West Virginia Mountains Flattened to Retrieve Coal

July 30, 2011— -- From the road, West Virginia's mountains look as pristine as ever, but from above, the landscape resembles more of a moonscape. From even higher up in space, entire swathes of countryside appear flattened.

Since the 1970s, 500 peaks and counting have been literally blown up for the coal that's deep underground. It's called mountaintop removal mining, and it's the subject of a new documentary called "The Last Mountain." It now surpasses mining that takes place underground in output.

When environmental campaigner Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. saw it for the first time, he was overwhelmed.

"If you try and blow up a mountain in the Berkshires or the Adirondacks or the Catskills or in Utah, Colorado, California -- you would be put in jail," he said. "The only reason you see mountain top removal happening in this country is because people don't know about it...nobody would allow this to happen."

With mountaintop removal mining, the trees, soil and land from a few hundred feet above and below ground level are dug up and pulverized for the coal that is underneath.

The mining has already cleared one million acres of forest, an area the size of Delaware, and buried 2,000 miles of streams, causing increased flooding. Selenium and other toxic metals have been found leaching into local waterways.

Health problems have also been reportedly linked to this specific type of mining.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Research finds a significantly higher rate of birth defects in areas where mountaintop removal mining is done compared to other mining and non-mining areas in the Appalachian region.

Higher rates of circulatory, respiratory, central nervous system, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal and urogenital problems were reported through the study, which looked at 1.8 million live births between 1996 and 2003 in central Appalachia.

Jerry Aleshire lives at the foot of Blair Mountain, one of the next targets. He and his family have made a living from underground mining for generations, but they say mountaintop mining is destroying their community.