Read more of this story »

With the help of conservation groups, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining launched the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative to attempt to rescue the thousands forest acres left barren by mountaintop coal mining.

The volunteer-based initiative, which hopes to eventually plant 38 million trees in Appalachia, received the endorsement of the United Nations Environment Program yesterday. The UN aims to plant 7 billion trees in the next three years across the globe, so every small project across the globe contributes.

Read more of this story »

Discover what really happens with your recyclables. It’s time for another round of That’s Just Weird.

Read more of this story »

Ashley Judd is speaking out against mountaintop removal mining, and you can too.

Here is Judd’s speech, delivered at a Kentuckians For The Commonwealth rally. The footage of strip mined mountaintops is horrifying:
This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post.
According to the Sierra Club, mountaintop removal mining:

…has already buried more than 1,200 miles of streams and threatens to destroy 1.4 million acres of land by 2020. The mining poisons drinking water, lays waste to wildlife habitat, increases the risk of flooding and wipes out entire communities.

A recent federal ruling allows the Army Corps of Engineers to start mountaintop removal mining in several sites in Appalachia. This overturns a 2007 ruling that found the permits to mine the land illegal. There is a backlog of 80-90 permits that could be granted, dramatically increasing the devastating mountaintop removal mining in the area. Local activist groups and the Sierra Club are asking President Obama “to follow up on statements he had made during his campaign that were critical of mountaintop mining by reversing Bush administration policies intended to expand the practice,” according to the New York Times.

Read more of this story »

Despite activists’ efforts earlier in the month to stop the Bush administration’s 11^th hour changes to environmental regulations, the EPA has gone ahead with undoing some rules. Specifically, they have signed off on loosening 1983’s coal dumping regulation, which prevent dumping within 100 feet of a river.

Fortunately, environmental groups are taking the ruling to court, saying that the already lax enforcement of the law has led to environmental destruction. Over 500 miles of rivers and streams have been adversely affected by dumping since 2001, and further weakening of the law could be devastating.

Read more of this story »

After significant pressure from the National Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network and a whole host of other activist groups, Bank of America conceded to withdrawing financial support of multinational coal companies like Massey Energy, which is widely known as one of the worst perpetrators of environmental offenses in Appalachia. The bank’s official policy statement reads:

Read more of this story »

Last Friday, the Bush administration submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a proposal to severely weaken the stream buffer zone rule. This rule has, since 1983, prevented coal companies from disturbing areas that are 100 feet or less from Appalachian waterways. The EPA now has 30 days to review the proposed change.

Read more of this story »

Author’s Note: While I usually report on green building developments in the Pacific Northwest, today I am examining green building trends in my own geographic region, Southeast Ohio. The architect for the LEED project discussed below is my husband, Don Dispenza.

Nationwide, there are currently more than 12,000 building projects pursuing LEED certification. But in economically depressed regions, there are still only a handful. For example, in Southeast Ohio, defined as an eight-county region in the Appalachian foothills, there are only two registered projects on the USGBC website. In areas such as this, which have a minimal amount of new construction overall, increasing a project’s cost by building green is rarely considered.

An exception is the Chamberlain Office Building in Athens, Ohio. The building’s owner, Russell Chamberlain, is a local real estate agent whose desire to build green stems from his own personal value system, and also from the belief that that investing in LEED certification will differentiate his company as being a progressive one. The project is expected to achieve a LEED Silver rating.

Read more of this story »

After all, coal might be dirty, deadly and environmentally destructive, but it also has a purpose, one of which is to fuel the power plants that generate our electricity. So unless you’re living and working completely off the grid, you too are a cog in the dirty coal machine. Ignorance is no excuse.

And now there’s no excuse for even claming ignorance: A Website created by the environmental group Appalachian Voices and Mathew Gross, Howard Dean’s former director of Internet communications, lets you find out exactly how you’re connected to the world of coal. It’s both fascinating and disturbing.

Just type in your Zip code and click “Show My Connection,” and you’ll get a detailed map showing the locations of coal-fired power plants in your area. You’ll also be able to find out whether your local plants are direct users of coal mined through mountaintop removal, or whether they’re indirectly connected by buying coal from companies that operate mountaintop removal mines elsewhere.

Once it’s left you feeling appropriately guilty, the site offers several ways in which to redeem yourself. There’s information about House Resolution 2169, the Clean Water Protection Act that would help protect the health and welfare of people who live in Appalachia’s coal regions, along with a list of which U.S. representatives have so far lent their support to the bill. You’ll also find links to help you email your House representatives — either to thank them for backing the bill, or to ask them to come on board.

The site also offers plenty more: email forms to recommend the site to friends and family; a “Go Tell it on the Mountain” page to offer your own prayers and prayer requests “for the people and mountains of Appalachia”; comments from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wendell Berry and others about the high cost of coal; an online National Memorial for the Mountains that uses Google Earth’s mapping software to illustrate how mountaintop removal mining has affected individual communities and regions; and videos, photos and more.

Oh, and if you want to help a bit more and still have a few holiday gifts left to buy, you’ll also find a link to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy’s online store, which offers “I Love Mountains” t-shirts, bumper stickers, books, hats and more.

85 year old Liz Moore is nobody’s fool. The minute she laid eyes on Syncrude’s Canadian Oil Sands operation in Alberta, Canada, she knew some terrible things were happening to the ecology of that area. While touring the company’s site, she took pictures of land not reclaimed, a few snapshots in the visitors center, and came home to Colorado bound to tell a story. She set up a website, The Oil (Tar) Sands of Alberta The Canada/U.S. Connection, and published her pictures along with some interesting facts about the operation.

Almost immediately, Syncrude’s legal staff wrote her and demanded she remove the pictures she had taken. Shortly thereafter, the company’s publishing firm did the same, as did the Alberta provincial government concerning pictures of the Oil Sands Discovery Center which they helped fund.

Liz also maintains another website: Energy Smart

Here is her story….