to crush his home near Varney, Ky. In early 2002, another home was destroyed by a fly boulder from a different Lodestar mine. Author Dennis Burke, using official government statistics, found that about 2,500 tons of high explosives are used against the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky each workday. Every four days, more explosives are used in mountaintop removal mining than have been used so far by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Every day in Appalachia, the blasting is the equivalent of 1,000 Oklahoma City bombings. And the United Nations declared 2002 the International Year of the Mountains. Photo courtesy Bobby Maggard, Appalachian News-Express

Save those Cartridges!

Here’s a reminder for folks who use ink jet cartridges in your printers, faxes and plotters. Don’t trash that empty cartridge! You can recycle it and get a donation for OVEC at the same time. OVEC has a stash of postage paid bags. Call the office at 522-0246 or e-mail vivian@ohvec.org and we’ll send you some. Just put the cartridge in the bag, then pop it in the mail. For every good cartridge OVEC members send in, OVEC receives $1.