Got an Opinion on Mountaintop Removal?

I came across a link on Facebook recently that asked me to sign a petition opposing mountaintop removal mining at Ison Rock Ridge in Southwest Virginia.  This is in the woodlands around Appalachia, Big Stone Gap, and on the way to Cumberland Gap.  It’s in the gorgeous mountains and valleys of Wise County. It’s a beautiful part of the state.

Mountaintop removal mining is just that:  the blasting and removal of a mountain to expose and extract the coal below.  The Environmental Protection Agency defines it as this: “mountaintop removal coal mining… as its name suggests, involves removing all or some portion of the top of a mountain or ridge to expose and mine one or more coal seams. The excess overburden is disposed of in constructed fills in small valleys or hollows adjacent to the mining site…”

Traditional Mountaintop Mine
Traditional Mountaintop Removal Mine

Here’s how it works:

  • The land must first be cleared.  All topsoil and vegetation is removed.  The trees are not generally used commercially but are disposed of.
  • Millions of pounds of explosives are inserted into the mountain to expose the seams of coal.
  • The resulting loose rock is scooped up in a “dragline”.  It’s like a giant crane with a bucket that could scoop up a couple of dozen small cars at a time.
  • The coal is separated from the rock and sent for processing.  The dirt and rock is then dumped into the neighboring valleys.
  • The coal is washed and treated and the leftover water is collected in ponds called “fly-ash” or “slurry” ponds.

 

Destroyed Home In Kingston, Tennessee
Destroyed Home In Kingston, Tennessee

If terms like “fly-ash” and “slurry pond” sound familiar, think back to the end of 2008.  A containment pond in Kingston, Tennessee failed and flooded the community with 1.3 million cubic meters of toxic waste.  It flooded farms, homes, roads, and polluted the Clinch and Emory rivers.  The Tennessee Valley Authority told folks in the area that the sludge contained arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese, and barium.

Mountaintop removal has become a flash point of sorts for people in coal country because the coal industry has sustained many mountain communities for generations.  If you’re from that area you know the importance of coal.  My family is from that area, scattered through Southern West Virginia, and into Kentucky. It is and has been coal country.  Members of my family have worked for the mines (although my family tree also has some farmers, carpenters, and moonshiners!).

Google Maps/Abandoned Centralia Today
Google Maps/Abandoned Centralia Today

Traditional mining is not without its dangers and disasters.  The Sago Mine near Buckhannon, West Virginia exploded in 2006.  12 miners were trapped and only one survived.  There is also the fabled story of Centralia, Pennsylvania.  A fire began in a mine some time in May of 1962.  It still burns.  After years of trying to put it out, the Federal Government decided to let it burn and basically relocated the town’s residents.  Scientists say that it could burn for the next 250 years, when the coal will run out.  There are, in fact, thousands of coal fires around the world that have been burning for hundreds of years.  Burning Mountain, in New South Wales, Australia, has been on fire for about a thousand years.  Early explorers mistook it for a volcano.

Traditional mining, while still dangerous, has a smaller impact on the environment.  If, of course, you take the effects of burning coal out of the equation.  It does not remove all of the trees; it does not fill in the streams and creeks that form the valleys.  It does not, in most cases, permanently alter the landscape.  An EPA study in 2009 said that mountaintop removal and its byproducts caused streams to be permanently lost, caused water quality levels to become acutely toxic, and had toxic effects for fish and birds.  Permanent.  Forever.

The coal industry defends the practice by pointing out that it provides jobs.  True enough, but even miners are opposed to mountaintop removal.  It creates fewer jobs than a traditional mine because it takes 1 guy to drive a dragline.  It takes 1 guy to plant some dynamite.  It takes a team to go underground.

The most vocal group opposing mountaintop removal isn’t a group of tree huggers.  It’s not some fancy club from somewhere out of state.  It’s the people of the area.  It’s the people who live there.  Speaking from experience, their parents lived there, and their parents, and their parents.  They’re Virginians, mountain people, and miners.  And they have, (along with their parents, and their parents, and their parents) been looking at Ison Rock Ridge for centuries.  And Mount Rogers, and Pine Mountain, and Buzzard Rock, and Round Top.

Follow some of the links and do your own research.  Good, bad, or indifferent, we’re not ready to “flip a switch” and eliminate our use of fossil fuels.  Much of America, and particularly that region of Appalachia, has been built around coal.

Taking away a mountain forever seems like a raw deal.