News and Events
EASTERN STUDENT HELPING TO FIGHT MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL
St. Davids, PA, July 15, 2008: Eastern University sophomore Tyler Sheaffer is trying to bring attention to a mountainous problem in the environment. The 19-year-old from Richfield, PA, participated in “Shoutin’ for the Mountain,” from April 3-8, 2008. Sheaffer was the only student from the east coast to take part in the event, an effort by college students across the country to point out the dangers of mountain top removal in the Appalachian Mountains.
Mountain top removal is done by eliminating layers of mountains to dig deeper into coal regions. This produces electricity. However, this process requires entire mountaintops to be dynamited, bulldozed and pushed into the nearby fresh valleys and streams. This can often lead to economic poverty and environmental destruction such as pollution, deadly floods, toxic water, and destroyed ecosystems.
Sheaffer took part in the effort with Restoring Eden, a Christian environmental group. The students traveled into the hills of Appalachia to look at mountains reduced to coal pit mines, met with communities deeply impacted by the coal mining, and attended a region-wide prayer meeting on a mountain. The students then spent three days lobbying on Capitol Hill for The Clean Water Protection Act.
After the conference, Sheaffer realized just how detrimental the removal of the mountain tops is to drinking water, pollution, and the economy.
“Valleys as wide as a mile long can be brought up resulting in a level, savanna-like field. Trees and vegetation cannot thrive in such a setting,” Sheaffer said.
He has committed himself to this project because he believes in the importance of saving God’s creation. “It is the only place [the hills of Appalachia] I have ever been within the United States that it is dangerous to drink the water,” Sheaffer said. “Even when I was in Haiti the water was drinkable.”
The town of Whitesville, West Virginia is in the heart of many mountain top removal sites and the community seems to be dying as a result. The removal is causing people to flee from the environmental destruction. If families hold out and remain in the area, they face plummeting property values and trouble finding clean drinking water.
“Mountain top removal is truly indescribable,” Sheaffer said. “Especially when you go to where people live and taste the gritty coal dust that lines your bottom and upper lip.”
For more information about mountain top conservation, contact Thommy Thompson(Restoring Eden) at thompi2@gmail.com; Allen Johnson (Christians For The Mountains) at 304.799.4137 or information@christiansforthemountains.org;
or Appalachian Voices at 828.262.1500 or jw@appvoices.org.
For more information on coal production used in Pennsylvania: www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/minres/bmr/historicalminingreports/index.html; or information on Restoring Eden: www.restoringeden.org.
