Speaking of getting arrested to stop coal, apparently 3,000 blocking the streets of DC doesn't scare the government but one volunteer driving home a granny does. Head to the March 14th March against TVA, to show TVA that this is unacceptable. Remember, TVA is a government run company.

On Thursday, March 5 United Mountain Defense member Matt Landon was arrested by TVA police while giving a ride home to an elderly disabled Swan Pond resident, Eva Hewitt. The two were returning from the Tennessee Environmental and Conservation public meeting held earlier that day where Eva was one of several community members who spoke at a citizen’s press conference about health concerns relating to the TVA disaster.

Eva is blind in one eye and does not drive so Matt was returning her to her home on South Swan Pond Road. There continues to be a TVA check point on this road even after the citizens of Roane County were promised that the road blocks would be removed more than a month prior to this event.

Please help save Coal River Mountain! Call Governor Manchin at 1-888-438-2731 and / or use our simple web form to email the governor.

Update: This morning six were arrested after locking down to a bulldozer and excavator on Coal River Mountain. They had giant banners that read “Save Coal River Mountain” and “Wind Mills NOT Toxic Spills.”

Update 2: This afternoon 8 more were arrested delivering a letter of protest to Massey as they crossed onto Massey's property. Around 50 were there to witness the arrests. All have been released with citations for trespassing.

Activists Blockade Efforts to Begin Mountaintop Removal and Blasting Beside World’s Largest Toxic Coal Sludge Dam

Citizens of the Coal River Valley, accompanied by supporters from throughout Appalachia and supported by national allies incuding James Hansen, are blocking access to prepare Coal River Mountain for blasting. The blasting would be dangerously near to a nine-billion-gallon toxic coal sludge dam. Massey has begun work on a mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain, with plans to blast over underground mines beside the sludge dam. Residents are advocating for a wind farm on the site as a safe alternative for cleaner energy and long-term jobs.

Across the climate movement, we are constantly bumping into the false dichotomy of JOBS vs. Everything Else. Every piece of common sense can apparently be defeated with 4 dang letters -- Human health? Jobs! Long term economy? Jobs! Destroying water resources for the eastern seaboard? Jobs! Air pollution causing tens of thousands of pre-mature deaths a year? Jobs!

Now, granted, I like jobs, but, remember this is a false dichotomy -- as Judy Bonds says, "There are no jobs on a dead planet." Coal may very well produce more jobs in the short term, but we need to be thinking longer term. In December, the Coal River Wind Project produced an extensive study that showed that a wind farm would create more than a million (yes, million!) dollars more tax revenue each year in the county than a mountaintop removal site, and that it would take only 27 years for a wind farm to produce more job hours than a strip mine.

However, these are hypotheticals, the Coal River Wind Project remains in jeopardy. Now, we have proof that wind can beat coal in the jobs and economy argument. According to CNN Money.com: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.

The nation's first carbon capture and sequestration scheme is sneaking its way through the West Virginia Department of Environmental "Protection." This is right on time with the Senate's attempt to sneak in $4.6 billion for Clean Coal in the Stimulus Package. This Carbon Capture and Sequestration boondoggle needs to stop before it starts.

We need your help to stop it! Please comment on this faulty permit by Friday.

"Clean Coal" may sound like fun to folks till it shows up in your backyard. Please support the communities in WV and nearby Ohio who are fighting this permit!

This particular scheme -- est. $70 million-- will only capture around 1% of the plant's emissions. The permit does not show the contours of the strata the CO2 will be injected into nor does it mention how surrounding water will be impacted. If this permit is approved, it will be approved without knowing where and how the CO2 will migrate.

This Friday, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection will close the comment period on American Electric Power's permit application to capture and geologically sequester Carbon Dioxide emissions from its Mountaineer Power Plant. Please take a moment to visit www.crmw.net/CCS_Comments.php to tell the DEP not to approve this permit.

Why else is Carbon Capture and Sequestration a Bad Idea?
Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is not a viable option to prevent catastrophic climate change. In a best case scenario, CCS wouldn't significantly contribute to a reduction in carbon emissions for at least 15 years, well beyond the time period in which we have to significantly curb our CO2 emissions.

This week my 2 million closest friends and I froze half to death on the Washington Mall to say goodbye to President Bush and scream a breathless, extended cheering, crying, dancing, hugging, being nice to strangers, delirious from lack of sleep hello to Barack Obama.

While were were there, we were greeted by the Reality Coalition's most recent Ain't No Clean Coal ad in the metros, which about a million people rode on Tuesday. Bigfoot, Mermaids, and Aliens were touting clean coal, ha ha ha!

Despite how fun these ads are, recently leaked Coal Sleaze memos reveal a serious battle is coming. Our work for clean energy is gaining amazing momentum--and they are scared. We're going to need more than funny ads on our side. Coal Sleaze power got new Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to go from "Coal is my worst night mare" to being “...hopeful and optimistic that we can figure out how to use coal in a clean way..."

As we move forward, it's going to take serious work, we need to band together with new efforts from Power Past Coal to Powershift--to show the power and cacophony of our thriving grassroots movement that values health and real prosperity over money. Viewing the 2 million people standing around me at the inauguration, it seemed so easy. Here's what our new President had to say about it, in some of my favorite parts of his first big speech as president.

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America...

As you probably know, there was a huge disaster in Tennessee last week where over 1 billion gallons of toxic waste spilled into the drinking water of millions of people. Read more below, Feel free to send checks for medical testing, copies, paper, gas and general support funds to:
United Mountain Defense
P.O. Box 20363
Knoxville, TN 37920
Please mark check: “For TVA Spill”
Or use our Pay Pal account at www.unitedmountaindefense.org

Visit www.CoalRiverWind.org to download the report.

Over 10,700 people from across the US and across the world have signed the petitionto save Coal River Mountain from 10 square mile mountaintop removal mine. In stead of the mountaintop removal site, residents want a wind farm. They've been trying to convince Governor Manchin of West Virginia that a wind farm is a better choice for the local residents, the county and the state than another mountaintop removal site. On Tuesday, that argument got a lot stronger.

Yesterday the Coal River Wind project of Coal River Mountain Watch released a study it had commissioned last August that compared the economics of a wind farm vs. a strip mine on Coal River Mountain. As part of the release, there was a press conference held in Beckley and another in Charleston.

The main message of the report is that the private landholding companies and mine companies benefit from the strip mining while the people living in the community and the county government benefits more from the wind farm. In fact, the annual taxes that will go to the county from the wind farm will be $1,740,000 while the severance taxes that will go to Raleigh County from the Surface mine will be $36,000. And that 1.7 million will be annual forever. The $36,000 from the mining will last only 17 years.

Posted by Sarah Moon on The Sunny Way

Sarah wrote this story after attending Mountaintop Removal Student Summit hosted by SEAC and Coal River Mountain Watch this past November. Bobby Mitchell (mentioned below) was a key part of SEAC for many years, please contact Prenter Water Fund if you are interested in working in solidarity with this project. -Dana

When residents of Prenter Road in West Virginia moved into their community, they were told their well water was so pure, they could bottle it and sell it. Today, that same water is making them sick. In response, the Prenter Water Fund was established this summer by activist Bobby Mitchell and local resident Patty Sebock. Since then, volunteers have been working urgently to get clean water to the community. “I don’t know how to be any more clear about this,” said fund manager, Mat Louis-Rosenberg, “People are dying now.”

Louis-Rosenberg has been living in the Coal River Mountain Watch campaign house for the past two months, devoting most of his waking hours to the Prenter Water Fund. He is sustained by a stipend from his position as Coal River Mountain Sludge Safety Intern. Assisted by fellow activist and friend Glen Collins, he has his mission cut out for him. Collins and Louis-Rosenberg joked merrily about being the Water Planeteers for Captain Planet. “We need to get our rings!” they enthused. Humor helps scatter the shadow of King Coal, the force behind Prenter’s polluted waters.

After 4 years, at least 60,000 letters and comments to the OSM and EPA, the Bush Administration has finally gotten the Stream Buffer Zone rule approved by the Office of Surface Mining and the EPA. The Stream Buffer Zone essentially takes away the ability to limit valley fills through the use of the buffer zone rule, to paraphrase Joe Lovett. Or, put even more simply, it removes one of the defenses that a citizen has when they don't want a valley fill to destroy the stream by their house. Or even more simply, it sucks.

In the words of Maria Gunnoe, world renowned anti mountaintop removal activist and the main focus of the documentary Burning the Future, "Oh my god, What are we going to do?"

But in case you really don't understand how bad this rule change is, lets hear it from the Bush administration (as quoted in the NY Times):
“This rule strengthens protections for streams,” said Peter L. Mali, a spokesman for the Interior Department office that wrote the regulation. “Federal law allows coal mine waste to be placed in streams, and the rule tightens restrictions as to when, where and how those discharges can occur.”

I know that someone is going to be doing a longer post about this later, but just to say that 70+ people joined SEAC and Coal River Mountain Watch and partners in Southern West Virginia this past weekend to learn about mountaintop removal and how to stand in solidarity with community members impacted by it.