Word: topsoil
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...more than half the 600 million tons of coal produced annually in the U.S. Environmental groups, ranchers and farmers favor such a law; they are dismayed by the landslides, soil erosion, water pollution and impairment of natural beauty that often result from the stripping away of tons of topsoil to get at rich coal seams lying just beneath the earth's surface. Energy industries argue that to achieve some form of energy self-sufficiency, the U.S. must mine all the coal that it can. Proponents and opponents cannot agree on how much production might be lost because of regulation...
...fall like dry leaves and rot on my topsoil...
...forests, which act as great sponges that sop up and hold rainfall, the water rapidly ran off the slopes. The accelerated runoff caused disastrous floods over the past year. In cleared jungles in Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, heavy rains quickly leached the nutrients from the thin layer of topsoil, rendering the land infertile within a year or two. (The trees had both anchored and nourished the soil.) In other cleared jungles, the sun burned out the soil's valuable organic content...
During the afternoon, gardeners were still dumping topsoil. The whine of vacuum cleaners sounded in the foyer. Along the lobby, leatherette ottomans were being bounced into place to the cacophonous accompaniment of electric drills. "We have only five hours to go," said President Donald L. Engle of the Minnesota Orchestral Association, surveying the mess. "But I tell you this-we'll be ready...
Every week, some 1,000 acres of America's land are strip-mined. Giant power shovels tear off the topsoil and expose the underlying seams of coal. After the glistening black mineral is loosened by explosives, earth movers gouge it up and dump it into huge waiting trucks. The process is so much cheaper and easier than deep-mining that more than 50% of the U.S.'s coal comes from surface mines. Trouble is, in only about half the strip-mining operations is the ravaged land filled in-and even then it seldom can be returned to productive...