Study: Mountaintop Mining Damage Pervasive and Irreversible

by Ken Ward Jr., excerpted from Jan. 7, 2010 Charleston Gazette

Full story at www.wvgazette.com/News/201001070420

Mountaintop removal is causing "pervasive and irreversible damage" to Appalachias forests, streams and wildlife and new permits should not be granted unless a way is found to prevent such impacts, a group of leading scientists have concluded.

A dozen top scientists in varying fields reviewed existing research on mining impacts and examined a huge new set of water quality data to develop a broad-picture look at surface coal-mining effects on the region. Their findings (were) published in (the January) issue of Science, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the top journals in the world.

"Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses," the scientists concluded.

In their paper, the authors outline severe environmental degradation taking place at mining sites and downstream: The practice destroys extensive tracts of forests and buries small streams that play essential roles in the overall health of entire watersheds. Waterborne contaminants enter streams that remain below valley fills, and can be carried downstream into larger bodies of water.

"The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable," said lead author Margaret Palmer of the University of Marylands Center for Environmental Science.

"Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes."

The paper called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the federal Army Corps of Engineers to not issue new mountaintop removal permits unless new mining and reclamation methods "can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems."

Palmer emphasized that federal regulators approve new valley fills based on their conclusion that mine operator "mitigation plans" to rebuild streams will properly replace waterways buried by mining.

But, Palmer said, no scientific literature has been published to show such plans work. Also, the paper said, corps officials have testified in court that they know of no such plan that worked.

Co-author Emily Bernhardt of Duke University explained that mining operations discharge a variety of metals and ions from sulfates to selenium that are toxic to aquatic life.

Studies have found decreased biodiversity downstream from valley fills, where these materials all mix to make water quality unsuitable for fish and aquatic insects.

"It is a death by many cuts," Bernhardt said.

Another co-author, Michael Hendryx of West Virginia University, has published papers showing that Appalachians who live near coal mining operations suffer increased heart and lung disease and early mortality.