by KERRY ZIMMERMAN
Intern News Reporter

Voicing serious concerns about the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has placed pending mining permits under tighter scrutiny, according to a March 24 news release.

The EPA submitted comments on two permits currently in review to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, addressing the “need to reduce the potential harmful impacts on water quality,” according to the release.

Mining by mountaintop removal is a method that levels the tops of mountains with explosives to expose and extract coal. Special to The Appalachian

“It’s a clear signal across the board that we now have an administration in place that is actually going to endorse environmental regulation,” Austin T. Hall, North Carolina field organizer for Appalachian Voices said.

Mountaintop removal is a coal mining method that levels the tops of mountains with explosives to extract the coal within.

The mountaintop rubble is then placed into nearby valleys, often burying and contaminating the headwaters of streams that provide the surrounding communities with their drinking water, Hall said.

He said chemical residue from the toxic explosive ammonium nitrate fuel oil (ANFO) used to remove the mountaintops, along with silica, or rock, dust and coal dust, “cascade down” on local communities.

They live with “blasting in [their] backyard,” poor water quality and “no real economic stimulus,” Hall said.

These conditions have devalued their houses, preventing them from moving to a better neighborhood.

“Essentially you’re stuck with a worthless house in a region that’s being completely degenerated right in front of your eyes,” Hall said. “People are forced to live a diminished quality of life.”

Mountaintop removal mining is still practiced because it is one of the cheapest ways to extract coal.

North Carolina is the second largest consumer of mountaintop removal coal in the country, causing irreparable repercussions “just next door,” Hall said.

Coal generates about 50 percent of North Carolina’s energy.

The New River Light and Power Company, owned by Appalachian State University, distributes energy to Appalachian and almost all of Boone, according to nrlp.appstate.edu.

It purchases its energy from Duke Power Company, which is a large facilitator and supplier powered by mountaintop removal mining.

Though North Carolina does not practice mountaintop removal mining, the state is not exempt from the practice’s negative environmental effects.

State boundaries cannot prevent impacts on North Carolina’s wildlife populations from mountaintop removal mining in bordering states.

Appalachian Voices is one of the major organizations fighting to discontinue the devastating effects of mountaintop removal mining on people, forestry, wildlife and the mountains themselves.

Their main initiatives against this process include legislation, which is now operating on the federal level.

The Clean Water Protection Act, a current bill in the U.S. House, would amend the original Clean Water Act to reinstate toxic mining waste as one of the law’s prohibited water pollutants. Recently, a companion bill, the Appalachia Restoration Act, was introduced in the U.S. Senate.

The Appalachian Mountains Protection Act, a bill in the N.C. House, would prohibit North Carolina energy companies to purchase and use coal from mountaintop removal mining. The bill recently received support from the Boone Town Council.

Hall advises students to express their opinions about the legislation by writing to their state and federal representatives.

The banning of mountaintop removal coal would affect North Carolina’s economy.

Many energy companies express their concerns that alternative mining methods are more expensive, require more workers and the added cost of re-outfitting their factories to process coal with compositional properties different from mountaintop removal coal will cause consumer prices to rise.

Hall said in the long run, North Carolina would be protecting itself from a coal supply shortage, which would “inevitably” cause a price spike.

Both Morgan A. Bosse, director of Environmental Affairs for Appalachian’s Student Government Association, and Rio W. Tazewell, Renewable Energy Initiative (REI) public relations officer and ASU Sustainable Energy Society (ASUSES) public relations coordinator, agree the price increase would be worth the abolition of mountaintop removal mining.

“[Energy corporations] shouldn’t be allowed to put the price tag on the consumers,” Tazewell said. “They were the ones who decided to invest in this infrastructure in the first place.”

Bosse stressed the environmental side.

“If we value our mountains, we should value all of [them],” she said. “You can’t rebuild a mountain.”

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