[at-l] Appalachian Mountain Top Removal

[RoksnRoots at aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)]

              There's a good article in the March 'National Geographic' about 
mountain top removal mining in the Appalachians. The story centers around SW 
West Virginia where the practice has been escalating. A second article in the 
same issue covers coal burning for electrical generation. Both are worth 
reading if you have an interest in the subject. Especially interesting is the 
impact on the old holler Appalachian folk affected by the mining.


              What got to me the most about the article was how they bury the 
overburden into mountain valleys in order to get rid of it. Some of these 
valley fills are gigantic. But what got to me was the fact that they bury the 
topsoil deepest because it comes off first. It is then buried forever under 
millions of tons of rock overburden. When they restore the mined areas they don't 
quite bring conditions back to normal because they have wasted the topsoil. The 
company says it is too expensive to save it for restoration. But that sounds 
stupid to me because there's no reason the strip of one area can't be timed 
with the cap-off of a restoration. Or if that is too hard there's no good reason 
why a specific valley can't be chosen for topsoil only and then be used as a 
store area for re-topsoiling after an area is restored. Sounds like a 
no-brainer to me. I think what we are really talking about is companies not really 
caring and just dumping the soil by the quickest route. It is a lot easier for 
the Washington polecats to say "company officials tell us it is too expensive" 
than do the smart thing. This is part of our neo legacy I guess. These areas 
should be made permanently wild after they are decimated. Instead they look to 
market them further. (Guess "it isn't wild anyway")


       Let's not mention the total destruction of prime Appalachian hardwood 
forests. These lands are then sold for profit and maybe development as real 
estate to finish the maximum exploitation cycle (the same cycle that caused the 
Appalachian national forests to come to be). The West Virginia Appalachians 
were cursed with coal. Otherwise they would be undesirable and left alone.


              US plans 40 new large CO2-producing coal generation power 
stations in the near future (have to power sprawl).







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