wfn.org | Kirkpatrick condemns mining practices

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Note #7371 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

07-August-2002
02286

Kirkpatrick condemns mining practices

Urges officials to oppose mountain 'decapitation,' stream plugging

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has written letters to federal officials expressing "grave concern" over environmental destruction and severe floods caused by mountaintop mining in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick dispatched the letters to President George W. Bush, whose administration wants to ease restrictions on mining companies, and  West Virginia's senators, Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller.

Rockefeller is a Presbyterian.

Although deep mining has declined in West Virginia, coal companies continue blowing the tops off mountains to expose the coal underneath and dumping the rubble in the valleys below. The waste dirt and rock bury streams and force water to cut new run-off channels for run-off - which residents blame for the repeated flooding of the state's poorest counties.

The Bush administration legalized the practice on May 3, one day after parts of West Virginia were inundated in flooding that killed several people and left hundreds homeless, the second round of destructive floods in the state this year.

Nine days later, however, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Clean Water Act prohibits the burying of streams under waste from mining. Coal operators have appealed the decision.

"While the decapitation of mountains and the filling of the valleys and streams of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky with rubble may greatly increase profits for companies engaging in these practices," Kirkpatrick wrote in his letter by Byrd and Rockefeller, dated July 2, "the communities and individuals affected by this kind of mining have experienced significant losses in their quality of life and have little to show in terms of economic development."

"It has been pointed out," he added, " ... that although West Virginia yielded more coal in the 1990s than in any previous decade, the number of mining jobs plummeted."

Acknowledging that "some" mining companies do take environmental concerns seriously, Kirkpatrick said that there is growing evidence that mountaintop removal and related practices damage water quality and aquatic ecosystems.

"The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has a long-standing commitment to the protection of God's creation," he said, urging the senators to "do everything within your power" to stop any effort to ease restrictions on mining companies.

Kirkpatrick urged the president in a separate letter to "abandon this initiative" (to ease restrictions on mining practices), which he said could only end in further degradation of the earth's resources, "without which we literally cannot live."
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