2ND District WV

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Did you know?

According to the Sierra Club, mountaintop removal mining has “covered 1,200 miles of streams never to be recovered. The ‘overburden’ from the blast of pulverized rock and dissolvable poisonous metals fills in the valleys and pollutes those streams not buried. It has destroyed 387,000 acres of forests and mountains.”

 

 

Energy and Environment

The Responsible Use of Energy
Is Our Future Challenge

Everyone knows that West Virginia is a coal state. Or are we? As of April 2009, coal mining and other extraction industries—oil, gas, and timber—employed less than 3.6% of the state’s workforce. Virginia Lynch Graf sees our future challenge as the responsible use of energy, which must include wind, solar, and natural gas.

 

 

Coal  As a source of energy, coal has both helped us and hurt us. In good times it provides jobs, but current demands for coal are low. Mine operators prefer mountaintop removal because it employs fewer miners and costs less money to operate. But mountaintop removal hurts West Virginia.  Although there are claims that flat mountaintops would lead to economic development, there is little evidence to support that claim. In fact, poverty is growing in areas devastated by mountaintop removal mining.

 

 

Miners need jobs, and there is good pay when miners work, but the coal industry is closing down underground jobs in favor of mountaintop removal. Currently, there are more unemployed (7.9%) than employed people working in mining in West Virginia. We need to add more industry to West Virginia’s economic opportunities. (Visit WorkForce West Virginia for the latest employment data for our state.)

 

 

Wind and Solar  We are just beginning to crack the surface in the use of wind as an energy source. Wind energy could supplement coal and provide jobs. Wind energy depends on steady streams of wind found in higher elevations, but mountaintop mining removes that economic prospect from West Virginia.

 

 

Wind and solar will provide millions of jobs and clean the air we breathe. Instead of importing foreign technology, American workers should be building wind turbines, solar cells, and green roofs. We can create our own technology corridor, build interconnected rail systems, modernize our infrastructure, and create new technologies for domestic use and exportation.

 

 

Independence from Foreign Oil  Dependence on foreign oil has led America to the brink of financial and domestic chaos. U.S. money pours out of our country into the pockets of repressive regimes, spawning violence in those countries. We need to cut our dependence on foreign oil now.