Court Rules in Favor of Controversial Mining in Appalachia

On February 13, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, VA ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can resume issuing Clean Water Act permits for mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia without further environmental impact study. The court's 2-to-1 decision overturned a 2007 ruling that rescinded such permits on the basis that they were improperly issued and required more extensive environmental review. (1, 2, 3)

Mountaintop removal mining, mainly carried out in West Virginia and Kentucky, is one of the most destructive and controversial types of surface mining in practice today. Just as the name implies, the top of a mountain is literally removed to expose the shallow seams of coal lying beneath.

The mining procedure takes place in several steps. First, the forest is clear cut and all vegetation is bulldozed down to the bare ground. Next, powerful explosives are used to blast off soil and rock, called "overburden." The debris is dumped into neighboring valleys, known as a "valley fill." A dragline excavator digs out the coal, which is then washed. Millions of gallons of liquid waste generated by the washing process are stored in open sludge or slurry ponds, held back by earthen dams. These dams sometimes break, releasing a deadly flood of toxic black water (4, 5, 6).

The environmental and human impact of this type of mining is devastating. Mountaintop removal results in the loss of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, transforming lush mountain forests into barren wastelands. Denuded hillsides trigger landslides, and the lack of vegetation increases the intensity of flash floods. Valley fills destroy streams and springs, while runoff pollutes water downstream (5). As reported in the March, 2006 issue of National Geographic, mountaintop removal mining has affected over 400,000 acres and 1,200 miles of streambeds in a four-state area of Appalachia including West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia (6).

Residents of the communities near the mining operations incur damage to their homes from the massive blasting, which cracks foundations and walls. Rocks and boulders known as "fly rock" are strewn from the blast site, often landing in residential areas in the vicinity of the mine.

Numerous lives have been lost due to flooding, road accidents involving overloaded coal trucks, and other disasters brought about by the mining procedures. Tragedy struck in Wise County, VA in 2004, when a thousand-pound boulder dislodged by a bulldozer rolled down a hill and crashed through the wall of 3-year-old Jeremy Davidson's home, crushing him to death while he slept in his bed (5, 7).

The toll on residents of the coalfields is not limited to the dangers of flooding and falling rock. In Rock Creek, West Virginia, the Marsh Fork Elementary School is located directly below a coal processing plant and slurry pond. A large percentage of the students from the school suffer from asthma, headaches, nausea, blisters in their mouths, and constant runny noses. Many children in the mining region of Letcher County, Kentucky suffer from nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and shortness of breath. These conditions, along with kidney, liver and spleen failure, bone damage and cancer are also attributed to mining contaminants in the air and water (5, 7).

Mountaintop removal mining may be an efficient way to extract coal, but at a terrible cost.

References

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/science/earth/14mountain.html?em

2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021301827.html

3. http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/694548.html

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining

5. http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/MJSnewsletter10.pdf

6. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/03/mountain-mining/mitchell-text

7. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/166/