Mountaintop Removal Concert Signals Move to PR in Face of Lawmaking Hurdles

The Natural Resources Defense Council has chosen Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to stage its largest PR campaign against mountaintop removal. The NRDC is putting on a concert in May including the likes of Dave Matthews and Emmy Lou Harris.

The performance is billed as the largest ever gathering of musical stars against what the environmental group considers a destructive mining practice – blasting away mountain tops to get to coal seams.

It’s not that the NRDC has given up on lobbying efforts in Congress and state legislatures to outlaw mountaintop removal. Senior scientist Allen Hershkowitz just says environmentalists have to take their message directly to the people.

“There is not a better way than getting a law passed. It needs to be done. But getting it done is difficult. There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”

The NRDC argues that limiting mountain top removal isn’t the big job killer some fear, at least in Tennessee. The National Mining Association counts just 311 surface coal mining jobs in the state compared with 7,000 in Kentucky and West Virginia.

Environmentalists are trying to beat back the notion that mountaintop removal is just an unavoidable fact of mining coal in Appalachia.

Hershkowitz says the group wants to take a message to music fans who might not otherwise care about an issue like mountain top removal.

“This would never be allowed to happen in the Rockies, in the Adirondacks or the Alps.”

The EPA has tightened down on regulation of mountain top mining, but a bill to outlaw it sponsored by Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander has been stymied in Congress. A proposed state law is stalled in the Tennessee Legislature.

In Tennessee, the EPA has one mountain top mining application under review. It’s in Anderson County. Otherwise, there’s little mining going on in the state compared to West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

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