Living in an apartment building in the heart of Washington, DC I don’t feel a deep connection to coal mining. I drink my coffee in the mornings and read about the tragedy at Sago mine or China’s voracious appetite for coal. From my dining room table though, West Virginia feels far away and China could practically be in other universe.
Turns out I’m much more connected than I care to imagine. This Sunday, the Washington Post ran a great piece by David Fahrenthold about DC’s connection to mountaintop removal coal mining.
MUD, W.Va. — 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.
Though this isolated mine is more than 400 miles from Washington, the two places share a powerful connection: coal. The D.C. region, with its need for electricity skyrocketing, has been burning steadily more coal, buying almost a third of its supply from this part of Appalachia.
Mountaintop removal is a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountains are literally blown up — and it is happening here in America on a scale that is almost unimaginable.
Central Appalachia provides much of the country’s coal, second only to Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. In the United States, 100 tons of coal are extracted every two seconds. Around 70 percent of that coal comes from strip mines, and over the last 20 years, an increasing amount comes from mountaintop-removal sites. In Virginia 29 mountains have already been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining.
Dominion Power has plans to build a new $1.8 billion coal-fired power plant in Wise County — a county that has already lost 25% of its mountains to mountaintop removal. Dominion’s proposed plant would burn mostly Virginia coal, which would increase the demand for coal and thus increase mountaintop removal mining.
No matter where you live in Maryland, Virginia or DC, part of your electricity comes from coal that was mined using mountaintop removal.
Check our your connection to mountaintop removal using Appalachian Voices’ web tool that allows you to track exactly where your coal comes from.
One way you can help stop the destructive practice of mountaintop removal in Virginia is by making sure Virginia doesn’t build any new coal plants.
Take action! Sign the petition against new coal in Virginia>>
