[Coach_Owens87]

Coach, in all honesty, I do enjoy these discussions, but the main reason I respond to your comments is to try and correct as many misleading and false statements from you and the anti-coal groups as I can.

Let's start with your last post, now you've tried to use the "windpub" website several times and as I've mentioned they are anti-coal, and will only post infromation against coal. I did however find something interesting from your post and this site. You said and I quote "All Kentucky waters have high levels of mercury, and women of childbearing age are warned not to eat fish or drink from the water". which you took from the "windpub site or Kentucky River Watershed Site" which said and I quote "All Kentucky waters are under advisory for excessive quantities of mercury. Women of childbearing age and children 6 years of age and younger are warned not to eat more than one meal per week of freshwater fish." Remember these are Environmental sites that are against mining.

Below is the advisory information provided by the Kentucky Department of Water, and it said A statewide fish cosumption advisory was issued on April 11, 2000, because of low levels of Organic Mercury found in samples of fish from Kentucky waters. Women of childbearing age and childeren 6 years and younger are advised to eat no more than one meal per week of fresh fish from Kentucky Rivers, Streams, and Lakes because of the prersence of mercury.
http://www.water.ky.gov/sw/advisories/fish.htm
Coach, Did you notice any difference between the to two? Nowhere do you or "windpub" mention Organic Mercury. Exactly what is Organic Mercury....well Organic Mercury comes from Antiseptics, Bactericidals, Embalming Agents, The Farming Industry, Fungicides, Germicials Agents, Insecticidal Products, Laundry Products, Diaper Products, Paper Manifacturing, Pathology Products, Histology Products, Seed Preservation and Wood Preservatives. Sorry but coal or carbon is not found in Organic Mercury, Coal is however found in Inorganic Mercury which was not part of this advisory.
Mercury is a naturally occuring metal which has several forms, but manmade mercury emissions comes from Industral Boilers, Burning Hazardous Waste, and Chlorine Production and one-third comes from coal fired power plants, which is in the process of reducing those emissions. Were you aware that on March 15, 2005, the EPA issued the first-ever Federal Rule to permanently cap and reduce Mercury emissions from Coal Fired Power Plants by 70%.

You mentioned that 17,000 pollutions violations were issued, are you suggesting that these are all mining related? I checked out several sites and found information about violations, but none said what consitutes a violation? Were these violations made by industry, or were they made by private land owners or business?

I'm glad you brought up Selenium, Did you realize that Water Plants that supply drinking water are allowed to release 10 times the amount selenium into the drinking water (50ppb), than Mining Companies are allowed to discharge into the Streams (5ppb), now tell me, does that make sense.

I looked, but couldn't find where you found the information on the impaired streams, maybe you could give me the site, regardless Silt/Sediment which can come from stream bank collaspe and overland sediment loads that are usually associated with incompatible land use that remove riparian vegation for land development, logging, mining, farming, poor construction practices, stream dredging to name a few causes. One interesting fact is that Mining is the only one of the causes that uses any type of sediment contol, and this problem is not isolated to Appalachia it is also happening in non coal producing states.

Calling "Windpub and Kentucky watershed" and some of their refrences (such as water keepers which is opearted by Cindy Rank another coal critic who is also on many boards for anti-mining groups) a legit and trustworthy site...please the misleading and false information on the mercury alone is enough to discredit any information they give.

First off me using windpub is no worse than you useing kycoal.org, or coaleducation.org, both of those are very slanted sites.

Now you ramble on with a response to my post on coal being a major source of mercury released into the environment. I dont really feel like typing a long response, it's late, and im depressed about the tenn game, so since you love to read info check this site out, http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev2...lmain.html , it pretty much answer all your questions, and proves what I was trying to say. The site I mentioned also looks at the effect the cap emmissions on mercury by the epa will have.

your figures for the allowed selenium release are WAY off. According to the EPA thier standard for the level of allowed selenium release is 0.05 ppm, not 5 ppm or 50 ppm. your numbers are 100x and 1000x larger than the actual number.

The information I gave on impaired streams was on the site I listed in my last post.

If anyone really wants to know the impact that MTR is having on the environment, go to this site
http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/pdf/mt...cument.pdf , its a copy of the impact statement given by the EPA. This is the only major scale study done on MTR. A lot of the information I have given has come from this study. it does have some inconclusive data, but it's the best study out there. One warning, this is a rather large file, it's 25 mb, but it;s worth it for people wanting the info.