We all know the typical summer blockbuster movie plot:  The scientist tries to warn authorities about an impending danger to the planet, but is thwarted until it’s too late - and when everything goes bad, all the civic leaders and businessmen realize they should have listened.

Aren’t you tired of that story?  Hang on.  In America’s coalfields, life is imitating crap movies. 

(Valley fill dump at Birchton Curve, Raleigh County, WV.  Photo:  Courtesy of Vivian Stockman, http://www.ohvec.org, and SouthWings.org.)

 

“Rarely do scientists come out and actually make a policy recommendation,” said Margaret Palmer.

We are living in one of those landmark moments.

In 1966, Robert F. Kennedy took a stand against the mining technique that was then called “strip-mining” and has now grown into “Mountain Top Removal Mining” or MTR. The rest of America is finally is catching up. In “Mountaintop Mining Consequences,” a paper published in the January issue of Science, twelve environmental scientists from across the country come out and say Appalachian surface mining is bad.  What’s more, they’ve called on the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to halt all new permits for MTR.

Valley fills from mountaintop removal cause “permanent loss of ecosystems” the paper says, and directly impact “downstream food webs.” 

(Big Branch, WV.  Photo:  Courtesy of Cindy Bene.)

 

For example, a 2006 paper co-written by Keith N. Eshleman compared storm water flow on strip-mined versus forested watersheds in Appalachia.  It determined that certain West Virginia watersheds were at the high end of human impact that they can tolerate.  That paper also linked the physical impacts of strip mining to worsened flooding nearby. 

The author’s aren’t impressed by what little effort at reclamation has been done, either.  They point out that the carbon sequestered by reclaimed forests is “only about 77% of that in undisturbed vegetation in the same region,” and that re-creating streams atop valley fills “fundamentally alters” them from their original state.  It says,

“Water emerges from the base of valley fills, containing a variety of solutes toxic or damaging to biota.”

In other words, MTR turns the arteries of the region into toxic sewers.

(Photo:  PetersCreek.org)

“Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science.”

The report in Science notes the general reticence of the scientific community, saying “surprisingly little attention has been given to the growing scientific evidence of the negative impacts of [mountain top mining with valley fills].” 

The final section, “A Failure of Policy and Enforcement,” calls on authorities to act on statutes that have been in place for more than three decades - namely, the Clean Water Act and the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act. The enforcement mechanism is there; it just hasn’t been used.

In a Discovery News interview, Margaret Palmer points out that despite the fact that mining companies are required to submit a mitigation plan with their Pre-Construction Notifications, “there’s been no mitigation to date that has really resulted in getting these ecosystems back to where they were.”

The Army Corps of Engineers, one of the permitting authorities, actually directs Project Managers and District Engineers when filing documents for mines to state they “will have no more than minimal adverse effects on the aquatic environment.”

Permanent damage

Forty-four years after RFK, science is finally saying what people have conjectured for generations.  But it takes no expert to reason that Mountaintop Amputation Mining is of “permanent” harm.  Even a successfully re-attached ecosystem won’t function as it once did.

Just ask John Wayne Bobbit whether his “hydrology” works good as new, or if his peak stands in its “approximate original contour.”

These twelve scientists have taken a bold step, by calling on our federal government to do its job.  Silence is not an option when our own people’s land and culture is being forever obliterated.

(Jeremy Irons in The Mission.  Photo:  SeattlePI.com)

Sources

1.  Mountaintop Mining Consequences.  Palmer, Margaret A. et al.  Science, Vol. 327 No. 5962.  8 Jan 2010.  Accessed:  13 Jan 2010. 

2.  Scientists Say Mountaintop Removal Mining Should Be Banned—No Remediation Ever Enough.  McDermott, Matthew.  Treehugger.  07 Jan 2010.  Accessed:  13 Jan 2010.  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/scientists-say-mountaintop-removal-mining-should-be-banned.php.

3.  Standard Operating Procedures for Nationwide Permit 21 Processing.  U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Department of the Army.  19 Mar 2004.  http://www.nab.usace.army.mil/Regulatory/Permit/sop.pdf.