Written by
A recent scientific review of dozens of studies entitled: “Mountaintop Mining Consequences“, was conducted by members of the National Academy of Sciences and is being published in the prestigious journal Science. The review concludes that it causes “pervasive and irreversible” damage to human health and the environment.
“…the authors outline severe environmental degradation taking place at mining sites and downstream. The practice destroys extensive tracts of deciduous forests and buries small streams that play essential roles in the overall health of entire watersheds. Waterborne contaminants enter streams that remain below valley fills and can be transported great distances into larger bodies of water.”
Mountaintop removal mining, is a type of surface coal mining that uses huge amounts of explosives to blast away the tops of mountains to expose coal seams. The resulting debris (aka the former mountain) are typically disposed of through a practice known as “valley fills,” where tons of mining debris are dumped into neighboring valleys, burying miles of headwater streams and valley ecosystems.
Mountaintop removal mining has already buried more than 800 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed hundreds of square miles of woodlands in one of America’s biodiversity hotspots.
In a recent interview the President told the political news organization, Politico, “It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient-especially when it’s inconvenient.” Yet last year, the Obama Administration released a multi-agency plan that called for more strict enforcement of laws regulating mountaintop removal but stopped short of prohibiting the practice.
The Coal companies mounted a campaign to resist even these minimal controls saying that it will cost jobs and increase energy prices. Mountaintop mining is a process that was developed to cut costs but it also reduced jobs. There are only a fraction of the miners and operators needed for the huge machines that remove the coal, compared to tunnel mining. The nation would be better off moving to other energy sources that do not destroy the environment removing it, or pollute the air burning it.