Hobet 21 Mine of West Virginia is a Mountaintop Removal Mine.
Being mined for coal, the mountain primarily produces high-grade coal, a
low-sulfur bituminous which burns with a cleaner, hotter efficiency in electric
power plants. Taxes from the bituminous
coal help fuel a large part of West Virginia’s economy. (National Geographic)
According
to the Smithsonian, since the coal shaft mining processes in the area ended in
the 1950s, the coal projects in West Virginia have since moved to become a project
of “demolishing mountains instead of drilling into them.” This is the
process/method known as mountaintop removal mining. (Smithsonian.com)
In
this process, the disposal of overburden into adjacent valleys is called
“valley fills.” Valley fills occur in steep terrain where there are
limited disposal alternative. Typically these mountaintop removal mines
occurred in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee. (Epa.gov)
(NWF)
In
the method of the mountaintop removal mining there are five basic steps.
Layers of rock and dirt above the coal, called
overburden, are removed.
Next, the upper seams of coal are removed with
spoils placed in an adjacent valley.
Draglines excavate lower layers of coal with
spoils placed in spoil piles.
Drag lines are huge
machines us, some the size of an entire city block, able to scoop up to 100
times in a single load.
Then, re-grading begins as the coal excavation
continues.
Finally, once the coal removal is complete, final
re-grading takes place and the area is re-vegetated.
These five steps for
provided by the EPA.
While
coal is in high demand in the United States, the US Department of Energy
estimated that there was a staggering 28.5 billion tons of this high-quality
coal in the Appalachia region in 1998. (Epa.gov)By
restricting mountaintop mining to small watersheds, this could potentially
substantially impact the amount of extraction that takes place in these
mountaintop removal mines. (Epa.gov)
Some of the coal companies in the
region have been using explosives to blast as much as 800-1,000 feet off of the
mountaintops. This is meant to reach deep into the mountain to reach some of
the thin seams of coal. (Earthjustice.org)
The Environmental Protection
Agency projected that by 2012, the two decades of mountaintop removal mining in
the region will have destroyed/degraded 11.5% of the forests in Kentucky,
Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee. This equals altogether, an area larger
than that of the state of Delaware. The overburden that is dumped into the
valleys has buried 1,000+ miles of stream. (Smithsonian.com)
In a study done by National
Geographic on the mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, the results
showed that as well as water pollution in the valley below the mountaintop
removal mining, there is serious air pollution which causes dangerous health
issues to the residents of the towns in the valleys. (National Geographic)
The Hobet 21 Mine produces
approximately one ton of coal for every 16 tons of terrain that is displaced.
(Smithsonian.com)
As far as reclamation of the
mountaintop removal mines in the Appalachian region goes, as of 2010, 89.3% of
these sites held no form of verifiable post-mining economic reclamation
excluding forestry and pasture, while only 6.3% of the total number of site
yielded some form of verifiable post mining economic development. These results
only examined 410 mountaintop removal sites in the Appalachian region, while 90
other of these locations were excluded from the study due to being active with
ongoing mining activity. The study also shows that roughly 1.2 million acres of
the Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains have been the product of mountaintop
removal mining. (Nrdc.org)
(Toxic Water)
Environmental laws that are in
existence to help protect the environment and regulate the mining in the area
include (Auoralights.org):
o Clean
Water Act of 1972
§
Is a safeguard against the dumping of waste and
pollutants into waterways.
o Valley
Fill or 404 permits
§
A 404 permits must be obtained in order for
mining which calls for valley fills.
§
This is an exemption to subsection 404 of the
Clean Water Act, which allows for the issuing of variances to fill in an
intermittent or perennial street.
·
An intermittent stream of water during wet
portions of the year in the perennial stream holds water throughout the year.
o Surface
mining control and reclamation act
§
This requires that “all surface coal mining
operations backfill, compact… and grade in order to restore the approximate
original contour of the land with all high walls, spoil piles and depressions
eliminated.”
·
It is not uncommon to be granted exemption from
this.
o Mining
safety and health administration permit
§
Oversees the regulatory structure of the mines.
Works Cited
Gormley, Neil.
"The Poverty of Mountaintop Removal Mining." Earthjustice. N.p., 03 Jan. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://earthjustice.org/blog/2013-january/the-poverty-of-mountaintop-removal-mining>.
Lexy. "Bucyrus
Erie 1570-W Walking Dragline (Patriot Coal Corp. - Hobet 21 Surface Mine)
"Big John"" Panoramio.
Google Maps, 7 Oct. 2010. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.panoramio.com/photo/41841203>.
Lindsey, Rebecca.
"Coal Controversy In Appalachia : Feature Articles." Coal Controversy In Appalachia : Feature
Articles. NASA, 21 Dec. 2007. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MountaintopRemoval/>.
McQuaid, John.
"Mining the Mountains." Smithsonian.
Smithsonian, Jan. 2009. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ecocenter-energy/mining-the-mountains-130454620/?no-ist=&no-list=&page=1>.
"Mid-Atlantic
Mountaintop Mining | US EPA." EPA.
Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.epa.gov/region03/mtntop/>.
Mitchell, John G.
"When Mountains Move." Mountaintop
Removal Article, Coal Mining Information, Coal Industry Facts. National
Geographic, Mar. 2006. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/surface-of-the-earth/when-mountains-move.html>.
"Mountaintop
Mine Looms Over House." Hobet 21
Coal Mine Aerial. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://olsonfarlow.photoshelter.com/image/I000029Xc7YTq3H8>.
Perks, Rob.
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2010. Web. 11 Mar. 2015. <http://www.nrdc.org/media/2010/100517.asp>.
Stadler, Felice.
"We Have a Climate Problem-and the U.S. EPA Has a Solution!" Wildlife Promise We Have a Climate
Problemand the US EPA Has a Solution Comments. National Wildlife
Federation, 20 Sept. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://blog.nwf.org/2013/09/we-have-a-climate-problem-and-the-us-epa-has-a-solution/>.
"What Is
Mountaintop Removal?" Legislation,
Permits, Regulations ::: Journey Up Coal River. Aurora Lights, n.d. Web. 11
Mar. 2015.
<http://auroralights.org/map_project/theme.php?theme=mtr&article=20>.
"What Is
Mountaintop Removal Mining?" Earthjustice.
N.p., 04 June 2010. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
<http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/what-is-mountaintop-removal-mining>.
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<http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-guidelines-for-mountaintop-coal-mining-26399004/?no-ist=>.
