This is a subject that I am very passionate about. I wanted to share this with you all. I am constantly writing congressmen and editors of newspapers and magazines trying to bring attention to this issue, thus far it has been no avail.
I grew up in rural Southern West Virginia. In the heart of central Appalachia. West Virginia is known for it's coal mines. However, coal mines are quickly becoming a thing of the past in West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Eastern Tennessee. That's right, they no longer dig deep holes into the sides of moutains. Instead they just find a mountain with coal in it and blow off the top of the mountain removing the coal as they go. The left over stuff, which is anything that isn't coal, gets pushed into the valleys. It destroys entire communities. It pollutes the water. As of 2001 over 1,000 miles of streams were buried. (This same water drains into the Ohio River, and then into the Mississippi and ultimately effects more than just Central Appalachia.)
It breaks my heart to see this. It is a scar on the land. It is no less dangerous than deep mining (I had an uncle die while working at a mountain top removal site) and it takes far less men to remove the coal than deep mines, which hurts the local economy. The biggest "site" of mountain top removal is as large as Washington D.C. and can be seen on Google Earth.
Go here to see pictures of actual mountain top removal sites:
Mountaintop Removal Mining - High Resolution Photos
There is an author named Silas House who is from Eastern Kentucky who said this all much more eloquently than I ever could. I'm going to quote parts of his speech in the post but you can read then entire thing here:
A Country Boy Can Surmise
"Something is rotten in the state of Appalachia.
Mountaintop removal isn’t going to end anytime soon. We’re an energy-hungry nation, a selfish country that won’t even look into ways to reduce the use of gas and electricity. Our government won’t explore things like mass transit or wind and solar technology because they say Americans don’t want that. And frankly I’m not one of those people who call for the end of the coal industry. That’s just not realistic to me. But I do believe that we can fight for coal mining to be done in a more responsible and respectful way. We can fight for this and win, too. There is the possibility of making that happen. People in other parts of the country don’t allow things like this to happen, and we can stand up and make it stop, too. We can make sure that our streams are protected, that our people are protected.
There is just no excuse in this world for a sludge impoundment holding billions of gallons of toxic coal sludge to be located just above the Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Where else in America could this happen but Appalachia? Would people in Massachusetts or California or Montana allow this? No. So why do we? Things like that make me want to just give up. When I think of those children in that school, being put in danger like that everyday…well, it’s almost too much. It’s enough to make you lose faith in your country. But then, the next second, something else kicks in and knowledge like that makes me want to fight harder."
The coal is washed and treated before it is loaded on trains. The excess water left over from this process is called coal slurry or sludge and is stored in open coal impoundments. Coal sludge is a mix of water, coal dust, clay and toxic chemicals such as arsenic mercury, lead, copper, and chromium. Impoundments are held in place by mining debris, making them very unstable. These slurry ponds do burst and the result is horrific. There was a 72 acre slurry pond that busted in Martin County, Kentucky in 2000. (I have a lot of family and a lot of my roots come from Martin County.) Anyway, this spill released over 300 million gallons of sludge into the streams. That is over 20 times more liquid than was lost during the memorable Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
I don't think coal mining should be stopped. I understand it's the bread and butter of a lot of Central Appalachian families, including many of my own family and friends. However, there has got to be a better way. If the coal companies would go back to deep mining it would create more jobs, and a better overall economic standing for the people being affected by this horrible crime agains nature.
I want every generation that follows me to know the joy of watching the sun rise over the tops of those mountains on a sleepy summer morning. I was home recently and stayed with my Granny, who lives on land that has been in our family for nearly 200 years. I woke up early one morning and stepped out onto her porch. It had been a while since I'd been at her house and awake at that hour and I had forgotten how beautiful it is at that time of day. Birds, just waking, were singing. The sun was begining to burn the dew off the ground and was creating a mist that clung to the grass and leaves of the trees. The air smelled fresh and clean. I stood there, wide eyed with wonder wishing I could take that moment and put it into a box to share with the world. I thought that maybe if they could experience that moment, they would understand the reason that Mountain Top Removal is so horrific. If this doesn't stop by the time my generation is grandparents, there will be very few mountains left. West Virginia will no longer be the Mountain State, it will be the Plateau State.
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Mountain Top Removal
