Chapter Introduction

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CHAPTER 18

COAL

BRINGING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

In the rubble, the true costs of coal

Leveling a mountain for coal in Appalachia. The mountaintop is blown off and dumped into valleys to leave sprawling, terraced, barren lands where there were once diverse temperate forests
© George Steinmetz/Corbis

CORE MESSAGE

Human society runs on energy, and coal continues to be a major reliable energy resource. However, coal mining causes irreversible environmental degradation, and the by-products of mining and burning coal pose significant environmental and health risks. Despite these drawbacks and the availability of renewable, cleaner energy sources, coal’s availability and industrial presence keep it a major energy player. Researchers are developing ways to lessen the impact of burning coal, but as long as we continue to use it, much of the impact of mining will remain.

AFTER READING THIS CHAPTER, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING GUIDING QUESTIONS

  • 1 How important is coal as an energy source, and how is it used to generate electricity?

  • 2 What is coal, how is it formed, and what regions of the world have coal deposits that are accessible?

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  • 3 What methods are used to mine coal, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

  • 4 What are the advantages and disadvantages of burning coal?

  • 5 What new technologies allow us to burn coal with fewer environmental and health problems? How can mining damage be repaired, and how effective is this restoration?

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A thousand feet above the foothills of central Appalachia, near the Kentucky-West Virginia border, a four-seater plane ducks and sways like a tiny boat on an anxious sea. It’s windier than expected, and Chuck Nelson, a retired coal miner seated next to the pilot, grips the door to steady his nerves. The passengers have come to survey the devastation wrought by mountaintop removal—a type of mining that involves blasting off several hundred feet of mountaintop, dumping the rubble into adjacent valleys, and harvesting the thin ribbons of coal beneath.

coal

A fossil fuel that is formed when plant material is buried in oxygen-poor conditions and subjected to high heat and pressure over a long time.

At first, the landscape looks mostly unbroken; mountains made soft and round by eons of erosion roll and dip and rise in every direction, carrying a dense hardwood forest with them to the horizon. But before long, a series of mountaintop removal sites come into view. Trucks and heavy equipment crawl like insects across what looks like an apocalyptic moonscape: decapitated peaks and acres of barren sandstone and shale. Smoke curls up from a brush fire as the side of an existing mountain is cleared for demolition. Orange and turquoise sediment ponds—designed to filter out heavy metal contaminants before they permeate the water downstream—dot the perimeter.

mountaintop removal

A surface mining technique that involves using explosives to blast away the top of a mountain to expose the coal seam underneath; the waste rock and rubble is deposited in a nearby valley.

Here and there, tiny patches of forest cling to some improbably preserved ridge line. “That’s where I live,” Nelson says, forgetting his air sickness long enough to point out one such patch. “My God, you would never know it was this bad from the ground.” The aerial tour has reached Hobet 21, which, at more than 52 square kilometers (20 square miles), is the region’s largest mining operation. So far, sites like this one have claimed roughly 400,000 hectares (1 million acres) of forested mountain, across just four states: Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. But there is still more coal to mine. It could mean the obliteration of hundreds of thousands of more acres in the coming years.

The controversial Spruce No. 1 coal mine in West Virginia was originally given a permit authorizing it to dump strip mining waste into 11 kilometers of creeks and onto 800 hectares of land. In 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency rejected the permit on the basis of the “irreversible damage” that would be inflicted to the streams, groundwater, and land, including: “the elimination of all fish, killing of birdlife, reduction of habitat value, and risk of human illness.”
Antrim Caskey

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Seams of coal exposed at a mountaintop removal mining site in Welch, West Virginia.
© Les Stone/Corbis
WHERE IS APPALACHIA?

To stem this tide of destruction, environmental activists have sued the coal industry, the state of West Virginia, and the federal government. They argue that mountaintop removal mining destroys biodiversity, pollutes the water beyond recompense, and threatens the health and safety of area residents. And by obliterating the mountains, they say, it also obliterates the culture of Appalachia.

Coal industry reps have countered by decrying the loss of jobs, tax revenue, and business the already impoverished region would suffer if the mines were to close under the weight of too much regulation. They also point out that the culture of Appalachia is as bound to coal mining as it is to the mountains. Both sides count area residents, including miners, among their ranks.

At the heart of the issue is coal itself—our country’s dirtiest, and most abundant, energy source—the one most responsible for rising CO2 levels from electricity production and also the one we rely on most heavily and the one we are consuming most rapidly. As the Appalachian reserves dwindle, debates raging throughout these decimated foothills are reverberating across our energy-addicted nation.