Mountaintop Mining Consequences
Damage to ecosystems and threats to human health and the lack of effective mitigation require new approaches to mining regulation.
Abstract
There has been a global, 30-year increase in surface mining (1), which is now the dominant driver of land-use change in the central Appalachian ecoregion of the United States (2). One major form of such mining, mountaintop mining with valley fills (MTM/VF) (3), is widespread throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia (WV), and southwestern Virginia. Upper elevation forests are cleared and stripped of topsoil, and explosives are used to break up rocks to access buried coal (fig. S1). Excess rock (mine “spoil”) is pushed into adjacent valleys, where it buries existing streams.
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References and Notes
1
World Coal Institute, www.worldcoal.org.
2
Saylor K. L., Land Cover Trends: Central Appalachians [U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Washington, DC, 2008]; http://landcovertrends.usgs.gov/east/eco69Report.html.
3
MTM/VF refers to surface mining operations that remove coal seams running through a mountain, ridge, or hill; it may also refer more broadly to large-scale surface mining, including area or contour mining in steep terrain that disposes of excess rock in heads of hollows or valleys with streams.
4
Debates are conspicuous because of recent high-profile federal court cases [e.g., (33)], widely publicized exchanges between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the ACOE over permitting decisions, advocacy by non-governmental organizations, and protests by miners.
5
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6
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7
This 5 to 10% issue is based on studies done on many nonmining types of land-use change. Thus far, EPA has not done mining-specific studies on this “threshold” issue (percentage of watershed mined versus impacts on streams) despite many calls for such data.
8
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18
EPA, Stream Chemistry Report, part 2 (EPA Region 3, Philadelphia, PA, 2002); http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/pdf/appendices/d/stream-chemistry/MTMVFChemistryPart2.pdf.
19
Lemly A. D., Selenium Assessment in Aquatic Ecosystems: A Guide for Hazard Evaluation and Water Quality Criteria (Springer, New York, 2002).
20
EPA, Mountaintop Mining/VF Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EPA Region 3, Philadelphia, PA, 2005); http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/index.htm.
21
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23
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24
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25
Mining industry and government organizations recently signed a statement of intent to promote reforestation approaches that improve reclamation [see, e.g., (34)]; however, adoption of recommendations is voluntary. Reforestation of a mined site to premined conditions has not been demonstrated.
26
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27
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29
Townsend P. A., et al., Remote Sens. Environ. 113, 62 (2009).
30
EPA and ACOE, Fed. Regist. 73, 10 (2008).
31
U.S. District Court, Civil Action No. 3:05-0784, transcript, vol. 3, pp. 34–45; http://palmerlab.umd.edu/MTM/US_District_Court_Civil_Action_Official_transcript_Volume_III.pdf.
32
Chikkatur A. P., Sagar A. D., Sankar T. L., Energy 34, 942 (2009).
33
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th District, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition et al. vs. U.S. ACOE et al., case 07-1255.
34
Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, www.arri.osmre.gov/FRApproach.shtm.
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Science
Volume 327 | Issue 5962
8 January 2010
8 January 2010
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Copyright © 2010, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Published in print: 8 January 2010
Acknowledgments
This is contribution no. 4368 of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
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