After review, scientists urge end to mountaintop mining

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/81902.html

Posted on Thursday, January 7, 2010
By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

The consequences of this mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are ""pervasive and irreversible," the article finds. Companies are required by law to take steps to reduce the damages, but their efforts don't compensate for lost streams nor do they prevent lasting water pollution, it says.

The article is a summary of recent scientific studies of the consequences of blasting the tops off mountains to obtain coal and dumping the excess rock into streams in valleys. The authors also studied new water-quality data from West Virginia streams and found that mining polluted them, reducing their biological health and diversity.

----- (skipping)

The Science article cites a number of potential health risks from removing mountaintops and filling in valleys, including contaminated well water, toxic dust and fish that are tainted with the chemical selenium. It also looked at environmental damage to the mining and fill areas and to streams below them, the reasons that forests are difficult to re-establish on mined areas and increased risks of downstream flooding.

"The reason we're willing to make a policy recommendation is that the evidence is so clear-cut," said Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, the lead author of the Science study and a specialist on the ecology of streams. Her co-authors were experts on chemistry, biology, engineering and health from Duke University, West Virginia University and other institutions.

----- (skipping)

Mountaintop-removal mining has destroyed roughly 2,040 square miles of land in Appalachia and buried more than 2,000 miles of streams, EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said in an e-mail.

----- (skipping)

Mountaintop mining has increased because it's good for coal companies' bottom line. In a recent commentary, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, 92, the longest-serving U.S. senator in history, noted that mountaintop removal allows companies to employ fewer miners to produce the same amount of coal.

----- (skipping)

Many of the streams had toxic concentrations of selenium. The chemical, which occurs naturally in coal, leaches from it and from the rocks that are dumped into the streams. Fish and birds with high levels of selenium have been found to have reproductive failures. State advisories warn people about eating too much selenium-contaminated fish.

The pollution remains long after the mining ends, the article says. Palmer said that no stream ever had been fully restored.

"The changes in water chemistry have never been shown to be fixable," she said in an interview. She and her co-authors wrote that companies are required to take steps to make up for lost stream habitat and functions but these steps don't work to protect or restore water quality.

----- (skipping)


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100107143903.htm