Saturday, April 22, was Earth Day 2000, the 30th anniversary of what has become an annual celebration of the natural bounty of our planet and the environment. Citizens and groups across West Virginia are still gathering to celebrate this event, and will continue to do so for the next several weeks.

For the West Virginia Environmental Council, every day is Earth Day. On this particular anniversary of the first Earth Day thirty years ago, we felt it was important to reflect on the state of the environment in West Virginia in the year 2000, and to express our vision of an improved environment for the twenty-first century.

West Virginia, the Mountain State, is blessed with an uncommon abundance and diversity of natural resources. No where else can you find the combination of green, rugged land, wild rivers, fresh air, lofty rock formations, and wilderness -- West Virginia is a place apart.

Yet, because of this very abundance of nature’s bounty, West Virginia has also been cursed with an equal abundance of short-sighted and destructive exploitation of our mountains, minerals, streams, and timber that has resulted in severe threats to the health of the people and the environment in this state.

Generations of extractive uses have resulted in acid mine drainage, siltation, and dams on the state’s rivers and streams. Industry has produced increasing amounts of toxic discharges and acid rain. Development has contributed sewage discharges. Polluted runoff from factory farms has degraded our drinking water to unsafe levels. Politics and unemployment have continued to drive inconsistent regulatory and administrative remedies.

According to "Poisoning Our Water: How the Government Permits Pollution" a U.S. PIRG report released in February 2000, in 1997 (the year for which data is most recently available), more than seven million pounds of toxic pollution were released into West Virginia’s waters. This ranked the state as the 12th highest in the nation.

West Virginia ranks thirty-fifth in state population, but in 1997 the state was ranked sixth in the nation for sulfur dioxide emissions and seventh for nitrogen oxides. According to former EPA regional administrator Michael McCabe, "West Virginia power plants spew more nitrogen oxide into the air than all the power plants in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and the District of Columbia." During the summer of 1998 state citizens breathed unhealthy air one of every three days.

Between 1987 and 1994 timber harvested every year doubled to more than one billion board feet and harvest levels have increased greatly since that time. Between 1992 and 1999 timber companies targeted more than two million acres for logging, which is about 13 percent of the land in West Virginia. Meanwhile, catastrophic flooding of areas downstream of this activity increases every year.

In recent times, valley fills from mountaintop removal mining have obliterated more than 500 miles of West Virginia headwater streams, resulting in the loss of aquatic habitat, terrestrial wildlife habitat, deciduous hardwood forest, herbaceous plants -- with devastating impacts to entire watersheds and ecosystems.

According to U.S. EPA data, during a recent test period, 27% of West Virginia’s major municipal and industrial facilities were in significant noncompliance with their Clean Water Act permits. And according to data published in industry’s own publications, West Virginia annually spends less per resident on environmental protection (air quality, drinking water, hazardous waste, pesticides control, solid waste, and water quality) than any other state in the nation.

There is a great need -- and much room -- for improving the record for environmental protection in the twenty-first century. We will continue to work for a cleaner, safer, more sustainable environment for the citizens of the Mountain State, and for all the future generations of West Virginians.