Cease Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

WHEREAS, mountaintop removal coal mining is extremely profitable to the coal companies who practice it; and

WHEREAS, a large part of its profitability is that fewer miners are required than in the usual traditional methods of coal mining, and

WHEREAS, the entire tops of West Virginia mountains have been removed at Kayford, Kanawha County, at Blair, Boone County, at Sharpless, Logan County, and at Spruce River, Boone County, and at Wise County, Virginia, and mountaintop removal projects are proposed in Kentucky and Tennessee, and

WHEREAS, this removal of mountaintops has resulted in severe damage to homes of persons living in the nearby communities, along with damage to wells, the bombarding of their homes with " blast rock," and massive amounts of dust, and

WHEREAS, the millions and millions of tons of earth and rock removed from the tops of mountains are dumped into the valleys next to these mountains, totally destroying the springs and headwaters of streams in these valleys, along with all plant and animal life in them, and

WHEREAS, mountaintop removal mining, by destroying home places, is also destroying ancestral ground, sacred ground where generations after generations have lived, gone to church, married, made and birthed babies, taken family meals, slept in peace, died and been buried, and

WHEREAS, staff employees of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Natural Resources testified before the West Virginia Legislature in its 1998 session that the long-term effect of mountaintop removal is unstudied and unknown, and that it should by stopped until its long-term effects are known, and

WHEREAS, Psalm 24:1 firmly reminds us that "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; and the world and they that dwell therein," and

WHEREAS, the sanctity and sacredness of human life and the natural environment should not be destroyed in the name of corporate profit,

Therefore, be it resolved, that the General Conference of The United Methodist Church, meeting in Cleveland, Ohio in May of the year 2000, implore those state and national governmental and regulatory agencies involved in mountaintop removal mining to halt this practice until scientific study of its long-term effect on human life and the natural environment has been accomplished.

ADOPTED 2000

See Social Principles, ¶ 160A.

From The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church — 2004. Copyright © 2004 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.