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Blame coal: Texas leads carbon emissions
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by NaturalResources: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by jon clogger: [qb] Thank you for your post NaturalResources. I am blown away. There would be a major protest and riot if any of California's streams looked like that. I still can't wrap my mind around how bad it is. I'm used to seeing stuff like this in the third-world, but not the good-ol USA. Especially with the EPA. One of my friends who owns a machine shop was cited by the EPA for some of the aluminum shavings that spilled in the parking lot. I was there, there might have been 25 small chips. Not even an ounce!! He had to pay $3500.00 So are these guys political money hungry a$$ clowns? What a double standard if there are streams full of acid like this. Shame. [/qb][/QUOTE]Jon Clogger, I too grew up in California and like you, was in total shock after the first few weeks after I moved out here to PA. My job as a land surveyor involves lots of hiking to "off the beaten path" locations and so almost every day I see this type of thing first hand. Many of the heavily polluted areas are not in locations normally viewed by those just passing through. I think part of the reason why it is so bad here in PA is because a lot of the coal mining that occurred went on long before there were things like reclamation bonds and the EPA. Coal has been taken from this area since the mid 1700's. Most people who now own polluted properties such as these cannot be held responsible for the acts of those before them, and even if they were, most, if not all, could not even begin to afford the costs required to even attempt to "fix" the damaged areas. There are some programs, both state and federal, that are providing money for reclamation projects in some of the worst areas, but they are lacking in funds and even if they had the money needed, IMO it would be decades before reclamation work would be finished in all the effected areas and maybe even centuries before the environment in the damaged areas returned to "normal". According to the EPA, more than 66,500 documented sources of coal mine drainage in Appalachia have polluted an estimate 17,000 km of streams and watercourses. While pollutions controls and coal miner accountability have increased dramatically since the 1970's when the EPA was created, coal mining, both underground and strip mining continue to be a source of pollution and destroyer of the environment. Even with EPA oversight and reclamation bonds, strip mining not only changes the local topography, it destroys the entire surface of the area mined, thus the entire ecosystem or habitat that existed above the coal seams. A even more dramatic form of strip mining that is practiced in both PA and WV is called 'mountaintop mining' ( http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/ ). This involves removing the [i]entire[/i] top of a hill or mountain to get to the coal underneath. Overburden is simply piled into the nearest ditch or gully, blocking what ever streams or drainage ditches are there and polluting ground water that percolates through it. Fortunately, many of the locals in WV, where it is more common, have become fed up and are trying to make changes to have that particular type of mining banned. ( http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06057/661362.stm ) Perhaps to some, I may seem like I am going on and on, but after living here for 3 years and seeing what I've seen, I just cannot stress enough that coal is an archaic source of energy, and is not worth the environmental damage that results from its recovery, use and disposal. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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