Environmental and Economic Effects of Local Coal Mining - Research Paper Example

The environmental and economic effects of local coal mining The environmental and economic effects of local coal mining The Appalachian Mountain Range is of one the oldest mountain ranges that stretch from central Alabama in the United States to the Canadian province of Newfoundland. The highest peak which lies at an elevation of six thousand, six hundred and eighty four is Mount Mitchell located in North Carolina. (NASA Earth Observatory) The mountain range is full of vales and small hillsides which support businesses for the people living there. Small farms and orchards are cultivated in the rich soil, paper and rayon manufacturing plants are set up since the raw material from the vast timber forests is available. Towards the northern end potatoes, wheat is grown along with cattle that are used to make dairy products. Towards the southern end farmers grow corn, tobacco and because the ground is flatter, poultry which provides eggs. The valleys of the Appalachian Mountains are ideal to grow alfalfa, hay and apples. Most of the forests that cover the ancient mountain range consist of hickories, maples and oaks. In the fall they change color from deep green to orange and crispy brown. The trees are chopped off for their wood and then taken to North Caroline furniture makers. The peaks are rich in coal, thus coal mining has emerged as a major industry and provides employment to many natives of the Appalachian Mountains. The upper land is also rich in mineral resources such as Iron, stone and crude oil. Of course the vast timber forests are worth their weight in gold as the international demand for timber for various chemical and furniture industry rises. To address the need for electricity, it is generated from the tumbling streams that go downhill supplies hydroelectric power. Tourism is also a booming industry which provides a steady source of income for most people living on the mountain tops. There is a Mount Mitchell National Park which was established in 1915 and named after the scientist Dr. Mitchell who was the first one sent to the mountain to collect the accurate data on its height. He fell to his death while he was climbing one of the mountains in the Appalachian range. Mining for various minerals have taken the toll on the mountain range and their inhabitants. Mining especially, surface mining where the surface is blasted off and the mineral collected and in strip mining where a side of a mountain is due in and then the mineral is accessed. When we consider mining for coal we have to consider two things, the heat trapping carbon dioxide it generates and the solution to the environment damage that is incurred when the cheap source of fuel is dug out of the ground in massive quantities. Never has the question been so vital to survival more contentious than in the coal mines of the ancient Appalachian Mountain range where the use of advanced mining machines have allowed surface coal mining to reach gigantic proportions. The most environmentally damaging mining technique is known as mountain top removal because coal mining companies literally remove the mountain peak with dynamite bombs and earth breaking machinery called draglines to reach the coal seams. What remains of the mountain in broken crumbs of rocks is piled into hollows in earthen damn called valley fills. The largest earth fills are over eight hundred feel in height and more than a mile in width. In some places like the southern part of the mountain range in West Virginia where there are no environmental laws protecting the mountains these behemoth mines have reached a couple of thousand acres and are still rapidly on the rise. The bigger these mines get the more environmental damage they are likely to create. When mountain tops are removed, and there are streams running downhill from that peak, water quality degrades and stream life, like fish is often killed or intoxicated with the minerals. Water, sediments and fish meat often become home to high concentrations of toxic trace elements, including lead, cadmium, iron nickel and selenium that are dangerous for human and animal consumptions. The only organisms that manage to survive these toxins live on and the rest of the aquatic life is killed. Often times, the mountains which hold millions of tons of coal underneath are home to some of the most biologically diverse and breathtaking forests which are home to thousands of birds and wildlife, and they have been degraded or completely lost due to dynamite bombs which kills the trees from its roots and reduces it to mere debris. Efforts by environmental protection agencies have had very limited success and the destruction of the habitats of the Appalachian Mountains continues at a tremendous scale. Valley fills, which are used to dump the composite of rocks and burned out forests, worsen when during heavy rains. The trees prevent flooding during the heavy rainy season and when the top cover is removed, top soil is lost during flooding making the soil unfertile for decades and the sometimes the water sinks into houses of the people who have dwellings there. Blasting cracks the house foundations and during flooding season the water fills up those cracks destroying the foundations of those houses. When flooding occurs due to the collapse of the earthen heaps of rock and coal sludge impoundments, have destroyed some of the vital watersheds and communities. Starting from late 1990’s, environmental protection groups and the residents who reside near or on the coalfield have sued coal operators and the companies that regulate coal mining. What triggered this off is when the companies started dumping landfill in the streams which is illegal under the Clean Water Act and the and the flattened ridge lines and valley fills are a violation of the core requirement of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act: that mining companies restore the land to its original shape—the “approximate original contour”—as best they can. Variances could be granted if the coal operator offered specific plans for post-mining development that would benefit the community, such as schools, housing, or shopping centers’’ However, in most cases concerning the communities of the Appalachian Mountains these developments never materialized so the residents often lost their dwellings and still did not get anything in return as compensation. In West Virginia, the rise in lawsuits created a pressure on the government to do a state wide survey of the impact of mining by mountaintop removal and gave this task to all the agencies that were responsible for regulating coal mining, —the federal Office of Surface Mining, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection—could not initially provide any information that any action could be taken on. The problem arose when they could not conclusively give a number on how many mountain top removal mines had been created, how many streams had been buried by valley fills and, how many “approximate original contour” variances had been granted, or whether or not the promises of reclamation of the mountain tops and development to provide alternate housing and jobs for the community had ever been fulfilled. In 1998 the US Environmental Protection Agency agreed to conduct an environmental study to calculate the cumulative impact of mountaintop removal mining. 12 million acre region of Eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, western Virginia, and eastern Tennessee where companies use earth movers to mine for coal, around seven percent of the land would be rendered useless by the mining between in the years 1992-2012. Twelve thousand miles of streams, which once provided the supply for hydroelectricity, tourism attraction, a habitat for the aquatic life and a supply of clean drinking water has been degraded by mountaintop removal mining. At least 724 miles of stream water lies buried under the earth fills in the years nineteen eighty five to two thousand and one. More mining permits that have been issued since 2001 are likely to destroy some more thousands of acres of forests and hundreds of miles of clean stream water will be too toxic to consume. Surface mining is preferred to underground tunnel mining since it helps to keep the costs low, it is safer for the miners since they are not exposed to rising levels of carbon monoxide underground and the valuable seems of lower sulfur coal is found near the surface. With dynamite bombs and earth breaking machines the output of surface mining is three times greater than coal per miner in the tunnel mines. Employment is the coal mining industry has been on the decline since the 1960’s, the industry still remains a vital joint of the West Virginia’s economy. Residents who have their dwelling on the coal fields are bitter where the jobs of the coal miners are more important than people’s residences or the preservation of the natural heritage which has been a part of the culture for hundreds of years and provides employments to thousands in the tourism industry while keep the environmentally friendly. In 2004 the ‘buffer zone’ was redefined by the Federal Office of Surface Mining that prohibits mining activities by the law within 100 feet of a stream in order to preserve them. 50 members of the U.S House of Representatives responded to the proposal by co-sponsoring legislation that would absolutely ban the disposal of mine wastes in the streams. - Report by the U.S House of Representatives.(GovTrack.us. (2007). The economy of the Appalachian is heavily based on the agriculture that region supports, with little development in the form of infrastructure jobs are limited to the mining and agriculture. In the recent years, as mechanization is becoming more and more popular and the minimum wage goes up many people’s jobs have been lost in the coal mining industry. In old days, tunnels were dug on the side of the mountains and then manual labor was used to haul out the coal which was a good way to protect the environment and provide employment to the residents living there. Now with companies using dynamite to blast through the solid rock and the machines to haul out the coal lesser people are needed to work in the mines. Thankfully the soil is fertile, and apples, wheat and barley are grown there in towards the south. In the southern region, cattle are also raised for its milk products and meat. It is easy to raise them because of the availability of food for them. The rich green dense forests are ideal for grazing and providing shelter for them. For centuries, farmers have relied on the rich fertile soil to grow the food on these mountains and the availability of clean water to drink and water the cattle and the farm produce. The advent of mining has proved to be devastating for the agricultural economy; the waste from the mining has been filled in the streams which were necessary to provide water for the growth of the plants. Now the streams have toxic elements in them which can cause indigestion in cattle and the humans who consume this water. Crops may die or the fruit might be contaminated with the toxic elements. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.2005) This creates a shortage of water supply too. Fishing in the Appalachian Mountains is one of the tourism attractions and also a good source of much needed protein for the people who live on the mountain tops. With water pollution on the rise in this range, aquatic life has greatly decreased reducing the live hood for the fishermen whose jobs depended on the steady fresh supply of fish. (Lyburn, WV 2007) Deforestation is the root cause of so many problems that the people and the wildlife suffer from in these mountains. When the trees are recklessly cut down the top soil which is considered the most fertile layers by soil scientists and most plants take their nutrition from there. It takes thousands of years of rock and dead animal decomposition to form the couple of inches of the top soil that is vital to the growth and when the trees and plant cover protecting the top soil from the element of nature like, wind and water are removed the top soil is lost. During the heavy rainfalls, the roots and the branches of the trees serve to give shelter to the wildlife and protect the fertile soil. When dynamite blasts through the rocks its kills the trees thus leaving the path open for water to create destruction and drown the animals. How flooding works is that when more the rainfall seasons manage to shower down more than average water the streams swell up and the water spills out. Now in order for the ground to absorb water there needs to be something holding the water down to the ground, like roots or grass so the water can slowly be absorbed into the ground. When the plant cover is blasted through, a slope is created and the water rapidly runs downhill flooding crops and damaging the houses of the communities that have their residents located on the side of the slope. That leads to the water going down in the foundations of the houses and cracking them. If crops are damaged that just adds to the loss to the communities. Mining development is good for the overall development of the economy, however if we do not use these scarce resources of scenic beauty and diversity of wildlife, we threaten to destroy some of the world’s most beautiful ecosystems. Tourism development is not just necessary for entertainment and relaxation purposes but also it helps us learn about the cultures and the diversity of habitats as well. Note: All the ideas mentioned in the paper have been taken from the following sources mentioned below but just have been put in different perspectives. Work Cited North Carolina State University | Tradition and Transformation. (n.d.). North Carolina State University | Tradition and Transformation. Retrieved April 27, 2012, from http://www.ncsu.edu NASA Earth Observatory : Home. (n.d.). NASA Earth Observatory : Home. Retrieved April 27, 2012, from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov American Geophysical Institute (2003, October 20). Settlement reached on coal slurry spill. Geotimes.org. Accessed December 20, 2007. Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. Massey Valley Fill Disaster, Lyburn, WV. Accessed December 20, 2007. GovTrack.us. (2007). H.R. 2169–110th Congress. Clean Water Protection Act. GovTrack.us Database of Federal legislation. Accessed Dec 16, 2007. Ryan, B. (2007, October 18). Judge grants injunction on mining permit. The State Journal. Accessed December 20, 2007. U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. (2004, January 7). Surface Coal Mining and Reclamation Operations; Excess Spoil; Stream Buffer Zones; Diversions; Proposed Rule Federal Register, 69(4). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2005). Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fills in Appalachia: Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. Accessed December 20, 2007. Ward, K. (2007, August 22). OSM proposes exempting fills from buffer zone rule. Charleston Gazette-Mail. Accessed December 20, 2007. Ward, K. (1998, August 9). Flattened: Most mountaintop mines left as pasture land in state. Charleston Gazette-Mail. Accessed December 20, 2007. Ward, K. (1998, August 9). Number of mines in state is unknown. Charleston Gazette-Mail. Accessed December 20, 2007. Ward, K. (2007, July 22). 30 years later, mine law’s success debated. Charleston Gazette-Mail. Accessed December 20, 2007. West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Division of Mining and Reclamation. Findings of the Flood Advisory Technical Task Force. Accessed December 20, 2007. Read More