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Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2010
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Time to Call a Halt to
Mountaintop Removal Mining
January 8, 2010
Mountaintop
removal is a hideous method of extracting coal in Appalachia. It levels
hilltops, destroys forests, obliterates streams, poisons fish, pollutes
drinking water, and shears the peace of mountain communities.
West Virginians who live with mountaintop removal have known that for
years. They suffer through the blasting and the fly rock. They mourn
the loss of treasured woods and the burial of fish-filled creeks. They
sleep with the fear that coal sludge impoundments will give way and
send walls of filthy floodwater crashing into their settlements.
Now, a dozen scientists have backed up local knowledge with academic
rigor. Upon release today of a sweeping study on the health and
environmental
impacts of mountaintop removal, they called for a halt in permits for
new mountaintop removal mines. In a study published in the prestigious
journal Science,
lead author Dr. Margaret Palmer of the University of
Maryland wrote:
"The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts
from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable. Its impacts are
pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation
practices successfully reverse the damage it causes."
Here is what the multi-disciplinary team of researchers found:
In coal production communities, elevated rates of premature death, lung
cancer, breast cancer, adult tooth loss, and chronic heart, lung, and
kidney disease have been documented, even after impacts of smoking and
other disease risk factors were accounted for.
Air quality around mountaintop removal areas is degraded as a result of
heavy use of explosives. Mining activity has contaminated drinking
water sources.
Obliteration of 1,500 miles of streams by "valley fills" – created when
the destroyed remains of mountaintops are dumped into watersheds – has
caused irreversible damage to ecological processes downstream.
Downstream water quality has been altered in damaging ways, including
increased concentrations of harmful metals and higher pH levels. The
result has been reduced biological diversity.
Elevated levels of selenium in streams have poisoned fisheries, leading
to increased risk of reproductive failure in fish and birds that feed
on them. In some areas downstream of mining areas, residents have been
advised to avoid eating fish caught from creeks.
Soil loss, stripping of vegetation, and compaction of soil by heavy
mining equipment have exacerbated flooding risks.
There is little evidence that reclamation and mitigation techniques,
such as creating intermittent streams and replanting of mined barrens
stripped of their topsoil and vegetation, compensate for lost native
forest habitat or degraded water quality.
Replanted areas are no match for native forests in carbon sequestration
and storage.
Bearing all of these findings in mind, the Obama administration, which
has talked a good game of letting
science drive policy, ought to read this study real closely and follow
up its words with more deeds than we’ve seen to date in the mountaintop
removal arena.
Meanwhile, self-proclaimed "conservative" politicians who default to
siding with industry on every issue every time, ought to think more
deeply about the conservative value of stewardship, as it applies to
the natural heritage and old ways of life that mountaintop removal is
blowing up.
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