Word: appalachia
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Loud blasting began years ago. Massey and other large coal-producing companies like Patriot Coal, in St. Louis, employ a particularly destructive form of excavation called mountaintop mining, which exposes entire coal seams by blowing off a mountain's summit; used mostly in Appalachia, such mining produces 130 millions tons of coal in the region per year. It's less popular in other coal-rich spots such as Texas, where the coal is deeper underground and requires a different kind of mining to unearth. Coal companies say mountaintop mining is also cheaper than traditional mining: rather than burrowing under...
More than 100 representatives of community and environmental advocacy groups showed up in Washington earlier this month to lobby for stiffer government regulation of the mining industry and a ban on mountaintop mining. Recently, representatives of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining visited Appalachia to study the effects in the area. Such mining is devastating the environment, "polluting our streams, poisoning our air and destroying our culture and heritage," says Judy Bonds, co-director of the West Virginia-based Coal River Mountain Watch...
...salamanders. Further, mountaintop debris that is dug up or displaced by explosions is dumped in the valleys below, burying headwater streams, killing the aquatic species that live in the waters and impacting downstream water supplies. About 1,200 miles of streams have been buried in this manner in central Appalachia, according to a 2003 federal study. "It's higher by now," says Bonds, given that mining activity has not slowed...
...Emptying of Appalachia...
...including the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which oblige companies to reclaim mined land, for example, by rehabilitating natural biodiversity or rebuilding the mountain to its approximate original contour. Massey has undertaken rehabilitation projects in the region, having already planted one million new trees in Central Appalachia - but critics say such efforts cannot undo the damage. It's the domino effect: initial damage from mining sets off an endless series of environmental consequences that are hard to trace, and even harder to fix. "The impacts appear to be permanent," says Palmer. "There is no evidence whatsoever that...