Reason #1534 to Support a Strong Climate Bill that Moves Us Away From Coal ASAP:
(Thanks to www.ohvec.org)
It’s springtime in Appalachia, and that means gardens, flowers and more flowers, wild edibles like ramps and molly moochers, old-timers sitting on their front porch with kids running around the yard and, sadly, catastrophic flash flooding made worse by mountaintop removal.
Late Friday night and early Saturday morning, heavy rains hit southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Many could use help with clean-up of their homes and yards. Communities report flooding debris with mud, stumps and rocks coming off the mountaintop removal site above their homes.
News reports says at least 300 buildings in Mingo County alone were destroyed in the flooding. The National Guard has been called in and the Red Cross is on the scene.
The Logan Banner reports that flooding inundated a cemetery:
Greg Dixon and Vickie Bailey walked over the rubble and mud that had covered the Marcum cemetery. He said the water rushed out of the top of the mountain.
“This has to be caused by strip mining,” Dixon, who takes care of the cemetery, said as he searched for missing tombstones. “All this came from the top of the mountain.”
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reminds readers of his blog “Coal Tattoo” about the studies that have been done: Now, it’s difficult without a lot more site-specific information to say that a particular flood was made worse by mountaintop removal. But in general, there’s little question that such large-scale land disturbance makes flooding more likely and makes floods that do occur worse.
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