known as mountaintop removal mining has plagued areas of the eastern United States, mainly including the state of West Virginia. Throughout its increasing stages of implementation, mountaintop removal mining has caused numerous hampering effects, including causing serious harm to nearby residents, and polluting a once-pure environment. Because of this, mountaintop removal mining needs to be limited in order to preserve the natural state of the Appalachian Mountains. Mountaintop removal mining has been
Mountaintop Removal Mining in West Virginia One of the most frequently talked about and discussed ethical issues, that I have heard a lot about since moving and living in the state of West Virginia for over a year, is about Mountain top removal mining. Mountain top removal poses two ethical questions, the environmental hazards of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia? And the economical benefits and resources it brings to the state? What is right and what is wrong; an answer or a problem
Mountaintop removal mining, a practice that was developed in the 1970s as an extension of surface strip mining, entails the removal of up to 800 vertical feet of a mountaintop or ridge in order to access deep coal seams. Practiced extensively in Southern Appalachia—primarily Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee—mountaintop removal is estimated to have impacted over 700,000 acres in the region (it is noteworthy that the 700,000 acre figure is based on coal company data, which geographers
perpetuated Adam and Eve’s banishment from paradise, mountaintop removal poses a serious threat to the ecosystem and economy of West Virginia. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (2005) defines mountaintop removal as “a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal.” Coal companies throughout Appalachia adopted this process as a means of acquiring coal faster. People in support of mountaintop removal concentrate, not only on the cheap, plentiful energy
Mountaintop removal, or Mountaintop Mining, is a criticized mining technique that mainly occurs in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. It is a form of surface mining, that is very different from other surface techniques, as it uses very strong and powerful explosives. Mountaintop Mining is the process of blowing the tops off mountains in order to extract the coal inside. This mining process is criticized as coal companies use strong explosives such as dynamite, in order to blow open mountains
The Region's economy has been highly dependent on mining, forestry, agriculture, chemical industries, and heavy industry, among which coal mining appears to be the largest financial contributor to the economy. Although half of the U.S. electricity comes from coal energy, many Americans now precious little about the earth-ravaging mining practice called mountaintop-removal mining used to extract coal in Southern Appalachia. The radical strip-mining process literally blow the tops off mountains with
Mountain Top Removal is an American tragedy, the process in which mining companies remove forests and topsoil then explode the mountain apart level by level to get to coal layer. It is estimated that the explosives are equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb. A lot of the mining waste is discarded into valleys and streams; the water runoff is high in silt, ion, and sulfur compounds, which in turn pollute water downstream. Even with chemical treatments, vegetation has a hard time growing on the infertile
resources for granted and are leading its people to believe there is an endless source of cheap energy in mountain top removal mining. As a West Virginia native this writer knows all to well what happens when big business wins out over land preservation. The most disturbing sight this writer has seen is the aftermath of mountain top removal mining. Mountain top removal mining has been in practice since the 1960’s. In order to reach the coal around 400 to 500 feet of the mountain top is blasted
Laura JonesMOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL IN KENTUCKY 1 Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in Kentucky! Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience to take action against the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Kentucky. Thesis Statement: Mountaintop removal has a negative effect on the environment and there are steps we can take to stop it from happening in Kentucky. Attention Step Kentucky is a beautiful place full of mountains, streams, and trees. Kentucky is special to everyone in this room
cancer-related deaths. Many of those cases have been said to be caused from greater exposer to pollution from coal-mining activity, which is said to increase your chances for cancer along with other fatal diseases. The Appalachia area has seen a rise in mortality rates, over 60,000 cases of those being cancer-related deaths directly linked to mountaintop removal practices. Mountaintop removal has been deemed as cleaner and safer than men going below ground to mine for coal, but with Appalachian communities-
economy because it is cheap and it creates jobs.. But the other side of the story portrays coal mining as a process that kills thousands of coal miners a year and that it practically destroys the environment around the mining with soot and air pollution. Mining now days is a big part of urbanization; due to how cheap the process is. There are different ways that coal mining is done. Mainly mountain top removal is done but there are many other
Web. 20 Apr. 2014. Pickering, John, Roland Kays, Albert Meier, Susan Andrew, and Kay Yatskievych. "Appalachian Mountains." Wilderness -- Earth's Last Wild Places (2002): 458-67. Web. 20 Apr. 2014 Yan, Sophia. "In West Virginia, a Battle Over Mountaintop Mining." Time. Time Inc., 12 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
boosted the economy of Appalachian towns and cities, it has also degraded the range aesthetically and commercially. One major business of the Appalachian mountain range is the coal mining industry; the range is the second-highest supplier of coal in America (Wuerthner, 2008). A common method of coal-extraction, mountaintop removal, results in mountain peaks becoming plateaus. The use of 300 million pounds of an explosive, ammonium nitrate rich fuel allows miners to remove hundreds of feet off mountain peaks
Coal Mining in West Virginia has long been a source of income in the mountain state. Coal was first being mined here in 1742, and many of our families have felt the impact of coal. My grandfather and great grandfather were both involved in the coal industry. Both worked underground while my grandfather graduated to an above ground job doing maintenance on long wall miners and other mine related equipment. I can say that the life of a coal miner has altered the ways of many for this great state
Coal mining, in particular, strip mining has become the latest casualty of the growing green movement in the United States. What is strip mining? Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines strip mining as the removal of vegetation, soil, and rock above a layer of coal, followed by the removal of the coal itself (“strip”). Most Americans don’t realize the impact this material of biological origin that can be used as a source of energy (“fossil”), or fossil fuel, has on their everyday lives or the nation’s
the coal reserve determines the method of coal extraction. Surface mining method is more convenient if the reserve or coal seam is less than 200 feet beneath and underground mining method is opted if the reserve lies beyond 200 feet below the surface. Surface mining involves removing of shallow coal over a broad area where the land is fairly flat. Huge dragline shovels commonly remove rocks overlying the coal (called
to do, is to blame big government for their down fall. Traditional, the people of West Virginia believe that it’s the federal government fault for the coal industry crashing in the state. The people of West Virginia beliefs system is off of coal mining, but there is a divide in the state now. You have part of the state that is for coal and the other half against coal for various reasons. Coal fuel no matter how you look at it, is harmful to the
overburden, power shovels, large trucks (Wikipedia, n.d) used for transportation and even used bucket wheel excavator and conveyors. Ways of extraction of coal in this method are first doing the explosive to break down the surface or overburden of the mining area. Once the overburden was removed by draglines, finally seam comes and coals gets and transported for economic
Another option is to have the United States military force mining countries, specifically the Congolese to treat their workers well and to equally distribute revenue, yet this would most likely lead to war. There is also the option of having companies only sell conflict-free electronics. This allows the possibility of individuals fighting over the same resource to stop. Although, this would
Humans impact the lithosphere by coal mining and mining for minerals. They also affect it by pollution, since the ground is permeable and it seeps into the lithosphere causing harm to it. On the other hand, the lithosphere has materials that humans need for survival and for some luxuries that we have made. How can we still keep the resources from the lithosphere without damaging it as much as we have. The humans need the lithosphere, so we need to either find better alternatives to the materials