MTR

Tonight I decided to do a little more research and reading about Mountain Top Removal (MTR) Mining. In the past, the predominant ways to mine coal have been deep mining and strip mining. Deep mining involved miners digging into mountains with various kinds of tools and machines to extract the coal in the core of the mountain. One of the hazards of deep mining came to the forefront when many miners began to have similar ailments when breathing. This was Black Lung. Imagine coal dust getting into your lungs, infecting the tissues of your lungs, and inhibiting your ability to breathe. But once safety measures were put into place, observed, and maintained, miners began to lead healthier lives and had medical care that addressed the concern about black lung.

Strip mining, also referred to as surface mining, has its very disastrous effects, too. It did not affect miners directly, but indirectly. Strip mining is the practice of mining a seam of coal by first removing all of the soil and rock that lies on top of it, called the overburden. This means all trees and original soil is stripped away. Wildlife is forced to evacuate and find new homes and the overcrowd other wildlife populations. Strip mining is only practical when the coal seam is close to the surface, but in many cases it is several layers of earth into the mountain. What happens in this case is the sides of mountain are stripped bare until the coal is fully extracted. This is called contour strip mining. Another negative effect this has on the environment? Erosion. When it rains, the rainwater runs straight down the stripped contour of the mountain, carrying with it the soil. This soil piles up in the valley, often clogging the headwaters of a creek there, and often leading the houses in the valleys and hollows getting flooded. Of course, this is not good.



Now, there is Mountaintop Removal Mining. It is self-explanatory. Yes, mountain tops are removed, quite literally. It involves the mass restructuring of earth in order to reach sediment as deep as 1,000 feet below the surface. MTR mining requires that the land be first clear-cut and then leveled by explosives. These explosives are so powerful that they not only blow huge holes into the mountain tops, but affect the foundations of homes in hollows nearby. The overburden is very often dumped in illegal landfills, causing destruction to headwaters, wildlife habitats, and neighboring communities. I cannot even begin to truly describe the destruction this type of mining causes. And the big money coal companies say that it increases the work force, but it does not. It takes jobs away from people in an already extremely poor state, West Virginia. It is not happening only in West Virginia, but in many of the other mountainous states of Appalachia. To be more forthright, Mountaintop Removal Mining is horrific, frightening, destructive (war on our environment), disrespectful, arrogant, ignorant, and disgusting.

Some informative websites to visit:
Mountain Justice Summer
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
Friends of the Mountains
I Love Mountains
Stop Mountaintop Removal
Appalachian Voices
Geography of Mountaintop Removal
Christians for the Mountains
EarthJustice
Wikipedia article on MTR
Mountaintop Removal and the Destruction of Appalachia. Speech by Jack Spadaro. (.PDF file)

Documentaries:
Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice
The Appalachians
Haw River Films: Mountaintop Removal
Kilowatt Ours
Razing Appalachia
Sludge, a film by Robert Salyer
Mountain Mourning