700 Mountains was a campaign of the Civil Society Institute being staffed by an employee of the public relations group, The Hastings Group. It worked to enlist citizens to fight the Bush administration's Office of Surface Mining (OSM) proposed rule to relax environmental regulations and thus make it easier for the coal industry to use a mining technique called "mountaintop removal." Mountaintop removal mining explodes sometimes as much as 500 vertical feet of the tops of mountains to access thin seams of coal and deposit the spoils (often including topsoil and trees) in adjacent valleys. If this new rule was approved, crtics charged, more than 700 mountains could be effected, with potentially devastating results for the landscape and local ecosystems.
Related coal plant proposals
Group website: 700 Mountains
Contact: aaaron [at] hastingsgroup.com
Related SourceWatch Articles
- "Rule to expand mountaintop coal mining in U.S.", International Herald Tribune, August 23, 2007.