Background
Coal mining has been at the heart of West Virginia’s identity -- and turmoil -- for well over 100 years. But as technology has allowed coal production to soar in the last few years, it has also meant the destruction of the Mountain State’s hills and streams by mountaintop removal coal mining and the resulting valley fills.

In mountaintop removal, entire mountaintops are blasted away to reach reserves of low-sulfur coal. The leftover dirt and rocks, or "spoil," are dumped into adjacent valleys, burying streams. Where permits for these operations were once issued for numbers of acres, they are today quantified in terms of square miles. Accordingly, this escalation in the size of operations correlates to the volume of the valley fills -- where fills used to be smaller than 250,000 cubic yards each, they can now fill as much as 250 million cubic yards each, and extend the stream burial up to two miles. 

The W.Va. Division of Environmental Protection (DEP) has permitted over 1,000 miles of streams to be buried by these valley fills, and hundreds of square miles of "wild and wonderful" landscape have been permitted to be flattened.

Mammoth coal corporations such as Arch Coal have resorted to decapitating mountains to extract these thin seams of coal. Mountaintop removal yields far greater amounts of coal than traditional underground mining or smaller-scale strip mining, but with reliance on fewer workers and bigger machinery, creating bigger and bigger profits. The coal companies (many of them headquartered out-of-state -- Arch Coal in St. Louis, Missouri) are permanently amputating dozens of peaks in the world’s oldest mountain range, the Appalachians, and filling the valleys with spoil, creating plateaus where once there was great contrast between the mountain heights and valley floors. In just the last decade, mountaintop removal has obliterated the natural beauty that took millions of years to form.

A 1998 lawsuit brought by the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and a group of coalfields residents against DEP for illegal permitting practices brought a great victory in October 1999. Federal judge Charles Haden ruled that the state government had in fact issued valley fill permits to bury perennial and intermittent streams, in violation of the Clean Water Act and the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act. Basically, Judge Haden followed the letter of the law, which prohibits mining waste from being dumped into streams. DEP immediately appealed the decision, and the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, Va. ruled that Judge Haden didn't have jurisdiction in the case.

Shortly after Judge Haden's October ruling, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and the rest of West Virginia’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C. tried to pass legislation that would have negated Haden’s ruling and gutted the Clean Water Act. Fortunately, citizens’ pressure kept the effort at bay.

The mountaintop removal issue is a complex one, but there are some key points to keep in mind:

* A poll of West Virginians conducted by WSAZ-NewsChannel 3 found that:

49% of West Virginians oppose mountaintop removal as a surface mining technique (and only 40% favor it, while 12% don't know)

57% of West Virginians think Judge Haden's ruling should be upheld

* Coal production has increased from 35 million tons in 1977 to 180 million tons in 1998, while West Virginia mining jobs have fallen from 65,000 in 1977 to 20,000 in 1999.

* West Virginia's Coal River was named one of the country’s 10 most endangered rivers in 1999 and 2000 because of the danger of mountaintop removal and valley fills. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, over 200 miles of headwater streams have been buried in the Coal River Watershed, more than any other watershed surveyed.

* Not only are there concerns about burying headwaters (with no documentation of the long-term environmental, social or economic effects), but also there are worries about consequences further downstream. In the Coal River, for instance, sediment buildup is simply unbelievable. In places where coal barges could run during the early days of coal mining, and where just a few years ago swimmers delighted diving into holes 12 feet deep, it’s often a struggle to simply navigate a canoe!

* As part of the lawsuit settlement, the state and federal government must develop an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for mountaintop removal/valley fills. A draft EIS is in the works, and it’s imperative that the public be involved. The EIS will dictate which permits are issued, and how they are given -- whether they’ll be granted as easily as in the past, or less frequently and on a smaller scale. Public involvement is crucial to ensure that the long-term environmental devastation caused by mountaintop removal and valley fills is recognized and factored into future permitting.

* Mountaintop removal destroys our towns and rural way of life, as blasting, dust, debris and noise often make living conditions simply unbearable. Residents are forced to move away, leaving behind homes they have known for generations.