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This news story originally provided by the The Charleston Gazette Mountaintops Mountaineers value hills LAST WEEK, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot give blanket approval to coal companies to bury streams. This week, a national polling firm found that more than half of West Virginians oppose mountaintop removal mining. The poll is not the first to suggest that people who live among the mountains oppose their destruction, but it is one of the strongest indications. The poll results also suggest that U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin was not so out of step as coal apologists contend when he ruled that the Corps and coal companies must follow the law. The law, after all, is intended to save some of the mountains for everyone else and for the future. Most West Virginians realize that coal deposits will be gone in a few generations, and the state’s economy increasingly will rest upon tourism, based on lovely nature in the mountains. Judge Goodwin found that a streamlined permitting process used to let companies bury ravines during mountaintop removal mining is unacceptable. The streamlined process is appropriate for projects that do not cause big environmental changes. When coal companies blow off the tops of mountains and bury streams in valley fills, the environmental impact is too great to ignore. Companies should be required to study and document the changes they propose. Of course, there is some concern that if mountaintop removal mines are subjected to a proper permitting process, some might not be approved at all. Such is the will of the people. Weary readers and voters sometimes dismiss poll results. “You can make a poll say anything you want,” is the familiar refrain. True. Particularly in election years, less-principled candidates hire pollsters who word questions in a way to solicit answers they want. We hope this new poll has no slant. Although pollster Celinda Lake of Washington-based Lake, Snell, Perry and Associates does a lot of work for Democratic candidates, we assume the West Virginia research simply sought accurate numbers. This poll found that 56 percent of 500 likely voters oppose mountaintop removal. That’s more than two West Virginia polls in 1998 that showed 52 percent and 53 percent. Even with the margin of error of 4.4 percent, latest poll still means more than half of the state’s likely voters oppose damage to their mountains. Thirty-nine percent said they “strongly oppose” mountaintop removal, compared to just 17 percent who “strongly favor” it. West Virginians want jobs, and they want electricity to power their homes and air conditioners. But they recognize that the state has suffered damage from generations of coal mining. They want to have something left when the coal is played out. They have the ability to think beyond coal. There is the real lesson. Candidates, including many Democrats,
have avoided this issue in the past, and haven’t heard the voices
of more than half of the voters.
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