Until the Mountains Crumble to Dust...
The True Costs of Mountaintop Removal/
Valley Fill Mining
On August 20th, 2004 around 2:30 in the morning, a boulder crashed through the wall of a small house in Appalachia, VA. The boulder landed in a bedroom and crushed and killed 3-year-old Jeremy Davidson. The boulder was knocked loose by A&G Coal corporation bulldozers illegally widening a mining road. State mining officials found the company grossly negligent in Jeremy's death, and fined the maximum amount possible. A&G coal was fined $15,000-they are currently appealing the fine [1].
The operation A&G coal was conducting that December night was a relatively new technique of strip mining know as Mountaintop Removal/Valley Fill (MTR/VF) mining. MTR mining involves the systematic demolition and stripping of plants, soil and bedrock from mountains in order to extract coal seams. The plants, soil and bedrock (known as "overburden" in the mining industry) are then dumped into adjacent valley to form a fill. Previous techniques of coal mining, such as shaft and contour strip mining, had severe environmental and ecological impacts; however, MTR/VF's damage dwarfs other methods [2, 3].
The first MTR/VF mines appeared
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The numbers of MTR mines increased
rapidly and now account for 44% of areas strip-mined. Increasing coal
demands drove the rapid increase in MTR mines. As of 2001, more than
half of the electricity in the US is generated by coal, and 62% in North
Carolina [4]. The goal of this page is to gain
a better understanding of what are the real costs of MTR mining and keeping the lights
on [2, 3].