Chapter 23 Testing comprehension. A mining geologist locates a horizontal seam of coal very near the surface of the land. What type of mining method will the minding company use to extract it? When a resource occurs in shallow horizontal deposits near the surface, the most effective mining method may be strip mining.
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which grew out of concerns over environmental degradation and pollution from strip mining, established the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and created regulations for regulating surface mines and reclaiming closed or abandoned mines.
Forty years ago, President Jimmy Carter signed a law that literally changed the face of Appalachia. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) was intended to replace a state-to-state patchwork of rules for strip-mining with a uniform federal standard. Four decades later, however, environmentalists say the law has fallen …
Appalachian Coalition Against Strip Mining. The Appalachian region boasts a long, proud history of resistance by individuals, organizations, and alliances working to stop strip mining abuses in the region, beginning in …
Strip mining has forever altered the Appalachian landscape by cutting off mountaintops to get at low sulfur deposits more cheaply and safely than underground mining allows. Now, after 20 years of dumping the debris into neighboring valleys, a federal judge has ruled that disposal violates the Clean Air Act, which prohibits depositing "waste" near waterways. …
Mountaintop Mining. Mountaintop removal coal mining — one of the most notoriously destructive forms of mining — has torn through over 500 mountains across Appalachia, even as coal's dominance over American energy supplies has faded in recent years. Mountaintop removal is a form of strip mining. Instead of tunneling into the earth ...
"Strip mining on steroids" is the term that has often been used to describe the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) that is ripping through the Appalachian Mountains. Over 2,000 miles of …
Forty years ago, President Jimmy Carter signed a law that literally changed the face of Appalachia. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) was intended to replace a state-to …
It involves cutting a shelf along the edge of the mountainside above the cold sea. The earth in the rock has been pushed over the side of the mountain until the coal is exposed. Then the coal is scooped out by machines. Developments in technology and heavy equipment eliminate the need for manpower. This strip job is employed at maximum 8 min.
Strip mining and later mountaintop-removal for coal has caused widespread destruction of native forest in Appalachia, USA, over the past decades. Around 1.5 million acres have been 'restored', but …
Strip mining required fewer workers than older methods of extraction. Thus, even as coal output soared, mining employment in Appalachia fell by more than half from 1950 to 1964. The unions withered.
Green Forests Work. Such aggressive bulldozing is part of a new and evolving approach to healing forests destroyed by decades of surface coal mining in Appalachia, from Alabama to Pennsylvania. These lands were supposed to have been reclaimed in recent decades under the 1977 federal Surface Mine Control and …
(A total ban on strip‐mining in Appalachia would cost the average consumer 15 cents month more on his utility bill —$1.80 a year—according to an estimate by a House subcommittee.)
Attorney Ned Pillersdorf has sued Blackhawk Mining and Pine Branch Mining, claiming strip mining in Breathitt County made flooding worse. "You got an amount of rain and then a 45-minute tidal ...
Developers of a solar farm atop a former Kentucky coal mining site hope their work will inspire similar projects — putting abandoned land to use and helping revive the Appalachian economy.. However, for reasons both logistical and cultural, the process is much more complicated and time consuming than it may seem. In April, a Kentucky coal …
Appalachian coal companies, saddled by billions in debt, started to collapse. In the case of Pat Coal, it had nearly three times as many retirees as active employees, and, in the first half of ...
Surface coal mining in the steep terrain of the central Appalachian coalfields includes: mountaintop removal, contour, area, highwall, and auger mining. …
Early attempts to regulate strip-mining on the state level were largely unsuccessful due to lax enforcement. The Appalachian Group to Save the Land and the People was founded in 1965 to stop surface mining. In 1968, Congress held the first hearings on strip mining. Ken Hechler introduced the first strip-mining abolition bill in Congress in 1971 ...
Strip mining across the mountaintops of Appalachia is scarring as much as three times more land to get a ton of coal than just …
Coal mining is an old story in Appalachia, but Blair has been claimed by a new kind of boom. Today's mining is driven by mountaintop removal, a method of strip-mining that does just what the name suggests. ... Strip-mining in the United States is governed by a 1977 federal law, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act …
It found that a total of 1,400 square miles of Appalachia within the Ohio River basin has been scarred by strip mining, with the tops and sides of mountains blasted away and steep mountains valleys filled with so-called "waste rock.". The area with the largest extent of strip-mining damage in the entire Ohio River basin—almost 500 square ...
A review of new and old research shows coal strip mines rebound in remarkable ways, findings that could shape a new vision for these ravaged landscapes. ... The federal Surface Mining Reclamation ...
In the 1970s, as more and more of the readily available coal was extracted from West ia's underground mines and ridge lines, companies decided to take strip mining to its logical ...
According to a compilation of individual states' data, it has been estimated that over 8.4 billion acres of land nationwide have been disturbed by strip mining practices, including …
8 months ago. Strip mining is a form of surface mining that is employed to strip away a layer or seam of soil, natural vegetation, and rocks (known as overburden) to extract the mineral deposits underneath. Unlike underground mining, it is predominately used to access relatively flat sedimentary mineral reserves that are near the earth's ...
The Appalachian and Illinois Basins east of the Mississippi River have the most mines in the country, with more than 77% of eastern production coming from underground mines. Between 2008 and 2017, 340 fewer underground mines produced coal in this region, compared with 410 fewer surface mines. ... Strip mining is a method used …
It's a scenario that's been played out so many times in these hollows — where all that's left of communities like Pardee, Dunbar, Linden, Twenty Town, and countless others are their names. To help fight the strip mining on Black Mountain, contact the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards — a local advocacy group — at 540/565-0595.
July 28, 2011. Cancer rates are twice as high in an Appalachian community exposed to mountaintop removal mining as in a non-mining control community, according to a new study, published July 26 ...
Strip Mining in the Appalachians Hosted by Warren Olney May. 16, 2002 National Strip mining has forever altered the Appalachian landscape by cutting off mountaintops to …
VARNEY — Pigeon Creek flows through a narrow mountain hollow along a string of coal mining communities, its water trickling under the red and yellow of the changing fall foliage.
Called mountaintop removal, an apt name, it's the latest, most rapid, ruthless, and efficient form of strip mining and accounts for an ever-growing share of West ia coal production.
MINING AND APPALACHIAN COMMUNITIES: A . HISTORY AS DARK AS THE MINES THEMSELVES. Historian Ronald Eller describes the solitude of the mountains of southern Appalachia in the last decade of the nineteenth century: 1 In "mountaintop removal" strip mining, coal companies blast the tops off mountains to reveal the coal …
In fact, the West ia Department of Environmental Protection celebrated Earth Day by rubber-stamping a new strip-mining permit for an out-of-state coal …
Mountaintop removal coal mines have changed the shape, altitude, and ecology of large areas of the Appalachian coalfields. This photograph shows part of the Kayford Mountain Mine in West ia on October 22, …
For well over a century, central Appalachia has been an environmental justice and energy sace zone. Technological developments in strip-mining for coal have destroyed the fabric of many Appalachian communities and wreaked incalculable damages on …