The Coal Industry
Mountaintop Removal

Study shows in detail the extent of coal industry's devastating mountaintop removals

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Study shows in detail the extent of coal industry's devastating mountaintop removals


Mountaintop removal

The most devastating form of surface mining—which literally involves blowing the tops off mountains to get at narrow seams of coal—has inflicted astounding damage to the Appalachian landscape and communities near these mines. Foes have for decades opposed the practice. Coal companies deny that mountaintop removal and the appallingly backward disposal of waste associated with it have a negative impact on the environment or people.

Having researched the health effects of the practice in Appalachia for more than a dozen years, Indiana University Professor of Environment and Occupational Health Michael Hendryx says it causes 1,000 extra deaths a year from lung diseases, including cancer. And for children born to mothers living close to the mines, birth defects are six times greater than for smoking during pregnancy.

The cancer extends to the land as well. As Mark Sumner noted more than a decade ago:

If all mining is a cancer on the land, Mountaintop removal is invasive, aggressive lung cancer. It rips up fragile, biologically diverse forests and ruins streams. It floods communities that are dozens of miles away. By eliminating the trees, it even reduces the natural 'carbon sink' of the forest, worsening the effect of burning the coal. It never heals, it's spreading, and relaxed regulations promise that it will spread ever faster.

The air gets polluted. The streams get polluted. And mandated reclamation, as Sumner puts it, is frequently “half-assed” at best. The land is left battered and scarred. Mining sites and valley fills are often planted with non-native grasses, and the natural streams are replaced with gravel ditches the industry and federal officials claim are “restored.” Many sites fail to fulfill reclamation requirements, and even those that do don’t stop toxic contaminants from poisoning the creeks. As far as the impacted people go, reclamation of their health isn’t on the government’s or industry’s agendas at all.

A team of researchers from SkyTruth, Duke University, and Appalachian Voices has just published a study in PLOS One showing in detail the full extent of surface mining in the region, mostly mountaintop removal. In the past 40 years, more than 7 percent of Central Appalachia has been cleared. That’s more than 2,300 square miles, an area the size of Delaware.

Using 10,000 Landsat images, the researchers created a timeline for active mining, providing other researchers and environmental advocates with useful data that so far has been difficult to find. They hope that data will contribute to an understanding of health and environmental impacts. That information is valuable since the Trump regime last year ended a comprehensive, federally funded, partially finished scientific study of the impacts of mountaintop removal.

Over the centuries, extracting and burning coal have been crucial elements of industrialization and modernization. Worldwide, coal generates about 40 percent of electricity. But, as climate scientists have made clear, we desperately need to accelerate a transition from fossil fuel to clean energy sources. Immediately prohibiting all mountaintop removal mining would be a good step in this direction.