Mountaintop Removal (MTR) is the practice of blowing the tops off of mountains, and in some cases taking out entire ranges, in order to get at the coal near the surface. First used in the late 1970s in the wake of the oil embargo, MTR is responsible for polluting more than 1,200 miles of streams and watersheds. Clean water for the Appalachian region is in danger of being lost forever to the practice. MTR fills valleys with vegetation, rock, and earth—called “overburden”— which is dumped, compacted and then planted with non-native plants in order to comply with environmental laws that require mining companies to restore the affected areas to “a level or gently rolling configuration.” What is left behind is a flat, barren plateau that will not support the region’s unique diversity of life.
The coal industry portrays MTR as an innocuous, even restorative practice that can enhance the area by creating recreational areas and flatland for development and construction projects, such as a prison built in Tennessee which has been dubbed “Sink Sink,” due to the fact that the unstable ground below it is shifting and causing damage to the structure. The Kentucky Coal Council and Kentucky Coal Association decry “emotional statements in the press about this form of mining that are neither based on fact nor supported by the truth,” but the evidence of the destruction can be seen in pictures of the area and the stories of people in the region who have been displaced either by flooding, blasting, or selling off ancestral homes to mining companies. The 24-hour blasting cracks the foundations of houses, rattles windows and the nerves of residents who are unfortunate enough to live near the massive mines, and there is danger of damage to health from flying debris and excessive dust in the air. Debris was the cause of the death of a three-year-old boy in Virginia, who was killed by a falling rock in August 2004. The A & G Coal Company was fined $15,000 because the incident was considered “an act of God.”
Damage to water supplies results when watersheds are filled in with the rocks and vegetation destroyed by heavy machinery. A loophole in regulation allows mining companies to dump mountaintop waste into seasonal streambeds—what the coal industry describes as “dry hollows”—that only run in rainy seasons and do not support fish. Opponents of MTR have been trying to get the US Office of Surface Mining (OSM) to enforce a buffer-zone prohibiting mining activity within 100 feet of a stream and to get the Army Corp of Engineers to regulate streambed fill. Occasional court victories by advocacy groups are set aside on appeal by attorneys for the industry or the various agencies involved, and the mining continues.
Another danger to water supplies is the process of washing freshly-mined coal, which leaves behind hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic black water and sticky black goo in impoundments referred to as slurry ponds, sludge lagoons, or waste basins that often perch precariously on the leveled tops of mountains. There have been several environmental disasters due to impoundments breaking and flooding entire communities. In 1972, two days of torrential rains in Logan County, West Virginia caused a waste storage structure owned by a subsidiary of the Pittston Coal Company collapsed and spilled 130 gallons of sludge into Buffalo Creek, washing tons of debris and even houses downstream leaving 125 dead, 1,000 injured and 4,000 homeless. The Pittston Mine Company called the disaster an “act of God.”
In October 2000, the bottom of a waste pond near Inez, Kentucky collapsed and spilled 250 million gallons of slurry into an inactive mine shaft, which then surged out through the mine’s exits into the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers. No one was killed, but 20 miles of waterway was eventually declared an aquatic dead zone. The spill was 25 times the size of the spill in the Exxon Valdez disaster. The resulting slick eventually reached all the way to the riverfront in Cincinnati. The pond was owned by the Martin County Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, which blamed the disaster on the rain.
Slurry waste is seeping into wells and water supplies and is causing health problems throughout areas where MTR is taking place. Massey Energy—with annual revenues of more than $2 billion—is being sued by 350 citizens in West Virginia, although Massey denies culpability for the damage. The state’s Division of Mining and Reclamations issued a memorandum that showed 500 environmental violations for the years 2000-01, more than twice the number of the next three largest coal producers combined. Their Brushy Fork slurry lagoon contains more than eight billion gallons of toxic sludge.
In Sundial, West Virginia, a battle is going on at Marsh Fork Elementary school over neighboring Sundial Mine which spews dust as coal is loaded into a silo that towers over the school. The school’s playground is often covered in black soot that also makes its way into the ventilation system. Many children at the school suffer from respiratory diseases and the school board and local government refuse to take action, claiming that the responsibility for the matter rests with the mining company. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) claims that the facility poses no threat to the school, even though it lists the 385 foot high dam for the slurry pond that sits above the school as a class C facility, meaning that its failure could be expected to lead to a loss of human life. Concerned Sundial residents seek to block the construction of another silo within 200 feet of the school, and continue to fight expansion of MTR. In the summer of 2005, 18 protestors were arrested at the Massey plant and protests continued throughout the summer. Many of the protestors were participants in Mountain Justice Summer (MJS)—an advocacy group based in Knoxville, Tennessee—and were not from the area. Massey used that to their advantage and has engendered an “us versus them” mentality among their employees, which has led to threats of violence against local protestors as well as those brought in by MJS. The governor tested the school’s ventilation system in August and deemed the school to be environmentally safe. The tests came after weeks of scrubbing, and were considered to be a sham. According to Bo Webb of Mountain Watch, “if they admit there is coal dust and other mine-related pollutants in the children’s lungs, there is going to be a parade of lawsuits naming just about everyone who has been made aware and did nothing.” Others suggest the state’s economy is so dependent on coal that officials choose to look away.
The practice of MTR is spreading so fast that an accurate accounting of the affected area is not available, but more than 400,000 acres in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia have been destroyed by the practice, and if it continues unabated, by 2012, a section of the Appalachians the size of Rhode Island will have been flattened. The massive mining equipment will often shear 300-500 feet of mountaintop in order to get a few feet of coal.
The Bush administration considers coal to be the energy of the future and the coal industry even conflates the attacks of 9/11 with the need for more coal. A section of a timeline on the Kentucky Coal Council & Kentucky Coal Association’s website entitled “The History of Coal” reads as follows:
The coal industry portrays MTR as an innocuous, even restorative practice that can enhance the area by creating recreational areas and flatland for development and construction projects, such as a prison built in Tennessee which has been dubbed “Sink Sink,” due to the fact that the unstable ground below it is shifting and causing damage to the structure. The Kentucky Coal Council and Kentucky Coal Association decry “emotional statements in the press about this form of mining that are neither based on fact nor supported by the truth,” but the evidence of the destruction can be seen in pictures of the area and the stories of people in the region who have been displaced either by flooding, blasting, or selling off ancestral homes to mining companies. The 24-hour blasting cracks the foundations of houses, rattles windows and the nerves of residents who are unfortunate enough to live near the massive mines, and there is danger of damage to health from flying debris and excessive dust in the air. Debris was the cause of the death of a three-year-old boy in Virginia, who was killed by a falling rock in August 2004. The A & G Coal Company was fined $15,000 because the incident was considered “an act of God.”
Damage to water supplies results when watersheds are filled in with the rocks and vegetation destroyed by heavy machinery. A loophole in regulation allows mining companies to dump mountaintop waste into seasonal streambeds—what the coal industry describes as “dry hollows”—that only run in rainy seasons and do not support fish. Opponents of MTR have been trying to get the US Office of Surface Mining (OSM) to enforce a buffer-zone prohibiting mining activity within 100 feet of a stream and to get the Army Corp of Engineers to regulate streambed fill. Occasional court victories by advocacy groups are set aside on appeal by attorneys for the industry or the various agencies involved, and the mining continues.
Another danger to water supplies is the process of washing freshly-mined coal, which leaves behind hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic black water and sticky black goo in impoundments referred to as slurry ponds, sludge lagoons, or waste basins that often perch precariously on the leveled tops of mountains. There have been several environmental disasters due to impoundments breaking and flooding entire communities. In 1972, two days of torrential rains in Logan County, West Virginia caused a waste storage structure owned by a subsidiary of the Pittston Coal Company collapsed and spilled 130 gallons of sludge into Buffalo Creek, washing tons of debris and even houses downstream leaving 125 dead, 1,000 injured and 4,000 homeless. The Pittston Mine Company called the disaster an “act of God.”
In October 2000, the bottom of a waste pond near Inez, Kentucky collapsed and spilled 250 million gallons of slurry into an inactive mine shaft, which then surged out through the mine’s exits into the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers. No one was killed, but 20 miles of waterway was eventually declared an aquatic dead zone. The spill was 25 times the size of the spill in the Exxon Valdez disaster. The resulting slick eventually reached all the way to the riverfront in Cincinnati. The pond was owned by the Martin County Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, which blamed the disaster on the rain.
Slurry waste is seeping into wells and water supplies and is causing health problems throughout areas where MTR is taking place. Massey Energy—with annual revenues of more than $2 billion—is being sued by 350 citizens in West Virginia, although Massey denies culpability for the damage. The state’s Division of Mining and Reclamations issued a memorandum that showed 500 environmental violations for the years 2000-01, more than twice the number of the next three largest coal producers combined. Their Brushy Fork slurry lagoon contains more than eight billion gallons of toxic sludge.
In Sundial, West Virginia, a battle is going on at Marsh Fork Elementary school over neighboring Sundial Mine which spews dust as coal is loaded into a silo that towers over the school. The school’s playground is often covered in black soot that also makes its way into the ventilation system. Many children at the school suffer from respiratory diseases and the school board and local government refuse to take action, claiming that the responsibility for the matter rests with the mining company. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) claims that the facility poses no threat to the school, even though it lists the 385 foot high dam for the slurry pond that sits above the school as a class C facility, meaning that its failure could be expected to lead to a loss of human life. Concerned Sundial residents seek to block the construction of another silo within 200 feet of the school, and continue to fight expansion of MTR. In the summer of 2005, 18 protestors were arrested at the Massey plant and protests continued throughout the summer. Many of the protestors were participants in Mountain Justice Summer (MJS)—an advocacy group based in Knoxville, Tennessee—and were not from the area. Massey used that to their advantage and has engendered an “us versus them” mentality among their employees, which has led to threats of violence against local protestors as well as those brought in by MJS. The governor tested the school’s ventilation system in August and deemed the school to be environmentally safe. The tests came after weeks of scrubbing, and were considered to be a sham. According to Bo Webb of Mountain Watch, “if they admit there is coal dust and other mine-related pollutants in the children’s lungs, there is going to be a parade of lawsuits naming just about everyone who has been made aware and did nothing.” Others suggest the state’s economy is so dependent on coal that officials choose to look away.
The practice of MTR is spreading so fast that an accurate accounting of the affected area is not available, but more than 400,000 acres in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia have been destroyed by the practice, and if it continues unabated, by 2012, a section of the Appalachians the size of Rhode Island will have been flattened. The massive mining equipment will often shear 300-500 feet of mountaintop in order to get a few feet of coal.
The Bush administration considers coal to be the energy of the future and the coal industry even conflates the attacks of 9/11 with the need for more coal. A section of a timeline on the Kentucky Coal Council & Kentucky Coal Association’s website entitled “The History of Coal” reads as follows:
2001 Natural gas prices increase over 50% in one year. Electricity shortages result in rolling blackouts in California. Kentucky permits two coal-fired electric power plants, first in 20 years. September 11, 2001 - America is attacked.
AMERICA'S SECURE FUEL FOR ELECTRIC ENERGY -- COAL
The industry touts the economic benefits of coal production to the Appalachians, a region that has consistently been the most impoverished section of the US. The Appalachians have been treated much like oil-rich countries around the world, in that the mineral wealth is taken from the region—7.8 billion tons of coal have been taken out of Kentucky alone in the past 130 years—and funneled into the coffers of distant energy companies, while the people who work to extract the precious commodity are left to live in poverty, and endure the environmental destruction caused by the practice. Census numbers show that the standard of living in the “coal counties” are no better, and often much worse than members of non-coal communities. Coal mining in Tennessee is not even in the top five money-making enterprises. In 2004, 154 million tons of coal was extracted via MTR from West Virginia alone, where the numbers of mine-related workers has plummeted from 125,000 in 1948, to less than 19,000 in 2005. In 1979, there were 35,902 mining jobs in Eastern Kentucky, but by 2003, there were only 13,036. For every three people who once worked the mines, two are now doing something else.
Regulations are being relaxed, and even when mining companies are fined, they often find legal loopholes that allow them to avoid payment and environmental clean up. One method used to avoid regulation and restitution is for the major coal companies to set up subsidiary companies that break the law and once charged with violations and fined, the subsidiaries declare bankruptcy leaving the mess behind and releasing the real culprits from punishment.
The Appalachians is not the only region being harmed by the practice of MTR. Wyoming, which is the number one producer of coal in the US, depends on the economically efficient practice more and more, and it is increasingly being used throughout the rest of world from Alaska to Australia.
There has been a flurry of publication regarding MTR in recent month. Several disasters—including the Sago Mine Disaster—have focused attention on the regulation of mining practices in the US. Books by Erik Reece of the University of Kentucky, and an upcoming book by Penny Loeb, an independent journalist and former editor of US News and World Report who wrote about MTR for that magazine in 1997, examine the practice from beginning to end. Reece’s book “Lost Mountain,” chronicles his year-long observance of the destruction of a mountain top in Eastern Kentucky. Another recent book entitled “Missing Mountains,” edited by Bobbie Ann Mason, Kristin Johannsen, and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, is a collection of essays, fiction and poetry by 35 Appalachian authors who are against MTR. In-depth articles in National Geographic, Harper’s, and even the New York Times and Washington Post are bringing the issues to a larger audience of Americans, but with an industry-friendly government in control of environmental and safety regulations, it remains to be seen if the reporting will have any real effect in solving the problem.
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Additional reading:
Mountain Justice Summer
When Mountains Move, by John G. Mitchell, National Geographic, March 2006
Moving Mountains, by Erik Reece Grist.org, 16 February 2006
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/021706EC.shtml
Resisting Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee
By Kari Lydersen, The NewStandard. Posted November 21, 2005.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/28489/
The Coal Mine Next Door, by Peter Slavin, The American School Board Journal, March 2006.
http://www.asbj.com/current/coverstory.html
EPA chief turns coal lobbyist
Mercury foe now represents a top polluter, by Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0602090094feb09,1,1986710.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
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