Ison Rock Ridge (click on photos for full sized images)
Please save a mountain from being blown to bits for coal. Ison Rock Ridge, a mountain in Virginia, is slated to be destroyed for a 1,200-acre mountaintop-removal coal mine. Mountaintop-removal mining is a process that blasts the top third of a mountain off with explosives, then pushes the waste directly into streams. This kills aquatic life and poisons everything downstream, wildlife and human alike. More than 500 Appalachian mountains and 2,000 miles of streams have already been lost.
Ison Rock Ridge sits above five small communities of 1,800 people. The proposed mine boundary calls for mining only 300 feet from some of these people’s homes (see photo below). If the permit is approved, their quality of life will be destroyed. The mine will bury headwater streams that feed the creeks running through their communities and pollute some of the most biologically diverse rivers on the planet.
Here is the overlay of the proposed mine site
The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to deny the permit for mining on Ison Rock Ridge but has indicated it intends to grant the permit. Please join me by using the form here to tell the EPA and the White House to save Ison Rock Ridge and ban mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia now and forever!
For more information on mountaintop removal mining go to iLoveMountains.org and to see more devastating photos of what has already been destroyed, check out their Flickr page here.
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