Last April, in response to resounding opposition to mountaintop removal, the EPA announced new guidelines for permitting mountaintop
removal valley fills.
In March 2007, OVEC and partner groups won a federal lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers that repealed mountaintop
removal valley fill permits in southern West Virginia granted without adequate environmental consideration, and banned issuance of new permits.
Not exact matches
I color coded the areas affected by mountaintop
removal (blue) and the areas affected by
valley fill (yellow) and overlaid the color coded DEM over the hill shades of the mine in 2003 and 2010.
After analyzing all these results, I have found that 7.4 million cubic meters of rock was removed by way of mountain top
removal mining and 9.8 million cubic meters of rock has
filled what once was a
valley.
In the case of mountaintop
removal mining, coal companies are exploding entire mountains to reach buried seams of coal and then
filling valleys with the rubble, burying hundreds of miles of stream forever.
These sites also don't hold water very well — they were engineered to drain into
valley fills, the terraced slopes where rubble from mountaintop
removal is dumped.
Coal mining has progressively changed from predominantly underground mining to surface mining [143], including mountaintop
removal with
valley fill, which is now widespread in the Appalachian ecoregion in the United States.
In the heart of Appalachia, where the coal industry wields enormous power over government and public opinion, lifelong resident Maria Gunnoe fights against environmentally - devastating mountaintop
removal mining and
valley fill operations.
Researchers at the university of Kentucky recently concluded: «there is a clear risk of increased flooding (greater runoff production and less surface flow detention) following [mountaintop
removal and
valley fill] operations.»
«Mountaintop
removal /
valley fill is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal.
At least 724 miles of streams were completely buried by
valley fills from Appalachian mountaintop
removal between 1985 and 2001.
Surface mining has also become a dominant driver of land - use change and water pollution in certain regions of the world, where mountaintop
removal, coal and tar sands exploitation, and other open pit mining methods strip land surfaces of forests and topsoils, produce vast quantities of toxic sludge and solid waste, and often
fill valleys, rivers, and streams with the resulting waste and debris [81].
Gunnoe won the Goldman Prize in 2009 for her fight against environmentally - devastating mountaintop
removal coal mining and
valley fill operations.
In the heart of Appalachia, where the coal industry wields enormous power over government and public opinion, lifelong resident and 2009 Goldman Prize winner Maria Gunnoe fights against environmentally - devastating mountaintop
removal mining and
valley fill operations.
Mountaintop
removal coal mining means blowing off most of a mountain and pushing the
fill into the
valleys.