Question:
The coal-rich moutains of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and
Pennsylvania are disappearing as a result of the latest, most cost-efficient
method of mining coal: mountaintop removal.
In this process, from 500 to 1,000 feet of the top of a moutain is
removed to expose successive seams of coal. The overburden, or spoil
(everything that isn't coal) is dumped into adjacent coves and valleys,
covering streams and drainages, and henceforth called 'valley fill'.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, mre than 900 miles of
Appalachian streams have been buried, including 470 miles of streams in West
Virginia.
Answer:
This form of strip, or surface mining, began in the 1950's. Back
then, however, the operations were small and few. It wasn't until the late
1970's tha eary '80's that surface mining began to evolve in scope into
what it is today. After 1990, when amendments to the federal Clean Air Act
required electric utilities to use cleaner-burning, low-sulfur coal, the
number and size of mountaintop-removal sites increased dramatically.
In 1977, in an attempt to protect the environment and coalfield
residents, Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act,
which requires coal companies to restore the "approximate original contour"
of surface-mined land. Oddly enough, operations that remove entire tops of
mountains are exempt from this rule.
States are responsible for permitting mining operations and
enforcement of the reclamation act's regulations. However, in the coalfield
states, King Coal rules. Our own Gov. James Gilmore received $78,374 in
campaign funds from Pittston alone; West Virginia Gov. Cecil Underwood, a
retired coal-company executive, received $250,000 from coal interests. Like
the federal Office of Surface Mining, state regulatory agencies were
designed by the industries they are supposed to regulate. Mining permits
are rubber-stamped procedures, enforcement is variously ineffective or
nonexistant.
Mountain-top removal mining is one of the nation's best-kept secrets.
If the general public were aware of the extent to which this practice is
devastating tje Appalachian Mountains, it would be banned. In West Virginia,
Chief U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden issued a landmark decision that
burying perennial and intermittent streams under millions of tons of waste
rock and earth violates federal and state mining rules and the federal Clean
Water Act.
Now, thanks to the reactionary predictions of economic doom by the
coal industry and the elected officials and agencies that serve the
industry, the issue of mountain-top removal coal mining may get the national
exposure it deserves.
