Wells Fargo and Mountaintop Removal

A “posse of environmentalists” from Rainforest Action Network (RAN) ran herd on the corporate headquarters of Wells Fargo in San Francisco. RAN, through its Global Finance Campaign, is recognized for relentlessly (for years) and successfully nagging, wrangling, vexing, and hectoring multinational investment and banking companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase to stop funding projects that endanger old growth forests, climate change, and indigenous peoples.

Ran links Wells Fargo to funding Massey Energy’s mountain-top removal coal mining operation in Western Virginia. Here is more on that:

Recent coal investments made by Wells Fargo include:

$175 million loan to Massey Energy, a brutally anti-union mining giant engaged in moutaintop removal in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia. Massey has been the target of community protests throughout the region as a result of its destructive practices.

$175 million loan for Alpha Natural Resources, a company operating 22 “surface mines” (read mountaintop removal and strip mines) across several states in the Appalachian Mountains.

$50 million loan to the James River Coal Company, one of the largest coal producers in the central Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky.

Banker for the Westmoreland Coal Company, one of the top 10 coal producers in the country, with operations in 7 states and 8 wholly-owned coal-fired power plants.

About these ads