Posted on January 12, 2010- Will Hewes- American Rivers- Climate Policy Coordinator
“Clean air, and water and coal mining go hand in hand.” So read an opinion piece in the Charleston Gazette earlier this month.
Phew, and all this time I had been worried that burying thousands of miles of streams in Appalachia had an impact on water quality and surrounding communities. The article goes on to make an impassioned argument in favor of continued coal mining and urges us to not “let our freedom diminish.”
As would seem relatively obvious to most unbiased observers, coal mining has not typically advanced the cause of clean water, especially when it comes to mountaintop removal. The process of coal mining can have some pretty disastrous downsides. Margaret Palmer - a member of American Rivers’ scientific and technical advisory committee - and a number of other scientists published a study in Science this week detailing the full environmental cost of mountaintop removal. The authors find:
“Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for the losses.”
The practice buries streams that are important to the overall health of the watershed, destroys forests, and decreases biodiversity. Contaminants from mining sites have been found to spread far downstream and degrade water quality. There are also significant threats to human health. In mined areas, there are higher levels of chemicals in well water and elevated rates of mortality, lung cancer, and heart, lung, and kidney disease.
Coal mining also has a dual effect of worsening climate change and increasing our vulnerability to its impacts. Continued burning of coal will contribute to rising temperatures, increased floods and droughts, and worsening water pollution problems. By damaging our natural resources, mountaintop removal also makes ecosystems less resilient to the impacts of climate change and decreases their ability to provide clean water, reduce floods, and buffer against droughts. Read Entire Article.