Changing a water filter in Prenter, WV (video courtesy of Coal River Mountain Watch):
One brilliant solution Coal Companies have come up with for expelling coal waste (slurry) is pumping it into abandoned underground mines. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that eventually it will get absorbed into groundwater…. and thus into well water. It’s just wrong…. plain and simple. No one, industry or individual, should have the right to do something on their property that will adversely affect someone else’s property. But King Coal has never been known to be a good neighbor.
Here in PA, they are putting CCW(coal combustion waste)- highly toxic ash into old mines, both underground and surface. I just wonder how much it costs to buy the EPA?
man. i wonder how you can live in the coalfields with this your reality, drinking water destroyed by the system that provides your livelihood, and still maintain that this is the best way to live. it makes me want to cry.
Folkface- glad you brought that up. executives from the coal industry and walker machinery alike don’t want people living in the coalfields, so they have no qualms with the destruction they are wreaking. they have actually said they think it should be a national sacrifice zone so that the rest of the country can have electricity. for some outrageous quotes in that line of thinking, read: http://www.ohvec.org/outrageous.html
one in particular:
““There’s still coal underneath the land and sometime in the future, that coal has the right to be mined,” said Commissioner Alan Weakly, a former mining engineer. “What I am saying is there are areas where people will build and in the future they will have to un-build.”
so it doesn’t matter that your family has lived on a piece of property for generations. the coal industry thinks they have a right to the land under the guise of ‘providing electricity for the rest of the country’. but we well know, it’s because of profit, not because they feel this overwhelming burden and compassion for america’s citizens to be able to watch TV and surf the internet.