I wanted to be sure you saw this. Not only are we sacrificing our mountains, even more important, we are sacrificing our health. We're sucking this stuff up every day. Mostly it dissipates faster, but the small daily doses are still poisonous.
We generate the electricity because the Eastern Seaboard states don't want the expense of shipping coal and they'd rather not have the pollution from generation either. Now they want new transmission lines running thru some of our acreage which has been unspoiled so far. They want us to figure out a way to stop the acid rain from heading north and east. And they want WV ratepayers to pay for the transmission lines too.
Meanwhile the WV taxpayer pays to repair our roads after 120,000 lb. plus coal trucks tear them up and we pay big bucks to treat our streams subject to acid mine drainage. This in a state where taxpayers making as little as $10K pay state income tax and the out-of-state landholding companies pay pennies per acre property tax on their resource-rich holdings.
Gosh this does sound like a diatribe and I know I'm preaching to the choir..........
Regina