The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given its conditional approval to a new mountaintop removal coal mining permit, as long as the mine operator makes changes to protect downstream water quality.

Community efforts to call a halt to mountaintop removal mining and the pollution that comes with it have attracted the support of well known musicians Dave Matthews, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Patty Griffin, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, Big Kenny and Buddy Miller, who held a sold-out benefit concert for the cause during May in Nashville.

The coal companies on one side and the musicians, environmental groups and affected communities are locked in a battle that is not going to end anytime soon.

But the Music Saves Mountains participants say their campaign is not an anti-coal industry movement. Rather, it seeks to raise awareness and put an end to just one destructive form of coal mining, mountaintop removal. Less than seven percent of the coal mined in the United States comes from mountaintop removal, its opponents point out.

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