EPA’s Lisa Jackson and the Science of Mountaintop Removal
Rob Perks- Director, NRDC Center for Advocacy Campaigns, Washington, D.C.- March 4, 2010
“Certainly it is my belief as we learn more and more from outside scientists and inside scientists, we know that there are clear water quality impacts that come from filling in streams — pretty intuitive — and from the valley fills that result when you have to take this tremendous amount of overburden.”
– Lisa P. Jackson, EPA Administrator
That is what the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday. Jackson readily ackowledged the established body of evidence suggesting mountaintop removal coal mining harms water quality.
How can it not? After all, this extreme form of strip mining involves the use of high explosives to blast Appalachian peaks and heavy machinery to scrape out thin coal seams from beneath the surface. Tons of leftover dirt, debris and rubble then gets dumped down the side of the mountains, filling the valleys below and burying the streams.
That anyone would question the severity of environmental impact is what is astonishing. Yet the coal industry — and its legislative proponents — continue to insist that the practice can be done in an environmentally responsible manner. And our federal environmental agencies have permitted the decapitation of some 500 mountaintops — not to mention the nearly 2,000 mountain streams that have so far been irrecovably contaminated or simply obliterated.
Recently, a group of distinguished scientists forcefully came out against mountaintop removal, publishing a research study concluding that the impacts on stream and groundwater quality, biodiversity, and forest productivity were “pervasive and irreversible” and that current strategies for mitigation and restoration cannot compensate for the degradation. Read entire article.