I wouldn’t mind making an announcement like this - oh, I don’t know - ten times a day. 
Welcome to Brian from PABackwoods as a co-author to the Stop MTR community. Brian lives in one of the most polluted parts of the country due to the usage of coal both from the atmosphere and coal waste disposal. I thought I should also mention Brian is a strong supporter of stopping mountaintop removal coal mining and has probably done more to promote this blog than I have - it’s too close to call.
—
In other news - there is a new undertaking in the works. Mind you this is in its early stages. But, I’ve been corresponding with some residents in the Spring Hollow area basically in the shadow of the new mountaintop removal site and let me tell you - you only think I’m fired up. I’m going to give them an opportunity to be heard by installing wordpress blogs on a sub-domain of this site. And then giving them to residents. There will also be a new page added to this blog entitled Residents of MTR and on that page is where you will find blog addresses and a little about the blog authors.
I’d venture to guess that things are going to get interesting in a hurry. Look for that coming real soon.
awesome!!! giving them a voice!!!
Well, 1st off, thank you for the kind words. However I doubt that I have even come close to putting in the work of promoting the blogs that you have. Moral support, yeah maybe
Giving local residents a blog of their own here is yeat another great idea. You’ve had quite a few of those the last week or two… what you on? I want some:) Is it the Ginseng?
Thanks Denny for posting this and letting us know about the Pennsylvania Backwoods blog. I used to work in Greene County, PA on the PA Game Lands up there (I’d still be there if funding for my position hadn’t got cut). I helped manage 7,300 acres for wildlife management, I developed the wood duck program that is now implemented in the entire state of PA. We also worked with several coal mines up there (mostly Consol mines), and I help them develop wetlands on several sites. There was some real problems with mining, mostly due to the high sulfur coal they have there, but I seen nothing that could compare to the MTR in Coal River Valley. As a matter of fact, the coal companies up there used to comment to me how the West Virginia coal industry got around laws and used rape and pillage tactics. Sometimes when I’d ask about certain aspects of their mines, they’d look at me and say, “Well, this ain’t West Virginia…we don’t do it like they do there.”
Not to diminish the plight of Southwest PA. They do have real problems, acid mine drainage that could choke a horse, and subsidence from Hell! The biggest problem I faced with the wetlands up there was the acidic water. The companies up there seem to be more community positive, much like the coal companies were in WV 30 years ago.
Anyway, thanks for linking up with Pennsylvania Backwoods, I look forward to reading the posts from there. In many ways, southwest PA is still very special to me.