With Virginia’s unemployment rate rising yet again in December, state legislators may be taking aim at eliminating 8,000 more jobs — and driving up utility rates around the country.

A State Senate committee is expected to soon hold hearings on a bill that exploits false environmental concerns to radically restrict the availability of mining permits in Virginia.

The bill refuses mining permits to any company that deposits any dirt or silt into an “intermittent, perennial, or ephemeral stream.”

The term “intermittent, perennial, or ephemeral stream” is intentionally broad. Even deserts have “ephemeral streams.”

Radical environmentalists have been putting that type of phrase into legislation, regulations and growth plans around the country.  They then send in hired lawyers who can shut down any employment project anywhere by showing that if you pour enough water onto the land in question, it will flow somewhere.

Now they want to use it to shut down a huge portion of America’ coal mining.

Radical environmentalists make no secret they want to eliminate America’s coal industry.  Even Barack Obama bragged on the campaign trail his “cap and tax” plan would “bankrupt the coal industry.”  Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore has publicly blasted the environmentalist movement for focusing too much on eliminating capitalism.

According to Moore, when the Soviet Union began to cut back on its financial support of international socialist movements in the 1970s, many anti-American activists found new homes in the environmentalist movement.  There, they began blaming worldwide environmental problems on an American economy they saw as too big and too prosperous.  Exploiting well-meaning peoples’ concerns for clean air and water, ecosocialists began making outrageous claims about American industries — particularly coal.

Driving the coal industry into extinction would drastically increase the price of energy, forcing America to downsize its economy — the central goal of most environmentalist leaders.  And with Virginia supply America with 44 percent of its coal, downsizing America’s economy begins with restricting coal mining in the Old Dominion.

Even worse, the 8,000 jobs targeted for elimination are largely in Appalachia, the poorest part of Virginia and the hardest hit by the current economic downturn.

Radical environmentalists falsely claim the bill is supported by the residents of these mining towns.  But it’s sponsored by “Gang Green” puppet State Sen. Patsy Ticer — a liberal Northern Virginia Democrat whose urban district not only has no coal mining, but is entirely on the other side of the state.  It’s rather telling that not one senator from the targeted areas has sponsored the legislation.  Unfortunately, most of Virginia’s population, and representation in the Democrat-controlled Senate, are Ticer’s Northern Virginia.

Like most radical environmentalist legislation, specifically Congress’ “NREPA” land grab of the Rocky Mountain West sponsored by a New York City Democrat, the anti-mining jobs bill is wrapped in feel-good intentions but can’t even get the support of the very residents it falsely claims to protect.

The bill, SB 564, is expected to eliminate thousands of jobs in an already-suffering Virginia.  Even worse, if passed the bill would cut off coal supplies to many power plants, driving utility rates even higher and touching off a “ripple effect” of unemployment reaching far beyond Virginia.

If you live in Virginia, you can check here to see if your state senator is a member of the committee.  If so, contact them and let them know you oppose this transparent attempt to eliminate jobs in Virginia.