| Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining is Not Someone Else’s Problem |
 Photo: Vivian Stockman, www.ohvec.org
Cleveland Climate Watch Launches the Cleveland Mountain Justice Project to End Northeast Ohio’s Complicity.
Over 1.4 million acres of the most biologically diverse forest habitat in North America, destroyed and bulldozed into valley fill. Over 500 mountains are no longer mountains. Over two thousand miles of headwater streams buried. Water supplies ruined. Communities ravaged. Residents subjected to a witches' brew of air and water pollution. These are the brutal facts of mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia and there is a link between all these injustices and energy providers and users in Northeast Ohio.
The Cleveland Climate Watch believes that the social and environmental holocaust that is mountain top removal coal mining, is not someone else's problem. It is our problem. It is for this reason that we are launching the Cleveland Mountain Justice Project. Energy suppliers and consumers in Northeast Ohio are complicit in the destruction of whole regions of Appalachia, because we burn mountain top removal coal in our power plants. That is why we are starting a campaign to declare Northeast Ohio a Mountain Top Removal Coal Free Zone.
We are starting with RRI Energy's (formerly Reliant Energy) Avon Lake power plant, which uses mountain top removal (MTR) coal, according to information the plant is required to provide to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and according to sources such as Appalachian Voices' ilovemountains.org website. We want RRI Energy to pledge to not renew its contracts with suppliers of MTR coal for its Avon Lake power plant, and then to pledge to move away from MTR coal in its entire system. We plan to utilize every method available to citizens to influence the behavior of corporations, from letter writing to informational picket lines.
Every day we lose more mountains in Appalachia. Every day people go to jail protesting the destruction overwhelming their communities. One of the most important things we can do to back them up and halt the destruction, is to cut off the demand for mountain top removal coal from local utility companies. The other important thing is to contact Senators Brown and Voinovich and insist that they cosponsor the Appalachia Restoration Act (S. 696), which would effectively outlaw mountaintop removal mining. (Brown is wavering, so he needs to hear from all of us.) This is important work. Join us.
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