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TechnoratiMountaintop Removal Damage 'Irreversible,' Senate Hears
DEP official only witness to defend practice
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Mountaintop removal coal mining is causing "immense and irreversible" damage to Appalachian hills, streams and forests, members of a U.S. Senate subcommittee were told Thursday.
A federal regulator joined a university expert, a West Virginia activist and a Tennessee environmental commissioner in criticizing large-scale strip mining's impacts, as lawmakers consider a bipartisan bill that would curb the practice.
"We must consider the cost of coal from the cradle to the grave," said Maria Gunnoe, a Boone County native who won the international Goldman Prize for her anti-mining activism. "We have the opportunity to stop the annihilation of mountains and people by mountaintop removal and to change the history of energy in this country."
Margaret Palmer, a University of Maryland ecologist who has been studying mountaintop removal's impacts, explained that scientists have clearly documented the damage being done.
"The mountain summits that are removed to reach the coal may not have the same shape or height they previously did, the streams that are buried when rocks and dirt are dumped over the side of the mountain into the valleys below are gone forever, and there is no evidence to date that mitigation actions can compensate for the lost natural resources and ecological functions of the headwater streams that are buried," Palmer told lawmakers.
Palmer and Gunnoe were among those who testified in a Senate Environmental and Public Works subcommittee hearing scheduled to examine mountaintop removal, the Obama administration's plans for regulating it, and legislation that would outlaw most -- if not all -- valley fills.
The only witness who defended mountaintop removal was Randy Huffman, who as secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection is the Manchin administration's top strip-mining regulator.
Huffman said his agency has an "effective and progressive" regulatory program, and that his main concern is that Obama administration efforts to more closely regulate the practice "have the potential to significantly limit all types of mining."
"West Virginia and the nation need jobs and coal," Huffman told senators. "Coal production is the leading revenue generator for West Virginia, and many in the state are concerned about losing the opportunities for future economic development associated with mountaintop mining."
Sens. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced the Appalachian Restoration Act to rewrite the federal Clean Water Act so that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could not permit mining waste to be dumped into streams as "fill material."
Cardin said that, among other concerns, he is worried that the environmental damage from mountaintop removal may be hindering other economic development efforts in the Appalachian region.
Alexander noted that his home state has already banned valley fills, and Tennessee Deputy Commissioner of Environment and Conservation Paul Sloan encouraged lawmakers to expand that prohibition to protect the region's vital headwaters streams.
"Just as the circulatory systems in our bodies rely upon the healthy functioning of billions of capillaries, the nation's rivers and streams will not be healthy unless the headwaters are protected," Sloan said in prepared testimony.
Randy Pomponio, director of environmental assessment for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Mid-Atlantic regional office, told lawmakers EPA studies have documented impacts that agency officials hope to try to reduce.
Mountaintop removal has buried an average of 120 miles of streams a year, Pomponio said, and studies show valley fills not only eliminate those waterways, but also degrade water quality downstream.
EPA studies also have documented the elimination of nearly 1,200 square miles of Appalachian forests -- an area larger than Kanawha County -- between 1992 and 2013.
"Should these forests not be restored, invaluable water quality and ecological services will be lost," Pomponio said. "Forest losses of this magnitude, although largely temporary, are not inconsequential."
21 Comments so far
Show AllOnly a deeply sick mind could think that decapitating a mountain and planting a tree plantation on top of it is somehow leaving it remotely the same. This must be stopped.
Front-end loaders and transport trucks are not invulnerable machines...
Heyduke Lives!
Almost hell now
West Virginia
Strip-mined mountains
Dumped into the rivers
Life is gone there
Gone just like the trees
Gone just like the mountains
Blowing on the Breeze
Coal mine roads
Take my home
To the place
I belonged
West Virginia
Mountain gone now
Take my home
Coal mine roads
I hear the explosions in the morning hours awakens me
The video reminds me of my home blown away
Driving down the road I get the feeling
That I should have stopped it yesterday, yesterday
Coal mine roads
Take my home
To the place
That is gone
West Virginia
Mountain gone now
Take my home
Coal mine roads
Take my home
Down coal mine roads
Take my home
Down coal mine roads
~Moondoggy, inspired by John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads and youtube videos of mountaintop removal in what used to be the beautiful mountain state of West Virginia
Of course it's irreversible! Once you cut it down, you can't put it back. It becomes a Frankenstein version of what was there before.
"And Mr Peabody's coal train done hauled it away..."
One comment on the activists statements.
If any of those Forests are original growth they will never come back the same. Of course the activists maybe completely correct in that all the cut forests may be secondary growth.
Second only to coal mining was the clear-cutting of it's forests in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Little or none of the forest cut for surface mining in WV is old-growth.
In the well-watered Appalacian region, an abandoned 40 acre farming field will become wooded again in about 40 years, and become a mature forest in just 80 years. The exceptions are some of the higher elevation red spruce forests - which because of near-timberline climate conditions, never grew back after the 19th century logging boom. They became a sort of sub-alpine mix of heath and sedge meadow and stunted wind-pruned spruce thickets. These eneded up having a lot or ecological and esthetic value all their own because of their prolific berry and wildflower production.
The MTR sites are lower and would return fairly quickly to mixed hardowood/stream valley hemlock forssts, except that because of their huge size the use of hardy non-native grasses for reclaimation and loss of topsoil, the return of the forests will be very, very slow. Also the rise of pests like the hemlock wooly adelgid and emerald ash-borer which aren't related to the mining but may be related to the warming climate the mining is contributing to, mean that some trees will never return, on at least a thousands-year time scale.
The central and southern Appalacians have lost much since the white man came - the Passenger Pigeon, the Carolina Parakeet (yes, a colorful native North-American parrot living as far north as Pennsylvania), maybe other songbirds we'll never know about; the panther, the Eastern Elk, the American Chestnut and Elm, now all the old-growth Hemlocks have been killed or will soon be killed (some 180 feet in height), soon, the White Ash.
From this perspective, MTR is just one more in a long line of insults.
Randy Huffman should have to spend a week on a mountaintop removal site, living in a tent...let's see what he has to say then.
The only societies that survive will be ones that have the natural resources to sustain their population.
We can level every mountain, using mega-giant oil powered machines; but when the oil and coal are gone, they're gone.
Would that the infinitely foolish human race could only see those who oppose population control, as enemies of the species.
I still can't understand why people can't see the utter foolishness of our manned space program. Of course it brings $$$$$ into our rulers districts. Of course they can't see the obscene evil of the Vietnam War or Iraq II either.
Just what good is a manned space program if you don't have a job, or gas for your car, or food? Huh?
As Charlton Heston said in Planet of the Apes, "God damn you, God damn you all!" Emotionally it was right on, but God is well up on the list of mankinds 100 top delusions.
George Evans Essex MA
Knowing what you know now, whould you choose to be born? At some point in most of our lives the answer is likely to be, "No."
So the root of the delusions, may be intrinsic to the human condition.
bostongeorge June 26th, 2009 12:22 am.... I certainly sympathize with your position. Since the stolen election in 2000 and the false flag of 9/11, I have dug deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. And, it's not pretty and only gets deeper. Whoever/whatever is ruling our existence now is way of course and no doubt inherently evil. I do not know if I would go as far as to say I am sorry I was born, but I will say that in some ways I regret going into that rabbit hole. We can rant and rave here on CD and other sites, but the feeling of helplessness and the knowledge of the indifference that rules most Americans lives is at times overwhelming and depressing. If one is not depressed and angry, one is not listening or paying attention. Just do not let it take you over...then they have won!
We rule our own existence, to the extent that we are conscious. Evil IS unconsciousness, so to the extent that we rule our own lives and are not subject to the whims of unconscious desires and repetition compulsions we are also good (and vice versa). Truth and knowledge are always better than ignorance and illusion; if it is not simply intellectual understanding we become whole--that is, unconflicted about what to do. What we want and what is right become the same, and we accept what we know with grace, wisdom, love and joy. Depression and anger are natural; they are also signs that one is not THERE yet. The way to win is to withdraw from their game, play our own and have more fun than they are.
J4zonian June 26th, 2009 11:02 pm............I believe one can be unconscious and still not be evil. Do you agree? To withdraw from "their" game, would also mean getting off the internet. Do you agree?
undaunted,
I'm not committed to any single answer on either question. There are certainly people who are "unconscious" (not a black and white proposition but a relative thing of degrees and types) who don't seem evil--in fact seem quite nice on the surface. You might think that about most US citizens. but in the end they allow evil to be perpetrated, even in their name with their money, corporate and government-collected. They could choose other paths if they were more conscious--withdraw from it, stop it, criticize it, at the very least learn about it. Most people in the US, however nice, participate directly in evil, contribute to it every time they buy food, go to work, or pay taxes.
Author Derrick Jensen thinks the only sustainable technology is stone age technology. I'm not willing to say yes or no to that and I don't think any of us can say now. To survive, let alone thrive, we need to move quickly and strongly in the direction of love and wisdom, including nature- and self-awareness and "consciousness" (which are all ways of saying the same thing--resolving our attachment issues (in both the Buddhist and Western psychological senses). Or at least in the direction of fake love, wisdom, and nature-awareness. Fake it til you make it, AA says. The real stuff will almost certainly end most technology, as most of what we do is destructive and difficult and is not making us happier. We can then live our lives on the angle of repose for seven or fifty generations while we slowly recover from the traumatic effects of civilization, and generation by generation decide the next step toward finding a place of true rest.
For now, we can't go back. We can't get there from here, as Cuba shows. The moment license (as opposed to true freedom) is restored there, US corporate/government will rush in, and the casino culture and a dictator to protect it from those it destroys will be restored. Voila, end of sustainable technology. The same here, where NAIS, HR 814 'Food Safety Modernization" HR 759 'FDA Globalization' HR 875/S 425 'TRACE' and even HR 2749 'Food Safety Enhancement' Acts are all conscious or unconscious attacks on the blooming homesteading, and small-scale and organic agriculture movements. The person who tries to withdraw will be overrun as soon as s/he begins to attract attention, get converts or in any way make a difference, as the Faillaces found out.
Paradoxical, ain't it, to talk about the fragility of sustainability? Such is the militant illness of civilization. So for now we have to go forward, toward hyper-industrial solar, wind, technical efficiency fixes, and other green lite versions of today's destructive methods. We have to do at least enough of that to allay fears of those who are psychologically dependent on the distractions of TV, Hummers (the cars, that is), and three times the working hours of 'primitive' people. To do that we need to engage politically enough to allow those distractions to be supplanted very very slowly for the majority of people here, where most of the destruction originates.
Meanwhile, some of us need to set up alternative ways of living--re-primitivizing ourselves to varying degrees, permaculturing, re-learning old ways Foxfire-style, turning to biomimicry in all fields while becoming more conscious of Nature and ourselves. Take your pick where you fall on that continuum. Maybe we can trust our holotropism (innate tendency toward healing and wholeness, words which have roots in the same Indo-European word) to spread ourselves out in the most useful numbers along that continuum. Maybe not, since none of us are actually healthy. Right now, I fall on the computer-using spot. Next year, maybe I'll have gotten healthy enough to reach more people without it. Take your pick. Doing both every minute, become conscious and choose.
We need to integrate all these things, and keep it small scale. We need to operate locally. Everyone participating.
People like you with computer skills are as necessary as people who are good at spinning fibers, making clothing, grafting fruit, planting seeds, blacksmithing, cutting timbers, crafting furniture, blowing glass, making pottery, digging canals, roof thatching, bicycle repairs, engine repairs, book binding, plumbing, electrical, medical, musical, geological, biological, astronomical, astrological, mathematical, historical and shamanic.
We need people who know and can teach all these skills in every self-sustaining community. It's all part of permaculture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKTgmW_FAg
When we align our consciousness with nature, the universe is supportive and life is more fun.
You guys need to get over yourselves and get out and do something to lift your spirits!
Our lifestyles have been fantastic. Better than the Kings and Queens of old.
The cost has been the near destruction of the planet.
We are going to have to cut back....a lot!!
It is the end of and Era....the best of times and the worst of times as the man said.
BUT...if you can somehow put your grief aside and go out and connect to a tree in your neighborhood or a plant on your windowsill you will begin to heal yourselves and Mother Earth and understand the big picture.
There are no guarantees in life.
Just be happy for every day that you can take a breath and gaze on the faces of your loved ones.
Be happy...it's that simple.
And if something makes you mad go out and do something about... but come home, dream sweet and be happy for as long as you can.
Every day.
That's what it's all about for me.
I refuse to let the bastids get me down.
I'm sure your advice is given with a good spirit. BUT, you do not know me, my feelings or emotions or actions or philosophy. How do you know I do not hug trees or have a garden? Allow me my anger. Thank you...
Good wishes.
AND, the last thing I wish to do is "get over myself". My search for self will continue.
Kind of off-topic, but since you brought it up, you could say the same things about art, music and theater as you could about a manned space program. The human sense-of-wonder that drives the desire to explore and eventually settle on other worlds and the human impulse for creating beauty, both seem to come from the same place.
I've been out of work too, but for me, it has been appreciating art and music, and vicariously following human exploration (and not-so vicariously, in limestone caves nearby), that made life bearable.
Humans would have gone extinct long ago if they didn't have this drive to explore.
And as far as choosing not to have been born, you are speaking for yourself, not most of us. You should seek therapy for depression.
Unfortunately, the exploration of space is mainly projection--the outside manifestation of curiosity/desire to understand our own selves in order to heal. Thus it will never succeed in satisfying us in any way that matters. Yes, it is a waste of money, time, energy, concentration and materials that could be better spent here. But more than that it's a distraction. As long as we believe it can accomplish anything worthwhile it will (along with everything from war, alcohol, TV and websurfing, unsatisying obsession with sex, drugs and the war on drugs, and almost everything else we do, keep us from feeling and acting as if we are part of Nature. Art, music, and theatre can either distract or legitimately express and help us heal.
There's no way to tell if we'd be extinct without that drive to explore. Maybe it's just the shadow form of our holotropic propensity to mend.
Huffman (WVDEP) said his agency has an "effective and progressive" regulatory program, and that his main concern is that Obama administration efforts to more closely regulate the practice "have the potential to significantly limit all types of mining."
Mr. Huffman,
Let me offer some advice from a fellow regulatory worker.
Your job is to promulgate and enforce environmental regulations, prusuant to the protection of the health and well-being of the people of West Virginia.
Period.
So, why should you give a flying fuck regarding the potential of regulation to "limit all types of mining"? Have you forgotten who you work for? Your customers are the people of West Virginia, NOT the mining companies. Please throw all that happy horseshit about getting along with those you regulate - calling them you "customers" or "stakeholders" - in the trash can. Your relation with those whose permit applications you review - the mining companies - is that of adversary. There is nothing wrong with that, being an adversary is the only ethical position to take. Would a cop ever call a crook his "customer"?.
The two arguments for destroying our environment are jobs and energy in this issue. As we understand quite well jobs come and jobs go but what will remain for eons into the future? For millions of years humans have searched for and used sources of power and energy. The recent use of coal is found to be wanting for it's destruction of human survival and the environment on which we depend. It has come and it will go at what cost?
The search for energy goes on.We continue to look for better ways to power and improve our biological survival and the planet we live on. We have used and learned of the destruction to ourselves from coal. It is time to move on. Do you doubt we can find new sources that are an improvement?
It is so with the charter of corporations that we have given the right of a person. It is time to move on as we have seen the destruction they create for jobs and power. Corporations live and die on a piece of paper and live without benefit of moral conscience.
You speak the truth, and I agree with you totally. Well said.