Mountaintop removal is a particularly
destructive form of coal mining. Coal mining companies employ it in
the Appalachians because the coal seams there are narrow and would
not repay the cost of deep mining. Think of a mountain as a series of
thin layers. First, of course, is soil and its attendant features:
Trees, plants, wildlife, streams—everything that we see when we
visit a mountain.
All these things hold no interest for
the coal mining company. They are just in the way. The layers
underneath the surface are those where coal is found. In mountaintop
mining, the mine operators strip off the top layers until they reach
the layer of coal, the seam. The operators then strip off the coal,
put it in trucks or trains, and ship it to market.
The operators are not done, though.
There is more coal down below, so they repeat the process, again and
again, until the mountaintop is gone. Also gone are topsoil, trees,
streams, and underground water deposits—aquifers--where a home
owner might drill a well for drinking water or irrigation. In short,
the operators remove everything that is capable of supporting life;
they leave only rocks.
People complained about this, of
course. Not the local residents, who are all in one way or another
dependent on the mine operators. But other people, environmentalists,
naturalists, and those interested in the future use of the earth,
what is now called sustainability. These people got the federal
government to pass laws intended to protect the land. They required
that the mine operators replace the rocks where they had been. They
also passed the Clean Water Act, which required the streams flowing
down from the mountain be clean enough to support aquatic life.
The mine operators have consistently
ignored these laws. It is actually impossible to replace the rocks
where the were originally. The volume of rocks increase once they are
exposed to the air. So the mine operators decided it would be okay to
dump the rocks in the stream beds. Neighbors might object, but the
mine operators have bought nearly all the property in the mining
region, so there are no more neighbors.
Likewise, there is no one who can sue
under the Clean Water Act. The former residents are gone. The water
is probably grossly polluted, but mine operators will not permit
anyone to test it. They test it themselves and file their results
with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For years, the EPA
has been collecting these reports and filing them without looking at
them.
I learned all these facts at the Yale
University Rebelaw
conference from lawyers who
had been suing mine operators for years. These lawyers seemed
pessimistic about the future of the mining region. The Appalachians
themselves are beautiful. Tourism could provide residents with
sustainable income. But wherever coal was mined, the land became
useless. The air was dusty, the water was poisonous, aquatic life
could not exist where there were once mountain streams. The mine
operators could not be stopped because they owned the state
governments of West Virginia and Kentucky.
This certainly seemed like a no win
scenario to me. I went back to my hotel room depressed about coal,
which not only destroys the landscape while it is mined, but also
contributes to global warming and air pollution while it is burned.
But my mood turned around after I
turned on the tv and saw one of the most extraordinary plays I have
ever seen in sports. In the Gold Medal hockey game between Sweden and
Canada, Canada led by one goal. Not a very secure lead. The Swedes
had a gifted goalie who was turning away shot after shot. Then one of
the Canadian players—Sidney Crosby--stole the puck at the Canadian
end of the rink. He took off running with no one between him and the
goalie. When he arrived at the goal mouth, he passed the puck to his
own backhand and dropped it into the goal past the helpless Swedish
goalie.
It was a simple play. The puck was
traveling at high speed past the goal and then, miraculously, turned
and flew into the goal.
I was reminded of this play the next
day, when, as I returned home on the train, I read that a federal
judge had declared the mining operators in West Virginia were
violating the protected species act. Just as the puck had turned
abruptly in the hockey game, the future of the Appalachian mountains,
with their rills, hollows, and history, had just changed. Now there
is a chance to stop the mine operators from flaunting the law and
destroying the land.
We should never lose hope in our
struggle to save the planet from exploiters and their shills.
Everything can change in an instant. And yes, Canada went on to win
the Gold Medal in Hockey.
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