Barack Obama and John McCain like to talk about building both a strong economy and energy independence. Yet when pressed, both presidential candidates say they want to stop a form of strip mining that employs thousands across Appalachia and generates 14 percent of the nation's power-producing coal.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Barack Obama and John McCain like to talk about building both a strong economy and energy independence. Yet when pressed, both presidential candidates say they want to stop a form of strip mining that employs thousands across Appalachia and generates 14 percent of the nation's power-producing coal.
Mountaintop removal mining "irreversibly alters our natural treasures and poses potential threats to water sources,'' and the Republican McCain believes the industry doesn't need it to stay in business, West Virginia campaign spokesman Ben Beakes wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
The Democrat's position is less strident. Obama's campaign expresses "serious concerns about the environmental implications'' but stops short of demanding a ban on the practice condemned by environmentalists and reviled by many who live near the mine sites.
Unlike underground mining, mountaintop removal is visibly destructive. Coal companies blast apart ridgetops to expose multiple coal seams so they can be mined simultaneously. It's often cheaper and faster than digging tunnels, and the industry argues it's sometimes the only way to mine the coal.
The practice is common in West Virginia and Kentucky and in portions of Virginia and Tennessee, but it comes at a cost. Although companies are required to restore the land to its approximate original contour, millions of tons of rock and dirt are routinely dumped in valleys, lowering the mountains, flattening their tops and burying hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.
The next president's role in shaping the nation's energy policy is not lost on anyone. McCain or Obama will wield tremendous influence over the coal industry in all forms, from the mountaintops of southern West Virginia to deep beneath Alabama to the thick, shallow seams of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.
The president names top officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, all three of which play crucial regulatory roles in the coal industry.
"It's important to have the right representatives in Congress. It's important to have the right person in the White House,'' said Cecil Roberts, president of United Mine Workers, which represent 600 to 700 members at four Appalachian mountaintop removal mines. The union has endorsed Obama.
President Bush is considered a friend of coal and during his tenure has moved to change regulations that control mountaintop removal mining. The Bush administration currently supports a proposed change that would allow mining companies to encroach upon the 100-foot buffer zone designed to protect streams near mine sites.
The anti-mountaintop stance of both candidates comes as a surprise to the industry, given that McCain and Obama have talked extensively about spending billions of dollars on so-called clean-coal technology.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Barack Obama and John McCain like to talk about building both a strong economy and energy independence. Yet when pressed, both presidential candidates say they want to stop a form of strip mining that employs thousands across Appalachia and generates 14 percent of the nation's power-producing coal.
Mountaintop removal mining "irreversibly alters our natural treasures and poses potential threats to water sources,'' and the Republican McCain believes the industry doesn't need it to stay in business, West Virginia campaign spokesman Ben Beakes wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
The Democrat's position is less strident. Obama's campaign expresses "serious concerns about the environmental implications'' but stops short of demanding a ban on the practice condemned by environmentalists and reviled by many who live near the mine sites.
Unlike underground mining, mountaintop removal is visibly destructive. Coal companies blast apart ridgetops to expose multiple coal seams so they can be mined simultaneously. It's often cheaper and faster than digging tunnels, and the industry argues it's sometimes the only way to mine the coal.
The practice is common in West Virginia and Kentucky and in portions of Virginia and Tennessee, but it comes at a cost. Although companies are required to restore the land to its approximate original contour, millions of tons of rock and dirt are routinely dumped in valleys, lowering the mountains, flattening their tops and burying hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.
The next president's role in shaping the nation's energy policy is not lost on anyone. McCain or Obama will wield tremendous influence over the coal industry in all forms, from the mountaintops of southern West Virginia to deep beneath Alabama to the thick, shallow seams of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.
The president names top officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, all three of which play crucial regulatory roles in the coal industry.
"It's important to have the right representatives in Congress. It's important to have the right person in the White House,'' said Cecil Roberts, president of United Mine Workers, which represent 600 to 700 members at four Appalachian mountaintop removal mines. The union has endorsed Obama.
President Bush is considered a friend of coal and during his tenure has moved to change regulations that control mountaintop removal mining. The Bush administration currently supports a proposed change that would allow mining companies to encroach upon the 100-foot buffer zone designed to protect streams near mine sites.
The anti-mountaintop stance of both candidates comes as a surprise to the industry, given that McCain and Obama have talked extensively about spending billions of dollars on so-called clean-coal technology.
So to dismiss mountaintop removal mining without even seeing it is shortsighted, says West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney.
"Let's go take a look and really see what's going on here as opposed to making what seems to be a very shallow and politically convenient statement,'' said Raney.
West Virginia is the nation's second-largest coal producing state behind Wyoming, and the National Mining Association estimates mountaintop removal accounts for about one-third of the state's production.
Most of the nearly 130 million tons of coal produced at mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia is used to generate electricity for 24.7 million customers, the industry says. And electricity rates already are rising because of tight coal supplies.
Luke Popovich of The National Mining Association believes neither candidate can discount the economic impact mountaintop removal mining has on Appalachian communities. Miners earn an average of about $62,000 -- high pay for rural Appalachia -- and states make millions in taxes.
McCain says those jobs can be protected with underground mines, but the industry and labor disputes that.
As thicker coal seams are played out, and mine operators face crumbling rock and other geological factors, surface mining becomes more commonplace.
Nor is it easy to replace the low-sulfur Appalachian coal that burns cleaner than forms mined elsewhere in the world. While coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana has a low sulfur content, it also holds less energy and higher transportation costs.
"If that coal doesn't come from here,'' Raney says, "it's likely going to be coming from South America.''
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You'd think that knowing how destructive and deadly coal is, good old American ingenuity would find another way. Instead, that world renowned American stupidity and greed gets in the way, and we fantasize about "clean coal" and go nowhere.
In fact, McCain agreed that his plan would require sacrifice, but he also argued (correctly) that in the long-run, America would be better off. In other words, he made the exact same arguments as Barack Obama.