Mountaintop Coal Mining—The Greatest Environmental Sin of All (With Photo Gallery)

by Heidi Stevenson

The scar in the earth shown in the picture on the right is the result of mountaintop coal mining. If the coal companies have their way, it's what will become of the rest of the Appalachian Mountains. As bad as it looks, the reality is even worse. The scars are not only ugly, they're toxic. The environment will never recover. It's poisoned.

Click here to see photos of the carnage, before and after images, and more.

If you go to Google Maps, click on Satellite view, and enter West Virginia, you'll see scar-like areas dotting the central southern part of the state. Center any of them in the window and zero in on it. That's how much and how extensive the destruction is already. Imagine the full range of the Appalacians subjected to this treatment. Consider our concerns for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. If mountaintop coal mining isn't stopped, what right do we have to complain? Click here to see a sample of Google's satellite view of West Virginia.

The only place on earth that rivals the Appalachians in biodiversity is the Amazon in South America. The violence being done by mountaintop coal mining is hidden from view. A fringe of trees is left along roadsides to hide the moonscapes left by the coal industry. The broadleaf forests, a sea of green that was unbroken for hundreds of miles, is being replaced by land torn and twisted, more reminiscent of long-dead viscera than anything earthly.

The power of King Coal, the corporations that do this, is enormous, so great that presidential candidates, even those deemed liberal, have failed to address the harm.

The first step of the process is bulldozing the trees. Not being logging firms—and obviously so fat with wealth that they can't even see it as profitable enough—most companies don't even bother selling the wood. They simply burn the trees—producing even more greenhouse gases for absolutely no benefit.

Next, the tillable soil is pushed and scraped aside. It is destined to be buried. Then, the underlying sandstone is blasted away, hundreds and thousands of blasts every day. King Coal refers to the blown-away material as "overburden"—as if the foundation of one of the greatest ecosystems in the world is nothing but a nuisance, something that's merely in the way of their profits. All of this is then dumped into the surrounding valleys—more than 7,000 have been filled.

This method of coal mining started in the '70s. By 2001, over 1,000 miles of rivers were gone. At this point, we've lost over 2,000 miles, doubling in 7-8 years the losses of the previous 35 years. Heavy metals, which had been safely buried deep in the mountains are now exposed.

Before being shipped by train, the coal is washed and treated. The remaining slurry is then dumped into impoundment ponds. This sludge is full of coal dust, clay, and poisons like arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, and mercury. All that holds

them in place is debris from the mining operation, highly unstable material that almost inevitably results in dam breaks sooner or later. Since many of these dams are built upstream from towns, the risks to people are immense.

King Coal is not even particularly concerned about trespassing and destroying land that they don't own. McKinley Sumner and his relatives refused to sell. To assure that his property wouldn't accidentally be harmed, he hired a surveyor, who clearly tagged the boundary with bright orange markers. He spoke with ICG, the mining company, several times to assure that they knew the location of the property line. Fortunately he was at home when there was a terrible noise. Sumner ran and found a huge bulldozer tearing his property apart. Since they were caught, ICG backed off. They apologized, saying it was a mistake. However, Susan Bush, who carries the inappropriate title of Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources in Kentucky, did nothing more than issue a citation. There wasn't even a fine.

The damage to McKinley Sumner's land is so severe that none of the property they bulldozed remains. There is nothing but a drop-off where he stopped the bulldozer. As reported on iLoveMountains.org, they didn't trespass; they literally stole the land.

King Coal's profits from this rape of the Appalachians has been next to impossible for the landholders to fight. Their ability to buy the political system has virtually guaranteed that court judgements will be in favor of the mining corporations. Damon Morgan, an 80-year-old survivor of World War II's Iwo Jima battle, tried to fight Horizon Resources' and International Coal Group's trespassing on his land. Debris had been pushed onto his land, causing extensive damage. The result was a ruling against him, and the court went so far as to issue a gag order, so Mr. Morgan cannot even legally comment about what happened. His story is being told by Teri Blanton, an anti-coal activist who originally moved to the Appalachians in an attempt to raise her children in a healthy environment.

Mary Jane and Raleigh Adams are still fighting Whymore Coal Company for trespassing on their land. The court ruled against them, and even barred them from stepping foot on parts of their own land. Travesties like those of Morgan and the Adams is, sadly, only part of the story of King Coal's rampage throughout the region.

The map below, produced by Appalachian Voices in 2006, illustrates most, though not all, of the areas that have received permits for mountaintop coal mining. (Because this map relies on data from coal companies, which are known to be unreliable, the truth is likely much worse.)

Huge swaths of southern and central West Virginia will be utterly destroyed. Stretches of Kentucky, on into Tennessee and Virginia, will also start to look like moonscapes. The EPA has temporarily halted the issuance of new permits, but nothing has happened to stop the ongoing devastation that will occur with the existing permits.

Those who live far from the scenes of destruction are also affected. The streams being destroyed are the headwaters of major river systems on the east coast of the United States. Water is being contaminated by the mining operations. Groundwater is contaminated across huge areas, often to an unknown extent. This water eventually ends up in the drinking supplies of major cities. In areas where mountaintop mining has gone on for a few years, liver and kidney problems, cancer, and skin rashes are common. These are all associated with high levels of arsenic, lead, manganese, and selenium, all of which are now found in their wellwater, a direct result of the mining. These contaminants are coming to eastern American cities.

The devastation that results from slurry dams that break is horrific—and their instability, because of being made from blasted materials dumped into the gap, nearly guarantees that they'll break. The Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, dam collapse in 1972 sent 132 million gallons of slurry in a 20-30 foot wall that killed 125 people and made another 4,000 homeless. Near Inez, Kentucky, 306 million gallons erupted from the bottom of a containment pit, leaked into an abandoned mine, and then broke through two other places into two streams. In time, the sludge and contamination arrived in the Tug Fork and Big Sandy Rivers 100 miles away. All water life along that stretch was annihilated. Water supplies were destroyed. The goop inundated land by several feet. It was considered to be the EPA to be 30 times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil disaster. Are you wondering why you never heard about it? The Bush administration, deep in the pockets of King Coal, covered it up.

If you live in the midwest or west of the United States, don't think that this has nothing to do with you. The reality is that the electrical power generated by coal from mountaintop mining is dumped onto the grid, to be directed virtually anywhere. In fact, it's highly unlikely that you don't benefit from this corruption destroying the Appalachians and its life. This devastation must end. Everyone is responsible. You can help stop mountaintop removal coal mining by going to iLoveMountains.org. You can sign their petition—and as a nice benefit, you'll receive a thank you e-mail from Woody Harrelson, who is active in this campaign.

As stated on Spirituality and Ecological Hope:

Now those coal companies are going to tell us that this is the cheapest, most efficient way to get to the coal seams (it has also put thousands of coalminers out of work, replaced by mega-machines and dynamite), and that if they are forced to stop the practice, we will all pay more for our electricity.

To which we say, "Good!! Yes!! Absolutely!!"—because these mountains are worth more to us than our creature comforts and our excessive use of power, worth more to us than the inconvenience of reducing our electricity usage as we become staunch energy-efficient conservationists, turning down our energy wasteful lifestyles so the streams and rivers can flow through vibrant natural ecosystems. We will willingly pay more for the use of coal, a lot more, to a point where alternative clean energy technologies can compete against the industry.

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