The Washington Post reminds its urban readers that "Washington's air conditioners and iPods have helped drive" a particularly destructive form of coal strip mining in the eastern mountains. The Post's David Fahrenthod traces the coal used in DC-area power plants back to West Virginia mines, where mountains are now leveled to extract the coal. "It used to be West Virginia," Vivian Stockman, an environmental activist, said. "And now it's Mars."

A West Virginia mining official estimates that 70 percent of the coal taken from strip mines comes from operations where the tops of mountains are lopped off to get to the fuel. "There's one big reason you mountaintop mine. That's where the good Lord put the coal," said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.

The story ends with a confrontation between an anti-strip mine activist and a coal truck driver — a staple of this issue in coal country for the past 40 years.

Two fires raked across Colorado's southeast plains last week, consuming 10,000 acres, destroying dozens of homes (above) and indirectly killing three people. The prairie fires were a reminder of how dangerous plains blazes can be, reports the Rock Mountain News.

"In the right weather conditions, prairie fires can move almost as fast as a person can drive," 100 times faster than forest fires, Ed Wright, board member of the National Wildfire Suppression Association, said. "They require a whole different set of tactics than forest fires."

Wright said he recalled a prairie fire in Nevada that began with a lightening strike and covered 30,000 acres in just five hours.

The Los Angeles Times noted Monday morning that fighting the construction of new coal-fired power plants has become a popular activity across rural America. (The front page photo on the Times site was of a protest in Abingdon, Virginia, see above and story about the protests in the next paragraph.)

Peter Galuszka writes about the particular fight against a Dominion Energy coal plant planned for southwest Virginia in Bacon's Rebellion. The post went up in January, but it gives a flavor of how these fights are playing out in rural communities. 

Finally, in the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, author Erik Reece, who wrote a book about coal strip mining, reviews the cost of coal on the regions where it's mined.

A county in eastern North Carolina invested in a community wireless internet system five years ago and already has lots to show for it: higher graduation rates and new businesses. With new technologies on the horizon, low-cost WiFi may soon be with reach for all rural communities.

Revised EPA standards show 45 rural counties with health-hazardous levels of ozone. And environmental experts say crops and forests are at even greater risk than people.