Mountaintop removal mining, a practice that was developed in the 1970s as an extension of surface strip mining, entails the removal of up to 800 vertical feet of a mountaintop or ridge in order to access deep coal seams. Practiced extensively in Southern Appalachia—primarily Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee—mountaintop removal is estimated to have impacted over 700,000 acres in the region (it is noteworthy that the 700,000 acre figure is based on coal company data, which geographers have claimed underestimates the actual extent of impact by as much as 40%).
The processes required for mountaintop removal include clear cutting, blasting, digging, waste dumping, processing of coal, and reclamation. Taken individually, each of these elements of mountaintop removal constitutes serious environmental harm. When considered in aggregate, the steps of mountaintop removal coalesce into a process that does irreparable damage to ecosystems and residential communities. Old-growth forests are clear-cut, killing wildlife and damaging the natural landscape. Ridges are blasted as little as 300 feet from homes and neighborhoods, frequently cracking wells and foundations. Digging machines, called draglines, are brought in, replacing the natural landscape with machines up to 22 stories tall. The removed rock and soil, dysphemistically called “spoil” or “overburden” by coal companies, is dumped into valleys, burying streams and further harming remaining wildlife. Mined coal is processed on-site, creating leaking ponds of sludge or slurry that further damage the water table.
There have been, in recent years, a number of media depictions of mountaintop removal, the affected communities, and activists standing in opposition to the prac...
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...ism ultimately, then, creates a world with almost no realism available for its inhabitants.
While Franzen employs realism, Freedom’s Walter Berglund is presented as a realist, as he tries to find a solution to the problem of extractive ecocide—“We can use mountaintop removal and reclamation to stop mountaintop removal!” Here, Franzen is clearly incorrect; the most basic fact about mountaintop removal is that there is no such thing as reclamation. “Reclamation” efforts certainly exist, but mountaintop removal entails such fundamental transformation of landscape that, “reclaimed” or not, what is left would require centuries to return to something that even remotely resembles what was. These harsh realities of mountaintop removal are, sadly, absent from Franzen’s realism just as they are absent from the growing cultural narrative surrounding mountaintop removal.
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
The 'Standard'. Mountains Beyond the Mountains. New York, NY: Random House Publishing Group. Popple, P. R., & L. Leighninger. (2011).
Throughout this mining process a byproduct is created called chat. The chat is leftover rock and waste from mining that did not contained the desired materials. The chat was left on the site because the Bureau of Indian Affairs thought it could be of value to the Quapaw tribe (1). This chat contained high levels of toxic lead and other harmful chemicals. It is estimated that there are 75 Million tons (150 billion pounds) of chat piles remaining exposed to the environment as well as numerous flotation ponds that haven’t been taken into account (4).
This Paper will describe and analyze three articles pertaining to the ongoing debate for and against Glen Canyon Dam. Two of these articles were found in the 1999 edition of A Sense of Place, and the third was downloaded off a site on the Internet (http://www.glencanyon.net/club.htm). These articles wi...
I will begin this report with a summary of this great book and delve deeper into the thoughts that the literary family has of it. I will then go on to explain its importance in the development of environmental policy and impact, and end with my thoughts regarding the material and the interaction among social and environmental values and impacts presented by the author Michael Pollan.
Both the National Mining Associations, U.S News, Office of Surface Mining have studied environmental and economical issues and numerous newspaper articles found on the subject. Here is a brief overview on what mountaintop removal is. Mountaintop removal is a type of surface mining that has been granted a variance of approximate original contour and extracts an entire coal seam or seams running through the upper fraction of a mountain, ridge, or hill. The coal must be extracted by removing all the overburden [topsoil] and by creating a level plateau or supporting certain post-mining land uses.
"The Toll from Coal." Catf.us. Clean Air Task Force, Sept. 2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
The main theme in Rising from the Plains is the formation of the Rocky Mountains. “Topography grows, shrinks, compresses, spreads, disintegrates, and disappears” (McPhee 27). The physical features of the Earth are temporary and are always changing. The
In the event of closing Mt. Everest for exploration, it would limit the seemingly limitless bounds of the curious mind. The human race is one of extreme chance-takers, and dreamers, so who is to say that they cannot do what they were designed to do? Imagine yourself in a situation of which you partake in a perilous expedition, risking your life to do what you love, only to be told that it is too dangerous, therefore it cannot be done. How would you feel? Think about this question as the argument progresses, and the reasons why these treacherous boundaries should be crossed.
The Interior Plains is a region in west-central Canada, in the Mountain and Central time zones. It is the fourth largest region of Canada. Majority of the Interior Plains is prairie land with lots of flatlands. The total area of this region is 1, 900, 000 km². Approximately nineteen percent of Canada’s population lives in the Interior Plains region. This region includes certain points of interests and attractions such as city areas like downtown Calgary and natural sightseeing areas like the Rocky Mountains. The majority of the Interior Plains is prairie land, with many trees and grass. Most of this area is wide, open spaces and flat land. Some of the animals living here include deer, wolves, and
Coal has a very negative impact on the environment, one of the main impacts on the environment is the actual process of extracting the coal from the ground. The two ways that coal is mined, underground and surface, both have different effects on the environment. The first way that coal is mined is by digging tunnels and creating mineshafts underground and then removing the coal from th...
Despite the evidence to the contrary, many interest groups with considerable political clout have successfully perpetuated the argument that documented changes in the environment are a product of natural cyclical changes in climate, and are not associated with human activities. However, even the acceptance of this particular brand of reality is no grounds for the disregard of environmental consciousness. Even if one accepts the premise that recent climate change is not a result of human activity, the rationale behind environmental conservation remains valid.... ... middle of paper ...
Hirsch, E. 1995. “Introduction, Landscape: between place and space” in Hirsch, E. (ed.) The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press.
Traditional methods for cleaning up contaminated sites such as dig and haul, pump and treat, soil venting, air sparging and others are generally harmful to habitats. Some methods strip the soil of vital nutrients and microorganisms, so nothing can grow on the site, even if it has been decontaminated. Typically these mechanical methods are also very expensive. Most of the remediation technologies that are currently in use are very expensive, relatively inefficient and generate a lot of waste, to be disposed of.
Left behind are tailings, which are large piles of crushed rock left over when minerals have been extracted from rocks that once contained them. These tailings are then left prone to wind dispersion and water erosion. This wind dispersion occurs since the sand-like tailings are easily swept up by the atmosphere by wind and spread throughout the environment as dust particles. Figure 1 shows the wind erosion of a mine tailings pile being blow up into the air, creating dust. These tailings contain metal contaminants like arsenic, lead, and cadmium, which creates a problem for the environment and they can persist for decades due to the low pH levels and can cause problems in soil stabilization (arizona.edu, 2008).