Today, coal powers over half of the electricity in the United States (“Razing Appalachia”). Over the course of many years, several different methods of mining coal have been introduced. The most controversial of these methods is surface mining, a form of mining that involves recovering minerals and ores that are very close to the exterior of the land. The two types of surface mining are strip mining and mountaintop removal. In strip mining, the overburden, several layers of dirt and/or rock are removed to reach the ore, mostly coal that is to be mined. Mountaintop removal is a more extreme version of strip mining in which explosives are used in order to blast the top off of a mountain, revealing the minerals (Squillace). In order to complete this process, the land around the minerals is completely devastated. Laws have been formed in order for mining companies to legally mine on private properties. Broad-form deeds involve mining companies buying the mineral rights to a property, giving them the right to mine the minerals on said property. There are also laws to prevent as much damage as possible and to repair the land once the strip mining is complete, a process called reclamation (Reece). Even with these laws in place, strip mining and mountaintop removal are both extremely destructive, hazardous and detrimental to the health of those who live near the mines and the land that surrounds them is forever devastated and will never return to the way it was before mining.
The earliest record of strip mining being used to mine coal is in 1866. Many believe strip mining began somewhere close to Danville, Illinois. In the summer, miners would strip the rock and other layers covering the coal using only horse drawn plows and scrapers; h...
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“Razing Appalachia.” PBS. 2012. Web. 14 March 2012.
Reece, Erik. “Death of a Mountain.” WesJones.com. 12 September 2003. Web. 13 March 2012.
“SMCRA Overview.” Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. n.d. Web. 14 March 2012.
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Squillace, Mark. “Introduction.” The Strip Mining Handbook. n.d. Web. 13 March 2012.
---. “The Environmental Effects of Strip Mining.” The Strip Mining Handbook. n.d. Web. 13 March 2012.
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...ing the conditions faced by coal miners and their families in addition to events leading up to the uprising. However, some additional research should be done in regards to the West Virginia Coal Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain.
from the company of the company. The miners begin their work in debt, and because of the low wages and continuance of charges placed on their account, they are unable to work their way out of the hole (no pun intended). Because the Stone Mountain Coal Company was paying the workers by the ton and not by an hourly wage, whether or not the workers were content with their jobs was basically irrelevant. The company also had obtained a monopoly on the employment in the town, forcing the workers to work for them. Most of the men spent their entire adult lives working as coal miners and were never self-sufficient enough to retire.... ...
This essay is about the land rights of of Australia and how Eddie Marbo was not happy about his land been taken away from him. In May 1982 Eddie Marbo and four other people of the Murray Islands began to take action in the high court of Australia and confirming their land rights. Eddie Marbo was a torres islander who thought that the Australian laws were wrong and who went to fight and try and change them. He was born in 1936 on Mer which is known as Murray Island. The British Crown in the form of the colony of Queensland became of the sovereign of the islands when they were annexed in1978. They claimed continued enjoyment of there land rights and that had not been validly extinguished by the sovereign. (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012)
Does the introduction of a system of registration of title remove the need for the law to recognise possessory or equitable interests in land? Why? Why not?
Removal of the mountaintops causes environmental impacts from blasting. The blasting has caused rocks to be deposited into valleys on the hillsides, burying almost 2,000 miles of streams which feed the Mississippi River. Slurry, the residue which is used to clean the coal can wash into groundwater and may contain arsenic, lead, manganese, iron, sodium, strontium, and sulfate. A recent research study is beginning to link these environmental impacts to the grave health concerns in the Appalachian communities. During most of the Mountaintop removal mining’s history coal industries have been able to obtain permits easily to operate, but once under the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) those permits now take more time to obtain. The permit process requires all applications to be reviewed before being given out to coal
A machine known as a dragline then digs into the rock to reveal the coal, the machines hollow out the tiers of coal and dump millions of overburden, the previous mountaintops, into constricted nearby valleys, thereby producing valley fills. Coal companies have covered over 1,200 miles of biologically crucial Appalachian headwaters streams.
Coal mines in these times were glorified death traps and collapsed. Often. Workers or their families were basically never compensated for anything, and even when they took things to court, essentially no court was sympathetic toward any coal miner or their family, and if their father or brother died, they were on their on for the rest of their life, often then forcing child boys to work if they weren’t already. Also, not many workers spoke proper english in the mines, so they could not read instruction signs, and by misuse of equipment, killing themselves and/or other
Terra Nullius was once apparent in Australian society, but has now been nullified with the turn of the century and the changes of societal attitudes. With the political changes in our society, and the apology to Indigenous Australians, society is now witnessing an increase in aboriginals gaining a voice in today’s society. Kevin Rudd’s apology as described by Pat Dodson (2006) as a seminal moment in Australia’s history, expressed the true spirit of reconciliation opening a new chapter in the history of Australia. Although from this reconciliation, considerable debate has arisen within society as to whether Aboriginals have a right to land of cultural significance. Thus, causing concern for current land owners, as to whether they will be entitled to their land.
To the northeast part of Arizona lay a conflict between two indigenous groups from the surrounding area and the world’s largest coal company formerly known as Peabody Coal (now Peabody Energy). The Hopi and Navajo reservations surround a region known as Black Mesa. Black Mesa is located on both the Navajo and Hopi Reservations which is a target source for underground water called the N-aquifer. The N-aquifer contains a great amount of pristine Ice Age water. As time drew on, many indigenous people were alarmed that the water was carelessly being depleted from their land. Mining on Black Mesa should be stopped because the inhabitants are affected by Peabody, livestock in the area must depend on the local springs, groundwater is being depleted at an average of 3.3 million gallons per day, and the water is being contaminated (SBMW Online par 1).
One of the first attempts to locate and mine this copper was back in 1771 when the first mining expedition was organized. English miners were sent to the New World to locate and mine the copper heard of in Indian tales that had been passed along by the French. These miners had begun their excavation in a clay bank where they had previously seen trickling green copper-containing water with pieces floating in the water nearby. Unfortunately, the frozen roof of the tunnel had thawed and lead to a cave in resulting in the first failed attempt at mining copper in Michigan.
In her book Coal A Human History, Barbara Freese states "The mundane mineral that built our global economyand even today powers our electrical plantshas also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction" (front flap) Today, coal provides for more than 55% of the electricity generated in the U.S. (Cullen, Robert Vol.272) Coal miners have had one of the most dangerous jobs in history before government regulation. Many miners had to work underground for 10 + hours a day and 6 days a week(Cobb, James "Coal") The number of deaths per year is the equivalent of a Titanic going down in the nation's coal fields each year (Turkington, Carol) According to James Cobb from the World Book Online Reference Center mine safety involves four main types of problems including accidents involving machinery, roof and rib failures, accumulations of gases and concentrations of coal dust.
Though it has had many negative impacts on the environment in the past, mining is a vital industry completely necessary to our economy and lives. Nearly every item we use or encounter in our day to day lives is mined or contains mined products. Without the excavation of such materials things like computers, televisions, large building structures, electricity, and cars would not be possible. Virtually every technological and medical advance uses minded materials, without which millions would suffer. Some examples of minerals in the home include the telephone which is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, silver, and talc. A television requires over 35 different minerals, and more than 30 minerals are needed to make a single personal computer. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year, which is higher than all other countries with the exception of Japan, which is a staggering figure representative of our dependence and need for mined minerals. Coal makes up more than half of nation’s electricity, and will continue to be the largest electrical supplier into 2020 & accounting for some 95 percent of the nation's fossil energy reserves – nine of every ten short-tons of coal mined in the United States is used for electricity generation. As the population of the world grows more mineral resources must be exploited through mining in order to support the rising demand for such products. Though it may present a hazard to the environment and those physically located nears the mines, the materials extracted from mines...
Burning and mining coal for fuel is harmful to the environment but because how cheap and easy it is to find many people are unwilling to give it up as a fuel source. One of the problems with coal is that they are limited and are non-renewable so once it has been used we won’t be able to use it again.
In the world today, Coal is one of the most used Fossil Fuels in America. The black gold, which I like to call it, affects America in so many different ways. Have no worries coal is no where from becoming extinct or replaced. "Coal will be popular big time, in 2005," says Jim Thompson, who edits the weekly report U.S. Coal Review out of Knoxville, Tenn. "There will be more test bums than ever." In Wyoming alone they shipped out over four hundred million tons. I can’t even imagine how large that quantity is. Coal is so useful and America depends on coal greatly (Gransbery). Coal is utilized for combustion, which benefits the Residential areas and Power Plants. The coal used for that is known as Bituminous coal. That can be found in the Appalachian Mountains and even some central states. This type of coal is used due to its high heating value and high sulfur content Coal is also capable of being converted into gaseous or liquid fuel. Before any of this can happen, we need to find the mother load of the coal. Another word for that is the reserves. The major reserves in America for coal are found in the Northern Great Planes, Texas and Gulf of Mexico.
In our days, mining for resources is inevitable. The resources we need are valuable in everyday life. Such resources mined up are coal, copper, gold, silver, and sand. However, mining poses environmental risks that can degrade the quality of soil and water, which can end up effecting us humans if not taken care of and many of the damages are irreversible once they have occurred.