The wonderful ending of the NCAA men's basketball season notwithstanding, the nation will still be watching North Carolina next week.
Thousands of Carolinians and tourists will head up the hills to enjoy the glorious blooms of the trailing arbutus and birdfoot violets in the Blue Ridge mountains this spring. They'll tarry in the historic towns that dot the hills; they'll marvel at the sweeping beauty. It's said that one acre in the western Carolina mountains -- the Appalachian mountains -- can possess more plant diversity than all of the forests in Europe.
The beauty of those Appalachian mountains doesn't stop at the state line, of course. But a different reality is taking place in parts of eastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Every day in the lush green coalfields of the central Appalachian mountains, over 3 million pounds of explosives are detonated in the strip mining process of coal called mountaintop removal. This mining technique literally clear cuts the range, blows off the tops of mountains with massive ammonium nitrate and fuel-oil blasts, and topples the rocks and waste into valleys and streams.
In the past three decades, an estimated 500 mountains have been destroyed by this mining technique; more than 1,200 miles of streams have been jammed with mining waste and fill, and scores of historic communities have been depopulated, left in ruin and saddled with unsparing poverty. Relying on heavy machinery and explosives, mountaintop removal operations have also stripped the region of needed jobs and any possibility of a diversified economy.
This other Appalachia is not so far from North Carolina.
With nearly 60 percent of its electricity generated by coal-fired plants, North Carolina consumes over 15 million tons of coal stripped from mountaintop removal operations in central Appalachia. It ranks as the second-largest consumer of mountaintop removal-mined coal in the nation.
In truth, we all live in the coalfields now.
In 2007, state Rep. Pricey Harrison of Greensboro took a historic step in introducing the Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act, which would prohibit the importation of mountaintop-removal coal into North Carolina. This was the first bill of its kind in the nation. It is aimed at ending the most egregious human rights and environmental violation in the Appalachian region and country.
Reintroduced this year, the bill serves as a wise reminder of the increasing precariousness of North Carolina's dependence on mountaintop-removal coal in a changing market and new presidential administration. As the recent Environmental Protection Agency rulings for greater scrutiny and restrictions of mountaintop removal operations demonstrate, a consensus is emerging to phase out mountaintop-removal coal.
By shifting to underground Appalachian coal, cheaper coal from Wyoming or renewable energy sources like biomass, the price of change for consumers in North Carolina will be a pittance compared with the risk of waiting for a sudden price spike and supply shortage. When factoring in the costs of transporting the coal to a power plant, converting it to electricity and transmitting that electricity to homes and businesses, a shift to underground coal would cost no more than an additional $0.09 per kilowatt hour for North Carolina electricity rates.
Since the Revolution, North Carolina has often led in making the historic decisions to advance our nation into a new era. As the Environment and Natural Resources Committee considers the Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act next week, North Carolina will once again have the opportunity to make history and distance itself from this unsound source of coal. It can call for an end to the destruction of the other Appalachia by halting the importation of mountaintop-removal coal.
As a bellwether for the other coal-consuming states, North Carolina will once again determine whether our nation is ready to move forward to a new energy future.
And the nation will be watching.
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