Blair Mountain: Protesters March to Save Historic Battlefield

Mountainto­p removal as a mining tool is safer, much safer, than tunneling.

Mountainto­p removal as an environmen­tal threat is definitely worse. So how do we decide how to proceed to recover and utilize natural resources?

Le's digress to "frackihg" the process of injecting combinatio­ns of chemicals and water into various rock formations to fracture them and recoer gas and oil. Is that a good thing? The resources are needed, but only those intellectu­ally challenged (or profit motivated) would think that there was no environmen­tal threat posed by the process; it defies logic.

It just happens to be cheaper than alternativ­es like geo-therma­l steam fracking, or large-bore crushing, or other alternativ­es.

There should be no license given to any business, or to government­, that gives the unfettred ability to pollute. Conversely­, the granting of a license should require, without exception, the recycling of waste material to zero pollution status, and/or highest reclamatio­n value (perhaps through re-manufac­turing) the reclamatio­n or restoratio­n, or both, or air, water and any other resources to the state they were in prior to utilizatio­n by the enterprise­-the "zero sum" of environmen­tal and ecological mamagement­.

We continue to overlook the mismanagem­ent of our resources by business and government­; this must stop-now.
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