Mining’s Destructive Legacy on Waterways
By John McQuaid (For Yale Environment 360)
Laurel Branch Hollow was once a small West Virginia mountain valley, with steep, forested hillsides and a stream that, depending on the season and the rains, flowed or trickled down into the Mud River about 200 yards below. The stream teemed with microbes and insect life, and each spring it became a sumptuous buffet for the birds, fish, and amphibians in the valley.
But over the past decade, the Hobet 21 mountaintop removal coal mining operation has obliterated 25 square miles of surrounding highlands. From the air, the mine is a 10-mile-long, mottled gray blotch among the green, crisscrossed by trucks and earth movers, appended by black lakes of coal sludge.
Publisher-Creator Mikhail Saavedra began life down by the deepest tip of southern Latin America. He started life with a deep curiosity for all things, with music and books being at the forefront, a curious child by all accounts. As he grew and opened his eyes to the world, he developed a sense of justice and dignity in part as a reaction to growing up in a military dictatorship. Alas, this did not fill him with fear or cynicism but a more rebellious spirit, which led him to being incredibly popular at the principal’s office and the local riot police department….
Then came Canada and it was here that he was able to formulate his deep desire to learn about the world, with Toronto being the kind of multicultural soup that could engage his need to know and embrace. It started with writing, then moved on to what became Toronto’s first Latin Alternative radio show, followed by an all-English show in the same vein. It was this desire to find the true “crossover” among people, which led him to the concept of “Alternavox”
He is a lover of wine, good food, Neruda, Eduardo Galeano, rebel music, revolutionaries, dancing, family and beautiful people. Believes that kindness in this much too cynical world is revolutionary, that you are a better person when able to give a little without asking for the change and that on the same token you should laugh at yourself and the madness surrounding you as often as possible as you set out to change the world bit by bit. 