Republicans Risk Their Constituents Lives to Protect Big Coal’s Profits

Cough cough, black phlegm spews from your lungs…and you don't smoke. That long-awaited bath or shower you desired after a hard days at work, is less orange than before. This is the fate of the folks living in the Appalachians and victims of Mountain Top Removal. Mountain removal is the act of blowing up mountain tops to get at the coal. Mountains that are hundred if not thousands of feet tall are destroyed and leaving destruction in its path. Not just the land, but also the lives of both animals and human.

According to Mountain Justice,

1. Forests are clear-cut; often scraping away topsoil, lumber, understory herbs such as ginseng and goldenseal, and all other forms of life that do not move out of the way quickly enough. Wildlife habitat is destroyed and vegetation loss often leads to floods and landslides. Next, explosives up to 100 times as strong as ones that tore open the Oklahoma City Federal building blast up to 800 feet off mountaintops. Explosions can cause damage to home foundations and wells. “Fly rock,” more aptly named fly boulder, can rain off mountains, endangering resident’s lives and homes.

2. Huge Shovels dig into the soil and trucks haul it away or push it into adjacent valleys.

3. A dragline digs into the rock to expose the coal. These machines can weigh up to 8 million pounds with a base as big as a gymnasium and as tall as a 20-story building. These machines allow coal companies to hire fewer workers. A small crew can tear apart a mountain in less than a year, working night and day. Coal companies make big profits at the expense of us all.The act itself is a detriment to life at the expense of our planet. By clear-cutting trees and blowing up the lands, corporations make millions if not billions of dollars and when done, leave the pristine woodlands for the family who live nearby.

4. Giant machines then scoop out the layers of coal, dumping millions of tons of “overburden” – the former mountaintops – into the narrow adjacent valleys, thereby creating valley fills. Coal companies have forever buried over 1,200 miles of biologically crucial Appalachian headwaters streams

5. Coal companies are supposed to reclaim land, but all too often mine sites are left stripped and bare. Even where attempts to replant vegetation have been made, the mountain is never again returned to its healthy state.