Mountaintop removal coal mining: A threat to public health and the environment

The Appalachian Mountains are home to more species of trees than all of Europe combined, we were told by local activists sitting in a tent in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley. Looking around at the spectacular autumn display covering the seemingly endless mountain terrain, it was not difficult to believe. A dozen passionate Michigan residents, both students and environmental activists, made the trip from Michigan to attend the Mountain Justice Fall Summit in West Virginia over fall break. Mountain Justice, a coalition of organizations working for environmental justice in Appalachia, rallied attendants from Washington DC, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and numerous other states to learn about the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) and its effect on Appalachian communities.

Our drive from Michigan saw increasingly hilly terrain, and lush forests ripe with an array of fall colors. At the informational workshops held at the summit, we learned that in the last ice age, ice blanketed all of Appalachia except the mountain peaks, which stuck out like islands, allowing the biological communities on each mountaintop to evolve separately from one another. This led to the specialization of thousands of unique species of plants, and animals endemic to the area. When the glaciers melted, these diverse communities crept down the mountains and into the valleys to create one of the most genetically diverse regions in the world.

This hotspot of biodiversity and the health of the human communities that inhabit it are in peril as the land is destroyed and toxified by mountaintop removal (MTR). A relatively new technique, mountaintop removal has replaced underground mining as a more profitable method of extraction. Underground mining required many miners to manually dig through the mountains. Pillars of coal would have to be left in place in order to support the underground mines. In the 1970s, mining companies figured out that they could get more coal much faster and cheaper by replacing workers with machinery. MTR uses dynamite to blast up to 800 feet off mountaintops. A dragline then digs into the rock to remove the coal. The implementation of MTR has thus reduced the number of jobs in the coalfields, leaving locals without work, as well as raising considerable environmental and public health concerns.

Rubble from the blasts is dumped into valleys where it buries streams and rivers, polluting the water and devastating aquatic wildlife populations.  All of the coal that is extracted is washed with water, producing a slurry that is stored in a dam between hills, held back by rubble from blasting sites. These embankments hold vast quantities of toxic waste that leak into the groundwater. If one of these dams were to fail, it would leave only death and destruction in its path. Such an event doesn’t seem unlikely, given that the dams are in close proximity to thousands of pounds of dynamite going off every day. On an excursion, we drove by Marsh Fork Elementary, a school sitting literally in the shadows of a dam holding back almost 3 million gallons of toxic waste containing mercury and arsenic among other heavy metals and toxic compounds. Should the dam fail, Marsh Fork Elementary is the first thing in the path of the slurry that would come cascading down the mountain.

Beyond learning about MTR from activists, we were given the opportunity to visit Kayford Mountain to see it for ourselves. Larry Gibson, a lifelong resident of the area, told us how 75% of his family’s land has been destroyed due to this particular practice. His family, he explained, had been living on the land since before the start of the nineteenth century. Residents like Gibson and activist Judy Bonds have become active against coal mining despite being part of families that have worked in mines for generations. Bonds speaks passionately against the coal-dust that settles on everything, causing neurological and respiratory disorders. Through hearing about the struggles of mountain communities, we have been compelled to become allies, and invite others to do so, too.