Bastards

Looks like maybe southern Arizona, no? But it's Hale Gap, Virginia, following an application of the strip-mining technique known as "mountaintop removal."

Which the g.d. George Bush administration is trying to make forever legal in new regs issued by the Office of Surface Mining.

The new rules will make "legal" what coal operators have been doing illegally already ... dumping the waste ("overburden") into adjoining valleys and burying streams. I'm not making this up.

"A spokesman for the National Mining Association, Luke Popovich, said that unless mine owners were allowed to dump mine waste in streams and valleys it would be impossible to operate in mountainous regions like West Virginia...." (NYTimes)

"This is a parting gift to the coal industry from this administration," said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va. "What is at stake is the future of Appalachia. This is an attempt to make legal what has long been illegal."

Not to mention IMMORAL.