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Mountaintop Mining to Claim Another 400,000 acres of Appalachia

Mountaintop mining has become widespread in several states of Appalachia. Environmental groups have been campaigning against it for years. Now a US Government study brings quantitative facts that help better assess this question.

Document created 13 February 2004, last updated 20 January 2005

Mountaintop removal near Kayford Mountain   A massive dragline, dwarfed by the huge scale of the operation, at work on a mountaintop removal operation near Kayford Mountain, W.Va
Photo by Vivian Stockman, Oct. 19, 2003
"Mountaintop mining" refers to coal mining by surface methods: contour mining, area mining and mountaintop removal mining. These methods have become dominant in the central Appalachian coalfields (eastern Kentucky, south-western Virginia, western Virginia and eastern Tennessee), where low sulfur coal deposits occur in thin layers that are often too narrow for traditional deep-mining methods.

With mountaintop removal, in particular, mining companies first strip the forest and topsoil, then blast up to 600 feet (180 m) or more off the summit of the mountain to reach the underlying coal to be extracted.

The large amounts of broken rock that cannot be returned to the locations from which they were removed (the "excess spoil") are disposed of in the adjacent valleys, resulting in "valley fills".

Mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia   Mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining in southern West Virginia in May 2003
Photo by Vivian Stockman, May 30, 2003
Environmental opposition and reported damages
For years now environmental organisations in the Appalachians have been fighting to try and bring an end to mountaintop mining. Their main issues include:
- deforestation and damage to the land, with over 500 square miles (1280 km2) already affected,
- valley fills and the destruction of biologically important headwater streams (over 1000 miles reported),
- impacts on nearby inhabitants, such as air pollution, noise, rock projections,
- pollution from slurries resulting from the processing of coal,
- flooding.

Opponents also stigmatise what they see as a high level of non compliance by mining companies with fill permit requirements and the Clean Water Act.

A Federal study provides facts to help assess the situation
The study referred to here, called "Mountaintop Mining / Valley Fill Environmental Impact Statement", was commissioned by the US Federal Government in February 1999. The aim is to evaluate options for the reduction of adverse environmental impacts of mountaintop mining and excess valley fills in Appalachia. The text used here is the first formal draft of the study, which was released on May 29th, 2003.

The purpose of this article is not to discuss this study and its findings and recommendations. Instead, the aim is limited to summarising the information provided in order to obtain a better picture of the actual environmental impacts of mountaintop mining in Appalachia. In turn this will be useful for assessing the actuality of the environmental concerns expressed, and to determine what can be expected for the future.

Below is a summary of the study's findings. For the study's full text as well as reactions to it, please refer to the links below.

Birchton Curve Valley Fill   Independence Coal operates the Upper Big Branch surface mine, where this massive valley fill looms over the devastated landscape.
The valley fill is locally known as the Birchton Curve Valley Fill.
Photo Vivian Stockman, May 30, 2003
The Study Area
The area of study encompasses approximately 12 million acres (4.8 million hectares) in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, western Virginia, and scattered areas of eastern Tennessee. It contains approximately 59,000 miles (95,000 km) of streams.

This area is characterised by steep terrain, with steep mountain slopes, confined river valleys, and narrow ridge tops. The Appalachian ecoregions of which it is part are unique in the world because they combine characteristically northern species with their southern counterparts, and thus boast enormous richness and diversity. The majority (85%) is forest land, representing some of the last remaining stands of a forest type that was once widespread in the northern hemisphere. The study area is considered one of the most diverse in terms of wildlife species in the United States.
Endemism is high in the region. Fourteen of the 351 vertebrate species, nine of which are amphibians, are endemic to the Appalachian Plateau Province: they are not found anywhere else in the world.

The mosaic of microenvironments associated with the Appalachian Plateau Province results in an extremely diverse bird life. At least 38 families of birds can be found throughout the region. Avian species with the greatest breeding distribution across the study area are species of forest or edge habitats and many species are year round residents.

Extent of current and forecasted mountaintop mining
For the period 1985 to 1999 a total of 5,858 valley fills were approved in the study area. These fills covered a total of 75,072 acres (30,028 ha) of land, and are estimated to have impacted on a total of 373,187 acres (149,275 ha) of watershed. A total of 562.6 miles of stream channel are estimated to have been filled by valley fills. However other estimates of valley fills give much higher values, up to 1000 miles approximately.

The study proposes several alternative sets of measures to better mitigate the adverse effects of mountaintop mining in the study area, and depending on what alternative is implemented the mine/fill area is expected to increase by 108% in the "short term" and up to 473 % in the "long term". Thus another 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) approximately could be damaged by mountaintop mining in the short term, including valley fills, and as much as another 1,765,000 acres (706,000 ha) in the longer term.

However, while no advocacy is made to significantly curb (or stop) mountaintop mining in the study area, the study provides detailed information about the known impacts of this activity on the various elements of the natural environment (as well as on its inhabitants), and about the characteristics of this environment which make these impacts particularly harmful in many cases.

Impacts on streams
A serious direct impact of mountaintop mining on streams is the elimination of habitats through placement of excess spoil. Large mines may be surrounded by several valley fills. Depending on the local topography and the profile of those valleys, a single fill may be over 1000 feet wide and over a mile long. While in the past the volume of fills was generally less than 250,000 cubic yards each, today the volume of a valley fill in a single stream can be as much as 250 million cubic yards, with stream burials up to two miles long.

Because mining takes place on ridgetops, stream headwaters are filled first, and the fills may extend some variable distance downstream. Water flow in stream headwaters may be ephemeral or intermittent, but headwater streams are now officially seen as a critical resource, and intermittent streams are viewed as just as valuable and ecologically important as any other aquatic resource. It has been demonstrated that ephemeral or intermittent headwater reaches serve as a critical junction for productivity throughout an entire river ecosystem. Experts have expressed concern that endemic amphibian and fish populations could be extirpated if whole classes of headwater streams are degraded, either because of activities like valley fills, which destroy the habitat completely, or because of water quality impacts which degrade the habitat. An interesting reported statement was that "we are burying some potentially valuable and unique habitats without knowing the consequences of our actions. Investigations into the taxonomy, ecology, and distribution of species associated with headwater streams and spring seeps in mountaintop mining areas should proceed with haste in order to document biotic inventories of the coalfield areas before many species are potentially lost forever without realizing their presence."

Impacts on surface and groundwater
Indirect impact on streams includes modified flow regimes and degraded water quality resulting in generalised worsening of biological conditions downstream from fills. Reported in the study is that "the increased sediment loads, toxic wastes, acid mine drainage, and high dissolved solids contribute to a significant reduction in stream water quality which causes a reduction, alteration in composition, or elimination of aquatic life; an alteration, reduction, or elimination in water use opportunities for industrial processes and domestic consumption; and/or a decrease in the water-carrying capacity of downstream channels and/or floodplains. These water quality impacts are particularly significant when sensitive aquatic resources are located downstream."

A decline in groundwater quality in relation to surface mining of coal has been reported in many studies.

Impacts on forests and wildlife habitats
Mountaintop mining operations in the Appalachian coal fields involve fundamental changes to the region's landscape and terrestrial wildlife habitats. A single permit may involve changing thousands of acres of hardwood forests into grasslands. While the original forested habitat was crossed by flowing streams and was comprised of steep slopes with microhabitats determined by slope, aspect, and moisture regimes, the reclaimed mines are often limited in topographic relief, devoid of flowing water, and most commonly dominated by erosion-controlling, herbaceous communities.
Loss of habitat is now recognised to be one of the most serious threats to present-day wildlife populations. Thus the deforestation of large portions of the study area is a significant concern in this regard. In addition, the forest fragmentation that also results from mountaintop mining and valley filling has an adverse impact on the species that require large tracts of contiguous forest for their survival and can cause their extinction. Forest fragmentation also favors the introduction of non-native species, which are considered the second most important threat to biodiversity after loss of habitat.

The study notes that forest destruction is not being successfully mitigated by reclamation with trees once the mining operations are over. While there are impediments, the technology exists to produce high-quality forest soils.
As for streams, the possibility of restoration is limited by physical factors such as the ability to intercept sufficient base groundwater flow, and in most cases it cannot be carried out successfully.

Impacts on people and quality of life
The impact of mountaintop mining operations on the adjacent social environments is a widely reported concern.
Blasting is perceived as the most detrimental factor degrading the everyday life of citizens residing in close proximity to mountaintop mining operations. An increasingly used technique known as ‘cast blasting’ involves moving large amounts of overburden with explosives rather than loaders or trucks. Cast blasting requires the use of large total weights of explosives in order to be efficient.

There is less evidence documenting the adverse health risks posed by dust and fume emissions, although a recent study indicated that detectable concentrations of respirable dust, total dust, nitrogen dioxide,nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and ammonia were found in ambient air at locations both in close proximity to the mining operation and at a distance greater than 1,000 feet from the blasting operations. However dust from road use may be more of a problem off-site than dust from blasting.

The Overall Picture
The study area has thousands of surface mining sites (5858 permits between 1985-1999), either under operation or formerly so.

In each of these sites the forest is cleared and entire ridgetops are dug out to a depth of up to 600 feet and sometimes more, over areas typically ranging from lows of 20 acres to highs above 2,500 acres. In all a total watershed area of 373,000 acres has been affected, or approximately 7% of the total study area.

At each of these sites the excavated material in excess is dumped into the nearby valleys, thereby burying thousands of stream headwaters, accounting to a total stream length of somewhere between 600 miles and 900 miles throughout the study area.

The result is a land and a landscape scarred by thousands of deeply, intrusively altered areas, each of a limited extent (a few hundred acres on average), but in all forming a dense patchwork which covers a significant part of the total area and which extensively and durably impacts the character of the whole region.

Prominent in this character are the dense forest cover and the network of streams which provide habitat for an unusual diversity of species, some of which are found nowhere else.

Forest destruction and its replacement by grassland after mining site rehabilitation results in habitat loss for the forest-dwelling species. Such loss is made even more severe by the patchwork-like pattern of forest clearance, as many of these species require large tracts of continuous forest to survive.

Headwater stream destruction is known to have a detrimental impact on the whole downstream system and directly to cause the degradation and loss of habitat for many vertebrate and invertebrate aquatic species, including rare amphibians endemic to the Appalachians. In addition water quality is commonly degraded below mined sites and this further adds to the adverse impacts on the aquatic environment.

Thus the overall picture created by the study, relative to the impact of mountaintop mining in the central Appalachian mountains, is that of extensive, severe and durable damage caused to the land over a large area, which is likely to at least double in the future. Added to this are serious, possibly irreversible, adverse impacts to a biological environment characterised by its richness, its diversity and a number of unique features. Also noted is a degraded quality of life for many residents in the vicinity of the mines.

Links to external websites:

[wb1]  Study's full text - US Environmental Protection Agency's webpage where the full text of the study presented here is available.

[wb2]  Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition - OVEC is a nationally recognized grassroots organization dedicated to the improvement and preservation of the environment in West Virginia and portions of southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky.

[wb3]  Appalachian Voices - Appalachian Voices is committed to protecting and restoring the ecological integrity, economic vitality, and cultural heritage of the central and southern Appalachians.

[wb4]  West Virginia Highlands Conservancy - Formed in 1967 to preserve the natural beauty of the West Virginia Highlands, the Conservancy is the state's oldest environmental advocacy organization.

[wb5]  Citizens Coal Council - The Citizens Coal Council is a federation of 48 grassroots citizens groups and individuals who work for social and environmental justice.

[wb6]  Office of Surface Mining - The Office of Surface Mining is a bureau of the US Department of the interior with responsibility to protect citizens and the environment during mining and reclamation.

[wb7]  West Virginia Coal Association - The West Virginia Coal Association is a trade association representing more than 90 percent of the state's underground and surface coal mine production.

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Mountaintop removal near Kayford Mountain A massive dragline, dwarfed by the huge scale of the operation, at work on a mountaintop removal operation near Kayford Mountain, W.Va
Photo by Vivian Stockman, Oct. 19, 2003

Mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia Mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining in southern West Virginia in May 2003
Photo by Vivian Stockman, May 30, 2003

Birchton Curve Valley Fill Independence Coal operates the Upper Big Branch surface mine, where this massive valley fill looms over the devastated landscape.
The valley fill is locally known as the Birchton Curve Valley Fill.
Photo Vivian Stockman, May 30, 2003

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