Randy Neal reports that “the House Environment subcommittee voted against HB3348 that would ban mountaintop removal mining in Tennessee.
I’ll do a little digging (no pun intended) and find out where the votes fell on this one.
A growing chorus of East Tennesseans - ranging from tree hugging progressives to thoughtful conservative Republicans - are now speaking out aginst this destructive and short-sghted mining practice.
The editorial in today’s KNS summed the issue up well:
What’s at stake, on the one hand, is Tennessee’s natural beauty and its water quality. On the other hand, as we said in an earlier editorial, we have to remember that coal fires 11 of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plants in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. That’s the power that runs our computers and other modern conveniences, such as heating and cooling systems. Most of us would agree that we’re pretty dependent on those things.
But what about clean water? How dependent are we on that?
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The comment on TVA plants being fired by coal oversimplifies. If I’m not mistaken, TVA still owns significant coal reserves, but much of that coal isn’t located within the TVA service area. In fact, I believe they’re burning mostly western low-sulfur coal now. That means that, when we turn on the power in the Tennessee Valley, we’re not contributing directly to mountaintop removal (at least not in the east).