"Mountaintop mining poisons water supplies, pollutes the air, destroys hundreds of miles of North America's most ancient and biologically diverse hardwood forests and permanently impoverishes local communities. For too long, this devastation has been hidden in the remote poverty-stricken communities of Appalachia. This new website finally exposes this national disgrace for every American to witness. Wherever you live, you have a connection – and a responsibility."
-- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the Official Google Blog.

ilovemountains, has a cool new mashup that even has RFK, Jr. talking about it! It's their "What's My Connection?" campaign. They have combined data so that when you punch in your zip code, you can see how you are paying for mountaintop removal.

For example, when I enter my zip code, I find out that my electricity provider, Pacific Gas Electric Co, buys coal from companies engaged in mountaintop removal, and I can see the connection on Google Maps and Google Earth (above).

Once I've seen the connection, I am given the tools to 1. join the 26,612 people that have already pledged to help end mountaintop removal, 2. tell others about this page, and 3. tell my power company to stop supporting mountaintop removal.

To find my connection, ilovemountains integrated 6 data sources:

• Coal purchases by individual coal-fired power plants.
• Location, ownership, and power control areas of coal-fired power plants.
• Location and ownership of coal mines.
• Association of zip codes with electric service providers.
• Latitude and longitude of zip code centroid locations.
• Determination of mine types (i.e., mountaintop removal mines)

Pretty cool, huh? Those ilovemountains folks are always ahead of the curve.

If reading about this give you an idea for a mashup with social impact, submit your idea to the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. You don't have to have the tech skills to create your mashup, just the idea!