The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy needs your help.

The Conservancy has outlined an ambitious legislative agenda for the 2000 session of the West Virginia Legislature. As the session unfolds, we hope to have an impact on these issues:

Water pollution from timbering operations. West Virginia is being timbered at a faster rate than at any time in the last century. At the same time, West Virginia has no effective law to protect our streams from the sediment that comes from those timbering operations. The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy wants to change that. We want to work for legislation that will protect our streams from the effects of these operations.

Threats to the purity of West Virginia’s streams. For over two decades state and federal law have prohibited the degradation of West Virginia’s streams. The goal was to keep pure the waters that were pure and to not pollute further those waters which were already polluted. Now various industrialists seek to revise that policy, making the degradation of West Virginia’s streams possible.

Controlling rock quarrying operations. Although they can cause enormous damage to the air and water, rock quarries are only lightly regulated. For years the Legislature has talked about regulating rock quarries. Now it is poised to actually do something. Without the participation of citizens and groups such as the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Legislature’s action is likely to be weak and ineffective.

Controlling mountaintop removal mining. Legal action in federal court by the Conservancy and several individual citizens during 1999 made dramatic improvement in requirements to return mined land to its original contour and in requirements to make mined land suitable for a beneficial post-mining use. Now it is the Legislature’s turn. It must write regulations to carry out the improvements in law the Conservancy and others reached in federal court. Without eternal vigilance on the part of the Conservancy and all citizens, the Legislature will work to take back the gains made in federal court.

To carry out this ambitious agenda, the Conservancy needs the help of all of its members.

You can help by contacting your legislative leaders to express your concern about these issues. You can help be sending a donation to help pay for a lobbyist and the other expenses of the lobbying effort.

This is a crucial legislative session for environmental issues. Please do whatever you can to help the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy be an active participant as the Legislature addresses these important issues.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Frank Young

President

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Yes, I would like to help the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

I would like to help by contacting my elected representatives. Please keep me informed on the issues and how I can help.

I would like to help by a donation to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. Enclosed is my donation of

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Return to: West Virginia Highlands Conservancy

P.O. Box 306

Charleston, WV 25321