Pollution and climate
change separate issues
In the 1950s and early 1960s, children were scared to death of the cold war threat. Today they hear, climate change is going to kill young and old alike.
As I aged common sense began to set in. If another country dropped a bomb it wouldn’t kill you as quick as the building collapsing on the desk you were hiding under. And if we or another country is unstable enough to put off a nuclear bomb, we will all be dead over a long agonizing period due to fallout contamination. The winds would carry the radiation around the world. It would kill the soil, contaminate all water sources, and destroy all food sources.
We do not take the time to figure things out for ourselves nor do necessary research to check facts. We listen to the overeducated whose common sense has left their minds full of mush. We have little or no control over climate change, pollution yes.
Climate change has happened since the first big flood. Each year, the continental plates move fractions of an inch at a northward direction. This causes climate change. Could we as caring people slow down the change? We are not in control of our world.
Pollution poses threats to our water, our oceans and our entire environment. It took me awhile to understand what a water aquifer is. It’s not a big underground swimming pool. Most believe we get our fresh water from rivers. Rivers eventually fill in with silt, eroded soil caused by logging and removing mountain tops for greed and progress. Sparse rainfall and dry summers assist this problem. All these events affect the flow and depth of water, and over time, many dry up or become unusable.
Water aquifers are sandstone deposits fed water from tree transpiration, summer rains, and winter’s snows. Many aquifers dry up due to excessive logging, well drilling and natural events. Can we clean up pollution? Absolutely. But a ride on West Virginia’s back roads will discourage you.
My question is: Is greed causing progress or progress causing greed that is fueling our natural and human problems?
Linda Newcome
Masontown
Waterways facing new
threat by permit revision
Save The Tygart Watershed Association is a local, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the Tygart River and its tributaries. Three Fork Creek, which begins in Preston County and enters the Tygart River at Grafton, is now alive again with aquatic life due to facilities constructed by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to treat acid mine drainage.
With new treatment facilities going on-line this year, we hope for similar results on Little Sandy Creek, which also begins in Preston County and flows directly into Tygart Lake.
These facilities cost millions of federal and state dollars to build and maintain. They are necessary due to abusive coal mining practices, which started in the late 1800s.
These streams now face new threats. Arch Coal’s Leer Mine near Grafton has proposed a permit revision, which our organization believes will have major adverse impacts on water quality in both of these tributaries.
The revision proposes creation of a gravity discharge of 3,465 gallons per minute of water from the deep mine works into Three Fork Creek. This water is projected to have a high amount of iron and will require treatment for a total of 38 years before untreated water will meet water quality standards. The specific conductance of the water will be at a level the DEP rates as “a definite stressor.”
A previous revision protected Little Sandy Creek by limiting mining under it and its major tributaries. In the proposed revision, these protections have been removed, and the company could subside the creek and its tributaries, resulting in tremendous damage.
The DEP will hold an informal conference from 2-6 p.m. Dec. 18 at Tygart Lake Lodge in Grafton. We encourage anyone with an interest in water quality to attend. More information is available at: savethetygart.org/
Stanley Jennings
Save The Tygart
Watershed Association
Thornton
