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negative and positive impacts of coal mining
positive and negative impacts of coal on people and the environment
negative and positive impacts of coal mining
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Appalachia, a vast, beautiful panoply of lush green mountains. At least, most of the thin line of peaks that make up the Appalachian Mountains used to be that way. Currently, the continued spread of a method of coal extraction known as mountaintop removal mining has plagued areas of the eastern United States, mainly including the state of West Virginia. Throughout its increasing stages of implementation, mountaintop removal mining has caused numerous hampering effects, including causing serious harm to nearby residents, and polluting a once-pure environment. Because of this, mountaintop removal mining needs to be limited in order to preserve the natural state of the Appalachian Mountains.
Mountaintop removal mining has been around for several decades—it started to become prevalent in Appalachia in 1985. 1,2 The general overview of the process of mountaintop removal mining goes as follows: Miners select a mountain to extract coal “seams” from, and clear its surface of major obstructions, mainly trees. 3 Next, either by explosives or machinery, the surface rock and soil of the mountain is removed. As the coal begins to become visible throughout the mountain, miners scoop out the coal. Throughout the process, many tons of rock and dust are displaced into neighboring areas, most often called “valley fills”. As the title implies, valley fills are what once used to be a peaceful vegetated valley that has now been filled with rubble. The coal itself goes through a cleaning process to remove some materials which make for a cleaner burn cycle. After all of the coal is extracted, the mountain goes through a reclamation process which is intended to stabilize and re-vegetate the now-crippled peak. 3 Unfortunately, coal companies tend to s...
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... Gunnoe. Firefly Pix, 2008. DVD.
"Learn More About Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining." ILoveMountains.org. Web. .
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The Powder River Basin coal beds are some of the thickest in the world helping to make the basin one of the top producers not only nationally but globally as well. Although the coals are low rank and therefore not ideal for producing electricity, the sheer amount of coal in the basin makes it very economical to mine these coals. The low ash and low sulfur content of the Powder River Basin coals also make the coal ideal for the current marketplace. The low ash and sulfur content helps to make these coals relatively environmentally friendly in comparison to coals that are mined from places like Illinois, which have higher sulfur contents. The vast amount of resources that the Powder River Basin contains makes this region of the United States a major player when it comes to supplying energy for the next century.
West Virginia and Kentucky have been faced with a rise in health-related issues, leading the nation in cancer-related deaths. Many of those cases have been said to be caused from greater exposer to pollution from coal-mining activity, which is said to increase your chances for cancer along with other fatal diseases. The Appalachia area has seen a rise in mortality rates, over 60,000 cases of those being cancer-related deaths directly linked to mountaintop removal practices. Mountaintop removal has been deemed as cleaner and safer than men going below ground to mine for coal, but with Appalachian communities- primarily in West Virginia, Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia seeing a high rise in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and birth defects rates, mountaintop removal has been looked at as one of the main causes.
In order to find the benefits and hazards of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, I used the various resources and gathered information from both sides of the questions posed, including economical benefits such as earnings, and environmental hazards such as ongoing experiments to clean up acid mine drainage. And some opinions written and expressed in newspaper articles and magazines.
It is a drastic procedure, and has gained quite a bit of unwanted attention in the past few years. Many groups have come together to ban against mountain top removal due to the effects it has on the environment and towns that they are located in. Not everything associated with this mining practice is necessarily bad though. There are in fact positive characteristics to mountaintop removal. When mountaintop removal happens in a community it creates jobs for that community and other towns/cities around the process. Mountain top removal allows for infrastructure development. Once a mountaintop has been removed, it becomes a viable piece of land for development. In places where mountaintop mining has been successfully completed, the land has been transformed into golf courses, airports, highway interchanges, and even shopping
Mountain Top Removal is an American tragedy, the process in which mining companies remove forests and topsoil then explode the mountain apart level by level to get to coal layer. It is estimated that the explosives are equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb. A lot of the mining waste is discarded into valleys and streams; the water runoff is high in silt, ion, and sulfur compounds, which in turn pollute water downstream. Even with chemical treatments, vegetation has a hard time growing on the infertile and highly acidic soil. Mountain top removal occurs in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee. Virtually 1.2 million acres of land has been surface mined and more than 500 mountains have been ruined by mountaintop removal mining.
McManus, Doyle. “Drawing Budget Battle Lines.” Editorial. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2011. Web. 5 June 2011. .
Instead of starting with ancient civilizations from the past, Diamond starts off by talking about present day Montana to give people an idea that there truly are many environmental problems affecting the world today. The Bitterroot Valley presents a microcosm of the environmental problems plaguing the rest of the United States: increasing population, immigration, increasing scarcity and decreasing quality of water, locally and seasonally poor air quality, toxic wastes, heightened
...graphy." Mining Techniques of the Sierra Nevada and Gold Country. N.p., n.d. 16 May 2014. .
Valley Region of the Appalachian Mountains and Subsequent Karst Regions in the State of Virginia
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%).
Coal Mining in West Virginia has long been a source of income in the mountain state. Coal was first being mined here in 1742, and many of our families have felt the impact of coal. My grandfather and great grandfather were both involved in the coal industry. Both worked underground while my grandfather graduated to an above ground job doing maintenance on long wall miners and other mine related equipment. I can say that the life of a coal miner has altered the ways of many for this great state (both good and bad), which I will elaborate below.
Coal, coal, coal, it is everywhere, and in the 1920’s people found out how powerful it was. There was a great move to find and get as much coal they could. So many people packed up what they had and went to mine coal for a living, but soon found out that it was not a wonderful life. It was hard and tough life. People somehow found a way to survive in these old Kentucky hills. Mining has improved greatly over the years by the type of equipment they have produced and the new safety restrictions they have put in place but mining it is still a hard life. There are still challenges that they face every day. People overcome them and face the fear that comes with the. People come and go in this old Kentucky hill but what they do when they are here changes them forever.
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...
Acid mine drainage refers to water (leachate, drainage or seepage) that has come into contact with oxidised rocks or overburden that contains sulphide material (coal, zinc, copper, lead). (Keller, 2000; U.S.G.S.; U.S.E.P.A., 2002). A common sulphide is pyrite, or iron disulfide (FeS2), and throughout this essay it will be pyrite that will be the primary sulphide considered. Acid mine drainage is not a new phenomenon, early mining techniques utilized gravity to avoid water pooling, resulting in the water becoming polluted by acid, iron, sulphur and aluminium (U.S.E.P.A., 2002). It is most commonly associated with coal mining, especially with soft coal, coal that has high sulphur content. The pyrite that is present in coal seams will be accessible after surface mining when the overlying surfaces are removed or in deep mines that allow oxygen access to the previously inaccessible pyrite-containing coal (D.E.P. 1, 1997). After pyrite is exposed to air and water, sulphuric acid and iron hydroxide are formed, creating an acidic runoff (D.E.P. 1, 1997; 2 2002).
Burning and mining coal for fuel is harmful to the environment but because how cheap and easy it is to find many people are unwilling to give it up as a fuel source. One of the problems with coal is that they are limited and are non-renewable so once it has been used we won’t be able to use it again.