Where is mountaintop removal

Since then, he and other researchers have published over a dozen peer-reviewed studies showing significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease, lung and other types of cancer, birth defects, and overall mortality, even after they controlled for factors such as poverty, smoking, obesity, education, race, and metropolitan setting.

For example, one study Hendryx co-authored calculated an excess of 1, deaths in mountaintop removal counties annually since , when the practice became prevalent, after adjusting for other factors, while another found that babies born between had nearly double the chance of having circulatory or respiratory birth defects. The voluminous data is consistent with anecdotal suspicions long held by many residents of these areas and some of the doctors who serve them.

Nicole C. James C. Is it safe to bathe them? She said was also worried about the dust coming from the mine site. Doctors and nurses Human Rights Watch spoke with were cautious about drawing conclusions from the anecdotal experience of Nicole and others, but several said they were struck by the number of their patients who had respiratory and other health problems and suspected mining-related environmental causes. I definitely feel there is an environmental component to that.

Human rights law protects the right to health and access to safe drinking water. The US government has a duty to prevent or regulate activities that pose risks to human rights. This can extend to activities that have not been conclusively shown to cause harm, where there is good reason to believe that they may. Because of the diffuse nature of many environmental harms and the long period it may take for health impacts to manifest, governments should take precautionary measures based on the best available science.

They should also endeavor to carry out or support studies that will establish the human rights risks in a definitive way. While proving causation should often not be a precondition for regulation, a recent group of studies by West Virginia University researchers examining air particles in communities near mountaintop removal sites provides evidence suggesting that mountaintop mining is not only associated with poor health but may cause cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Air samples revealed high levels of inhalable particles consisting mostly of silica, a toxic heavy metal commonly found in rock dust. Multiple experiments showed that they promoted tumor growth and changed cellular function in ways consistent with cardiovascular disease. A team of researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, as well as the US Geological Survey, have conducted extensive research on streams near mountaintop removal and concluded that they are severely polluted by the practice.

The research assessing potential health risks of human exposure to water contaminated due to mountaintop removal is less developed than research on air pollution, but the lack of research and data collection on this issue is itself worrisome. Many people in these communities still rely on private wells, which are not subject to state or federal water standards or monitoring. Human Rights Watch visited seven families who live near Coal Mountain in Wyoming County, West Virginia and allege that an active mountaintop removal mine near their homes is responsible for contaminating their well water.

Although users of public water systems may be less at risk of negative health impacts from their water because federal law requires regular monitoring and treatment, water quality in public systems may nonetheless be adversely impacted by mountaintop mining pollution if not properly managed and monitored. Hendryx conducted a survey of public water treatment facilities in West Virginia from and found that mountaintop removal counties had over five times the number of Safe Drinking Water Act violations, principally for lack of monitoring, than in other Appalachian counties.

Some facilities, particularly small ones, may find it difficult to monitor due to a lack of resources, but it nevertheless raises concerns that authorities and residents may be unaware that water contamination from mountaintop removal has negatively impacted both the source water for public systems and the water these systems then supply to users. But many noted that these added stressors can also make people more vulnerable to air and water pollution from mountaintop removal.

As the drumbeat of health studies linking mountaintop removal to poor health intensified, coal companies, and their key trade group called the National Mining Association, launched aggressive efforts to discredit the evidence and beat back any attempts at regulation.

The industry had been fighting legal challenges to mountaintop removal since a group of West Virginians sued the federal and state government in , claiming that the practice violated a surface mining rule that, according to its author, was specifically designed to counter the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal and that the government issued the industry permits through a process that violated rules under the Clean Water Act. However, in , the US Army Corps of Engineers worked together with the Interior Department, which was under the direction of a former coal lobbyist, to change the Clean Water Act rules to allow coal companies to easily obtain permits to fill a valley with mountaintop removal overburden known as valley fills , circumventing one of the legal problems the lawsuit identified.

The agency later released a version of the environmental impact study that included no recommendations to limit mountaintop removal or address its toxic legacy. Instead of proposing limits on mountaintop removal, it proposed changing a surface mining rule to remove another legal obstacle to valley fills that the lawsuit raised.

The Obama administration, after studying the issue for eight years and receiving 94, public comments, adopted the Stream Protection Rule on December 20, The rule disappointed environmental activists because it did not ban mountaintop removal. Instead it required coal companies to monitor and restore streams impacted by their activities — an issue that most significantly affects mountaintop removal because of its reliance on valley fills that bury and contaminate streams.

Stoking the fear of potential massive job losses in already hard-hit areas was an incredibly effective tactic. Congress canceled the rule within weeks of starting its term by invoking a little-used law called the Congressional Review Act in February But a NAS spokesperson said that none of its other studies for the agency were stopped and such a decision was highly unusual.

Critics of the decision point out the suspicious timing to argue it was the product of inappropriate political interference. This report examines the health impact of mountaintop removal, a form of coal mining that involves destroying mountains with explosives to access coal underneath, and then filling valleys with the overburden.

We also reviewed raw health and mining data and relevant regulatory documents, as well as media articles and other publicly available information. Human Rights Watch staff conducted field research in areas of southern West Virginia where mountaintop removal is most prevalent, including Boone, Raleigh, Kanawha, Logan, Fayette, and Wyoming counties, as well as in northeastern Tennessee. During five visits conducted in November , and between March and August , Human Rights Watch interviewed scientists, doctors, mining specialists, lawyers, environmental activists, and impacted residents.

We conducted additional interviews by phone. In all, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 people. All interviewees freely consented to the interviews, and Human Rights Watch explained to them the purpose of the interview and did not offer any remuneration. Since Donald Trump became president in January , his administration and Congress have canceled, withdrawn, or weakened hundreds of rules enacted to protect workers, communities, and the environment.

The date he chose is significant. The s marked a fundamental shift in how the US government regulates businesses. The visible rise in pollution — from the acrid emissions of cars and power plants blackening the air to oil spills and industrial waste poisoning fish — brought public attention to the environmental degradation wrought by unregulated industry.

At the same time, a steady drumbeat of ground-breaking studies began to link exposure to various toxins with serious health problems. Capping a decade of growing concern, in , sparks from a train passing through northern Ohio flew onto floating oil-slicked debris on the Cuyahoga River and ignited a fire that flared to 50 feet high. The images of the fire lighting up the heavily polluted river captivated the country, seeming to encapsulate the failure of a system that gave businesses virtually unfettered freedom to pollute the environment with impunity.

The Clean Air Act, passed in to provide federal funds for research, was updated in to set broad federal emissions standards. In addition to these wide-ranging laws, Congress passed numerous laws around this time to address specific pollutants that studies had shown posed risks to public health.

In the decades since, new laws and regulations have been put in place or old ones amended to reflect changes in industrial practices, products, and other business activities, as well as new evidence of health risks to workers, consumers, and communities. Trump and senior officials in his administration have broadly painted regulations as an assault on businesses, the economy, and an impediment to creating jobs rather than a set of protections for the public at risk of being harmed by business activities.

Fifty years ago, West Virginian and other Appalachian miners were at the forefront of demanding government protection from mining companies that they saw as taking their lives and health for granted. The coal industry has a very long record of opposing regulations to protect public health. This is an early illustration of a tactic that remains central in the fights around regulation in the country: opponents of regulation exploit the absence or uncertainty of data to fend off rules, including those requiring better data collection and disclosure, even where significant evidence indicates that their activities are causing harm.

Donald Rasmussen and Dr. Isadore Buff, launched a public campaign to persuade the medical community to recognize the disease and politicians to act. In , they formed the Black Lung Association along with miners and others, leading grassroots protests and massive strikes across Appalachia.

By then, nearly 43, miners had been killed in accidents. In , Congress empowered the Bureau to inspect mines, but the inspections had little value without legally mandated health and safety standards.

Congress first passed a law requiring minimal mine safety standards in Although there was no enforcement mechanism and the standards expired after one year, it marked a turning point in miner fatalities: whereas on average 25 out of every 10, miners were killed annually from to , that number dropped to an average of 15 over the next five years. In the fall of , there was an explosion in a mine in Farmington, West Virginia where 99 miners were working. The mine had a long history of violating safety standards, including high levels of methane, poor ventilation, and excessive amounts of combustible coal dust that had already caused several fatal explosions.

It also provided for regular inspections and criminal and civil penalties for violations, respiratory health surveillance to underground but not surface miners, and compensation for miners with black lung disease.

Coal industry representatives largely opposed the law, arguing variously that it would harm the national economy, was overly burdensome, and overstepped the proper role of the federal government.

These legislative achievements improved the situation of miners, but mining disasters and black lung continued to claim lives. The disaster killed people and swept away hundreds of homes, bringing attention to the risks to nearby communities of mining.

In response to these developments, President Jimmy Carter signed a new law that strengthened the Coal Act and transferred enforcement from the Interior Department to the newly established Mine Safety and Health Administration housed under the Department of Labor. This legal framework remains in effect today, effectively dividing the regulation of mining between three federal agencies see text box. In the decades since, these agencies have updated the rules implementing the relevant laws to reflect technological and scientific changes.

The Obama administration promulgated several new rules that affect the coal industry. This report focuses on the Stream Protection Rule, which required coal companies to monitor streams impacted by their activities for contamination and restore them at the end of a project. Other Obama-era rules affect power companies rather than the mining industry.

One such rule regulates the disposal coal combustion residuals — a heavily toxic byproduct of burning coal that is often dumped into unlined pits that leach heavy metals into groundwater and present the risk of a catastrophic spill.

But while their rollback might help coal and power company executives, it is at the price of risking the health of their employees, nearby communities, and the environment on which we all depend. The process of enacting and enforcing regulations in the United States is a complex interplay between Congress, the president, federal agencies, and state governments. Under the US Constitution, Congress, made up of a member Senate and member House of Representatives, has sole authority to pass laws, and the president must faithfully execute them.

According to the Nature Conservancy, the mountain region including southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and northeastern Tennessee contains some of the highest levels of biological diversity in the nation.

This region is also at the headwaters of the drinking water supplies of many US cities. The maps below show hotspots of biodiversity based on a rarity-weighted index biological diversity produced by the Nature Conservancy, as well as the major river systems with headwaters in the Appalachian coalfields. Unfortunately, there is little information on the cumulative impacts of mountaintop removal because the federal agencies that are charged with regulating coal mining have refused to track the overall extent and impacts of mountaintop removal.

The one attempt at a comprehensive analysis of MTR by government agencies was presented in a multi-agency Environmental Impact Statement that was completed in This effort was initiated in the late 90s, but the focus of the EIS was revised after the White House changed hands in According to the Charleston Gazette:. While the EIS did compile a lot of disparate information on the effects and extent of MTR, the analysis was based on mining permit maps.

Thus, the entire EIS is based on verifiably faulty data. Despite its many flaws, however, the multi-agency environmental impact statement did provide some useful information on the extent and impacts of mountaintop removal. Environmental Protection Agency impact statement on mountaintop removal in Appalachia, it may take hundreds of years for a forest to re-establish on the mine site.

Mountaintop removal takes place primarily in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. Appalachian Voices commissioned a study in that showed nearly 1. In some counties, such as Wise County, Va. The researchers found that the mines and valley fills could range anywhere from 10 to meters deep. Across the region, the average slope of the land dropped by more than 10 degrees post-mining.

View satellite imagery of mining encroachment and learn about the top 50 communities at risk from mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia with our Communities at Risk mapping tool on iLoveMountains. Most mountaintop removal coal is burned in power plants in the eastern United States and in some Midwestern states. That water contains cleaning chemicals, proprietary formulas, and noncombustible material that is removed from the coal, including heavy metals like arsenic and mercury.

All of this heavy contamination ends up in these earthen-lined slurry impoundments. A creek downstream of a mountaintop removal coal mine in Magoffin County, Kentucky. What did you think about that? Hendryx: I was skeptical that the panel, which contained several industry people, was truly going to do a fair and unbiased review. I may have been wrong on that. But my concern was also that part of their charge was to make recommendations for future research.

But to say that we should do nothing and just keep studying it forever, and in the meantime the people in these communities continue to die, that to me is not acceptable. Hendryx: These areas have higher unemployment rates and more poverty that anywhere else in the region because these are job-destroying activities, not job-creating ones. When you compare MTR with underground mining, the amount of coal that is produced per job is much higher at the mountaintop site.

So these sites can be huge, but they require very few jobs. Hendryx: Blowing up mountains, deforesting large tracts of land, polluting streams, destroying roads from all the trucks going by, coating the landscape in dust, making people sick — what other employers are going to move into that area? By Jacques Leslie. By Jon Hurdle. Search Search.