Mining Mountains 1
Mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining in southern West Virginia in May 2003. Photo by Vivian Stockman, May 30, 2003
JB: This is Earth and Sky. The Appalachian Mountains in the eastern U.S. support the most diverse plant and animal communities of any temperate forest in the world.
DB: Appalachia is also rich in coal. Mining companies are using explosives to remove the tops of mountains at dozens of sites in West Virginia, Kentucky and elsewhere. It’s called mountaintop removal mining. In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA – and other federal agencies – commissioned a series of individual studies with the goal of producing an impact statement.
JB: The EPA released a draft of the impact statement last year. We spoke with three of the scientists involved in the studies. They told us that the thousands of acres of forest destroyed by a typical mountaintop mining operation won’t return for at least a hundred or more years.
DB: And, along with the trees go rare forest songbirds and other animals. After blasting a mountaintop, workers dump the resulting rock and dirt into surrounding valleys and streams. According to the EPA, nearly 2000 kilometers – 1200 miles – of Appalachian streams have been buried or polluted in the last two decades.
JB: Mountaintop mining permits have recently become harder to obtain in the U.S. Now scientists say they’re trying to identify ways to make the practice less invasive. More on that, next time. Our thanks to the U.S. Forest Service and to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
More Resources:
Mountaintop Removal/Valley Fill (Environmental Protection Agency)
Mountaintop Mining Environmental Impact Statement (Environmental Protection Agency)
Coal Country, by Ian Frazier, On Earth (Natural Resources Defense Council, Spring 2003)
Razing Appalachia (site for a PBS documentary on mountaintop mining – good links to sources)
Mining the Mountains (by the Charleston Gazette)
Blue Ridge Press-Put a lid on mountaintop removal mining (by Jeff South, The Tracey Farmer Center for the Environment)
Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment
“Mining a Sacred Land, Human Rights Dialogue: “Environmental Rights”“:http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/viewMedia.php/prmTemplateID/8/prmID/4459 (Spring 2004, by Abigail Abrash Walton, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs)
““Federal Judge Rejects Process for Approval of Mining,”“:http://www.ohvec.org/links/news/archive/2004/fair_use/07_10b.html (By Felicity Barringer, New York Times, July 10, 2004)
““Residents oppose mountaintop removal, poll shows,”“:http://www.ohvec.org/links/news/archive/2004/fair_use/07_14.html (By Ken Ward Jr., The Charleston Gazette, July 14, 2004)
Leveling a Mountain of Research on Mountaintop Removal Strip Mining (Union of Concerned Scientists)
EIA’s Annual Coal Report 2002 ((Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy)
Reference for how much of our electricity comes from coal:
Share of Electric Power Industry Net Generation by Energy Source, 2002 vs. 2003 (Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy)
““Shear Madness”“:http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmusn/is_199708/ai_kepm228039 (U.S.News & World Report, August, 1997)
Author’s Notes:
The Appalachian mountains are extremely rich in terms of biodiversity.
We interviewed Petra Wood, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in West Virginia. She explained why the region is so diverse: “This region is known for its richness in bird populations, in amphibians, in reptiles, especially salamanders. … And one of the reasons we have such a high diversity is that we’re in the part of the world where you’ve got species that would normally occur more to the south – they reach the northern extent of their range here. Species that occur more to the north have the southern extent of their range here. We’ve got western species that are hitting here. So you’ve got all those things in play. … we have really steep slopes, very narrow valleys – and you basically have all these little niches for all these different species. You’ve got birds that like ridgetops, that like places along streams, that like these cove situations. You’ve got different slopes, elevations, all those things just add to the diversity of the region. And then you’ve got a lot of diversity in the plant communities too which then also leads to greater diversity in the animal species. So all of those things come into play.”
But now the plants, animals and people of this region are being affected by a powerful new method of coal mining – mountaintop removal mining.
In May 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a draft of its Environmental Impact Statement on the effects of mountaintop removal mining. The study area spanned 12 million acres, encompassing most of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, western Virginia, and scattered areas of eastern Tennessee. Here are some of the findings of that report:
- Of the largely forested study area, approximately 6.8 % has been or may be affected by recent and future (1992-2012) mountaintop mining [USEPA, 2002].
- Approximately 1200 miles of headwater streams (or 2% of the streams in the study area) were directly impacted by MTM/VF features including coal removal areas, valley fills, roads, and ponds between 1992 and 2002. An estimated 724 stream miles (1.2 % of streams) were covered by valley fills from 1985 to 2001. Certain watersheds were more impacted by MTM/VF than others.
- Streams in watersheds where MTM/VFs exist are characterized by an increase of minerals in the water as well as less diverse and more pollutant-tolerant macroinvertebrates and fish species.
- Streams in watersheds below valley fills tend to have greater base flow. These flows are more persistent than comparable unmined watersheds. Streams with fills are generally less prone to higher runoff than unmined areas during most low-frequency storm events; however, this phenomenon appears to reverse itself during larger rainfall events.
Human Impacts
In today’s show, we talked about the effects of mountaintop removal mining and valley fills (MTM/VF) on forests, songbirds and streams. But there are also impacts to people.
Tourism and recreation are very important to the economy in rural Appalachia. People come to camp, hike, fish and canoe. But at recently mined sites, majestic, wooded peeks are replaced by flat-topped, grassy mounds. Spring fed streams are transformed into piles of mining waste.
Mining companies do provide jobs for some local people. But critics say that the number of jobs created by a mine is fairly small. Bruce Wallace, a stream ecologist the University of Georgia in Athens, says: “We always talk about the issue of how important it is economically to these areas where they’re mining and how important the mountaintop mining is to the public. But the interesting thing about it, if you look at the per capita income in these places where they’re doing the mining and compare it with the per capita income of the state – in almost every case – whether you’re looking at Kentucky or Tennessee or Virginia or West Virginia – the per capita income in the mining counties is much lower than it is in the statewide counties. I don’t know how you can make it a big issue that mining is that important to the local economies when those kind of statistics crop up from every state. And of course the other problem that goes along with that is that many people don’t realize that the more you trash the local environment, the harder it is to develop a viable economy. And so I think those are part of the problems too that need to be considered in this overall process.”
There are also impacts on aquatic life. One recent study found that salamanders are much less abundant in streams below valleys filled with mining debris. And there are concerns that selenium – a chemical harmful in high doses – accumulates in fish downstream. That might also pose a risk to humans who eat the fish.
Across the country, people are concerned about air pollution. One contributor to dirty air – and to a rise in cases of asthma – is the burning of coal for power. So energy producers have tried to find forms of energy that pollute less. Low-sulfur coal is cleaner burning than traditional coal. To get the low-sulfur coal, mining companies have increasingly been resorting to mountaintop removal mining. Ironically, this method of getting cleaner coal is more dangerous to the environment than traditional mining practices.
The following people were interviewed for today’s show. Our thanks to:
Steven Handel
Professor
Rutgers University
Eenr/Plant Phys Grp
New Brunswick, NJ
Bruce Wallace
Stream Ecologist and Professor
University of Georgia in Athens
Petra Wood
Division of Forestry
West Virginia University
Morgantown, West Virginia
John Morgan
Morgan Consulting
Lexington, KY
