An exciting recent development in the region is a collaboration of groups fighting mountaintop removal strip mining called The Alliance for Appalachia. SOCM is one of the founding members of The Alliance which is a coalition of thirteen regional groups with goals of ending mountaintop removal coal mining and working to build healthy sustainable coalfield communities. 

The Alliance provides grassroots groups with members in the central Appalachian coalfields a more powerful regional voice for people directly impacted by coal to have a say in addressing regional and national problems regarding energy and coal. A major focus of Alliance activity is to gain support for the Clean Water Protection Act which would essentially outlaw throwing mine waste into streams. In most cases mountaintop removal mining cannot be done economically without the practice of “valley fills” or “head of hollow fills” in which excess mine waste created by blowing up the mountain is dumped into the head of hollows, the headwaters of streams.

Quite of bit of organizing time has been spent during the Bush administration to oppose that administration’s proposals for weakening regulations and policies including largely doing away with the stream buffer zone in cases of mountaintop removal mining.

With a new administration Alliance grassroots members are actively seeking support from officials in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality, and are pushing for a new Director of the Office Of Surface Mining who is not from the coal industry, who is not moved up from within, but is someone who will bring a fresh perspective and a dedication to really enforce the Federal strip mine law.

The Alliance meets quarterly in a two day face to face meeting and coordinates strategy and activities through monthly conference calls of a steering committee made up of two representatives from each member organization. Through its task forces and permanent committees there are many ways to participate in the governing of the Alliance as well as taking part in direct action organizing strategies.

For more information: www.theallianceforappalachia.org