WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys…
Blog Archives
Bogging Down the Courts
The fabled cranberry bogs of Shady Valley, Tennessee, were once the very image of a pastoral Ocean Spray commercial. Now mostly a faded memory, the remaining bogs are still woven into the fabric of civic pride—in the town’s welcome signs,…
Students Building Beyond Campuses for Greener Future
From campus to community to state, students across the Southeast will have a strong campaign this coming school year, pushing more schools’ administrations and state legislators to convert to renewable sources of energy and move away from fossil fuels. Students…
Affrialachia Magazine Showcases Poetry
For well over a century now, Appalachia has been categorically reduced by many outsiders and insiders alike to include only white Scots-Irish descendants, with a few Native Americans thrown in for political correctness. The rich ethnic diversity that actually exists…
Renewable Energy from Landfill Gas Fires Glassblowing
images/voice_uploads/energy-exchange-8_circle.gif Hand thrown pottery and blown glass have a high aesthetic value, but they also come with a fairly high price tag in terms of energy use and environmental impact. EnergyXchange, an arts incubator project in Yancey County, is working…
Asheville Climate Data Center May Expand Mission
It’s a good bet you didn’t know Asheville has a weather museum, nor that it has the world’s largest archive of climate data in the world. But it does, and there’s a vision brewing for its future. “We have a…
Assessing the Cost of Wise County Coal Plant
By Kathy R. Selvage I am a lifelong resident of Wise County, VA, where a now bankrupt company demolished a portion of my Stevens, VA community through mountaintop removal. I know the true costs of being forced to live through…
Mountain Girls Go to Press
Tammy Robinson Smith could well be one of the characters in her own fiction. Some sort of regional literary mandate dictates that the heroine’s heart must always belong in these Southern Appalachian mountains no matter what else comes along, and…
Going Green: Campus by Campus
NORTH CAROLINA Appalachian State University, Boone, NC – ASU’s wide ranging Renewable Energy Initiative began over a decade ago with the founding of the Sustainable Energy Society. It expanded in 2004 when students approved a green fee of $5 per…
Hiking the Highlands
Consider the contents: a waterfall, a tunnel and a trestle over a rocky river. It’s all waiting in Virginia’s Wise County, all within the first half-mile of the Guest River Gorge Trail. But wait, all this literally is just the…
