Mountaintop Mining Should Cease: Scientists

The controversial practice of mountaintop coal mining is back in the news.

The Obama Administration this week disappointed opponents by allowing a West Virginia mountaintop coal mining project to proceed.

That was followed by a report in the most Jan. 8, 2010 issue of the journal Science by a group of respected scientists released Thursday that called for the Obama Administration to completely halt such mining, which involves the use of explosives to blast off mountaintops to expose coal seams to surface mining.

NPR's Christopher Joyce reported on All Things Considered about the scientific push to stop mountain top removal.

An snippet of Christopher's report:

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: You can say this for mountaintop removal mining: The name is dead on. That's exactly what mining companies do. They strip the trees from the top of the mountain, blast off the rock or overburden and dig down to get the coal below. It's pretty efficient and cheap to mine this way, but a big problem is the coarse rock that used to be the mountaintop. It's got to go somewhere, and in Appalachia, that means down the mountainside. It becomes what's called valley fill.

Margaret Palmer is a biologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who studied what happens in a valley fill.

Ms. MARGARET PALMER (Biologist, University of Maryland for Environmental Science): You expose material that, when it rains and water percolates through that, it dissolves a lot of chemicals, and those are very persistent in the streams below valley fill sites.

JOYCE: Chemicals like selenium, which can harm fish and other aquatic life; and sulfates, which alter the water chemistry. The scientists say many organisms in these valley streams, from algae to fish and birds, could be seriously harmed.

Writing in the journal Science, Palmer and 11 other scientists reviewed research on the biological effects of mountaintop mining. They say those chemicals stick around.

Ms. PALMER: Even after a site has been reclaimed and attempts have been made to re-vegetate it, the streams that remain below that that weren't filled have high levels of all sorts of nasty things.

 

An excerpt from a press release:

Based on a comprehensive analysis of the latest scientific findings and new data, a group of the nation's leading environmental scientists are calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to stay all new mountaintop mining permits. In the January 8 edition of the journal Science, they argue that peer-reviewed research unequivocally documents irreversible environmental impacts from this form of mining which also exposes local residents to a higher risk of serious health problems.

The authors — hydrologists, ecologists and engineers — are internationally recognized scientists, including several members of the National Academy of Sciences. They argue that the U.S. should take a global leadership role on the issue, as surface mining in many developing countries is expected to grow extensively in the next decade.

"The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable," says lead author Dr. Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. "Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes."

In mountaintop mining, upper elevation forests are cleared and stripped of topsoil, and explosives are used to break up rocks in order to access coal buried below. Much of this rock is pushed into adjacent valleys where it buries and obliterates streams. Mountaintop mining with valley fills (MTM/VF) is widespread throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and southwestern Virginia.

In their paper, the authors outline severe environmental degradation taking place at mining sites and downstream. The practice destroys extensive tracts of deciduous forests and buries small streams that play essential roles in the overall health of entire watersheds. Waterborne contaminants enter streams that remain below valley fills and can be transported great distances into larger bodies of water.

Co-author Dr. Emily Bernhardt, of Duke University, explains that "The chemicals released into streams from valley fills contain a variety of ions and trace metals which are toxic or debilitating for many organisms, which explains why biodiversity is reduced below valley fills." The authors provide evidence that mine reclamation and mitigation practices have not prevented the contaminants from moving into downstream waters.

The authors also describe human health impacts associated with surface mining for coal in the Appalachian region, including elevated rates of mortality, lung cancer, and chronic heart, lung and kidney disease in coal producing communities.

"Over the last 30 years, there has been a global increase in surface mining, and it is now the dominant driver of land-use change in the Central Appalachian region," says Dr. Keith Eshleman also of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "We now know that surface mining has extraordinary consequences for both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Notwithstanding recent attempts to improve reclamation, the immense scale of mountaintop mining makes it unrealistic to think that true restoration or mitigation is possible with current techniques."