Mountaintop Removal Mining: Digging Into Community Health Concerns

Abstract

The practice of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining has been carried out on at least 500 Appalachian peaks.1 MTR mining is controversial for its environmental impacts: “Spoil”—the earth and rock dislodged by mining—is deposited in the valleys of this hilly and steep terrain,2 by some estimates burying almost 2,000 miles of headwater streams that ultimately feed the Mississippi River.3 Slurry, the residue from cleaning the coal, is impounded in ponds or injected into abandoned underground mine shafts, where it can leach potentially toxic constituents such as arsenic, lead, manganese, iron, sodium, strontium, and sulfate that ultimately may end up in groundwater.4 Now research studies are beginning to link these environmental impacts to adverse outcomes in community health, raising questions about whether the benefits of MTR mining come at too high a health cost. For most of MTR mining’s history, permits had been relatively easy to obtain, but under the Obama administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began conducting more stringent reviews of applications. By late January 2010, the agency had scrutinized roughly 175 proposed mines and signed off on only 48, according to The Washington Post.5 Then, on 1 April 2010, the EPA issued what it described as comprehensive guidance, based on strong science, designed to strengthen permitting requirements for Appalachian MTR and other surface coal mining projects.6 Subsequently, on 13 January 2011, in a decision that opponents of MTR mining considered a major victory, the agency halted disposal of mining waste at the proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine, which would have buried more than 6 miles of streams in Logan County, West Virginia, and dynamited roughly 3.5 square miles of mountaintop and forestland.7 MTR Mining in Progress. Trees are clearcut, and explosives and massive machines are used to remove earth and access coal seams from the top down. Mining waste, or “spoil,” is dumped into valleys. The landscape changes incurred by MTR mining ... A form of surface mining, MTR mining first emerged in the late 1960s but remained a small source of coal until the mid-1990s. Now it is a major form of coal mining in West Virginia and Kentucky—the second and third largest coal-producing states after Wyoming—and it also occurs in Virginia and Tennessee.2 A few factors account for its rise. First, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 encouraged companies to seek low-sulfur coal, which is abundant in central Appalachia. MTR mining also uses less labor than underground mining, with massive draglines able to move 100 cubic yards of earth in a single scoop. And with underground coal supplies significantly depleted, MTR mining allows the harvest of seams of coal too thin to work from traditional coal mines.8 The literature on health impacts of MTR mining has been both scant—encompassing a mere three-quarters of a page in the 99-page decision on the Spruce Mine7—and circumstantial. The dearth of literature is not surprising; just 10 investigators study the public health impact of MTR mining, says Michael Hendryx, an associate professor in the Community Medicine Department of West Virginia University in Morgantown. That’s partly because large-scale MTR mining is such a recent development. But a round of research articles published in 2011 has begun backing up anecdotal evidence of health effects with peer-reviewed data showing strong associations. The combination of the new studies along with the previous anecdotal and circumstantial evidence begs for more research to be conducted, Hendryx says.