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Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works. Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 556
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Tom Butler
Publisher: Earth Aware Editions
Published: 2009-09-29
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781601090508
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Appalachian mountain range is the oldest in the world and it's disappearing one mountain top at a time. Plundering Appalachia takes a bold look at the out-of-control strip mining in the American heartland and its threat to our environment. The Appalachians are the oldest mountains in the world, and they are literally disappearing. The term “mountaintop removal mining,” coined to describe the coal-mining process currently at work in much of Appalachia, is in reality, exactly what the name suggests: a mountain, formed over millions of years, is decapitated with explosives—the “overburden” scraped into adjacent valleys—and the exposed coal collected. No living thing survives this “removal,” and if the land is replanted, its ecosystem will be nothing like that of the ancient mountaintop it previously held. The process is not only destructive and toxic, but ultimately unsustainable: not one of the four hundred plus mountains blasted has yet grown back. Plundering Appalachia is a collection of photographs and essays presenting the grim realities of mountaintop removal mining: The effects of the blasting on the environment and the people and animals in its wake. The irreversible devastation of the natural landscape of Appalachia. How mountaintop removal is or is not regulated The true costs of the practice over time. Most people in the United States are connected to mountaintop removal in some way. Even if they have never visited the Appalachians, they consume products derived from the mining haul or they are affected by the drastic changes the mining has on their ecosystem. The contributors to Plundering Appalachia clearly wish to empower a nation to action—to get past the rhetoric of the coal industry and see the real Appalachia. It is a plea for a region whose natural beauty deserves to be enjoyed by future generations. Includes essays by: David W. Orr, Vivian Stockman, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Ross Gelbspan, Richard Heinberg, Carl Pope, Denise Giardina, Lisa Evans, Ken Hechler, Jerry Hardt, Wendell Berry and more.
Author: Julian M. Wagner
Publisher:
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 203
ISBN-13: 9781629480978
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book assesses the state of the science on the environmental impacts of mountaintop mines and valley fills (MTM-VF) on streams in the Central Appalachian Coalfields. These coalfields cover about 48,000 square kilometers (12 million acres) in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, USA. This book focuses on the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, which, as its name suggests, involves removing all--or some portion--of the top of a mountain or ridge to expose and mine one or more coal seams. The excess overburden is disposed of in constructed fills in small valleys or hollows adjacent to the mining site. Conclusions are drawn, based on evidence from peer-reviewed literature, and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement released in 2005, and that MTM-VF lead directly to five principal alterations of stream ecosystems: (1) springs, and ephemeral, intermittent, and small perennial streams are permanently lost with the removal of the mountain and from burial under fill, (2) concentrations of major chemical ions are persistently elevated downstream, (3) degraded water quality reaches levels that are acutely lethal to standard laboratory test organisms, (4) selenium concentrations are elevated, reaching concentrations that have caused toxic effects in fish and birds and (5) macroinvertebrate and fish communities are consistently degraded.
Author: Carl E. Zipper
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2020-11-25
Total Pages: 358
ISBN-13: 3030577805
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book collects and summarizes current scientific knowledge concerning coal-mined landscapes of the Appalachian region in eastern United States. Containing contributions from authors across disciplines, the book addresses topics relevant to the region’s coal-mining history and its future; its human communities; and the soils, waters, plants, wildlife, and human-use potentials of Appalachia’s coal-mined landscapes. The book provides a comprehensive overview of coal mining’s legacy in Appalachia, USA. It book describes the resources of the Appalachian coalfield, its lands and waters, and its human communities – as they have been left in the aftermath of intensive mining, drawing upon peer-reviewed science and other regional data to provide clear and objective descriptions. By understanding the Appalachian experience, officials and planners in other resource extraction- affected world regions can gain knowledge and perspectives that will aid their own efforts to plan and manage for environmental quality and for human welfare. Appalachia's Coal-Mined Landscapes: Resources and Communities in a New Energy Era will be of use to natural resource managers and scientists within Appalachia and in other world regions experiencing widespread mining, researchers with interest in the region’s disturbance legacy, and economic and community planners concerned with Appalachia’s future.
Author: Erik Reece
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007-02-06
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9781594482366
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A new form of strip mining has caused a state of emergency for the Appalachian wilderness and the communities that depend on it-a crisis compounded by issues of government neglect, corporate hubris, and class conflict. In this powerful call to arms, Erik Reece chronicles the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain and offers a landmark defense of a national treasure threatened with extinction.
Author: Penny loeb
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2014-10-17
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 0813156564
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Deep in the heart of the southern West Virginia coalfields, one of the most important environmental and social empowerment battles in the nation has been waged for the past decade. Fought by a heroic woman struggling to save her tiny community through a landmark lawsuit, this battle, which led all the way to the halls of Congress, has implications for environmentally conscious people across the world. The story begins with Patricia Bragg in the tiny community of Pie. When a deep mine drained her neighbors' wells, Bragg heeded her grandmother's admonition to "fight for what you believe in" and led the battle to save their drinking water. Though she and her friends quickly convinced state mining officials to force the coal company to provide new wells, Bragg's fight had only just begun. Soon large-scale mining began on the mountains behind her beloved hollow. Fearing what the blasting off of mountaintops would do to the humble homes below, she joined a lawsuit being pursued by attorney Joe Lovett, the first case he had ever handled. In the case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Bragg v. Robertson), federal judge Charles Haden II shocked the coal industry by granting victory to Joe Lovett and Patricia Bragg and temporarily halting the practice of mountaintop removal. While Lovett battled in court, Bragg sought other ways to protect the resources and safety of coalfield communities, all the while recognizing that coal mining was the lifeblood of her community, even of her own family (her husband is a disabled miner). The years of Bragg v. Robertson bitterly divided the coalfields and left many bewildered by the legal wrangling. One of the state's largest mines shut down because of the case, leaving hardworking miners out of work, at least temporarily. Despite hurtful words from members of her church, Patricia Bragg battled on, making the two-hour trek to the legislature in Charleston, over and over, to ask for better controls on mine blasting. There Bragg and her friends won support from delegate Arley Johnson, himself a survivor of one of the coalfield's greatest disasters. Award-winning investigative journalist Penny Loeb spent nine years following the twists and turns of this remarkable story, giving voice both to citizens, like Patricia Bragg, and to those in the coal industry. Intertwined with court and statehouse battles is Patricia Bragg's own quiet triumph of graduating from college summa cum laude in her late thirtie and moving her family out of welfare and into prosperity and freedom from mining interests. Bragg's remarkable personal triumph and the victories won in Pie and other coalfield communities will surprise and inspire readers.
Author: Jeff Goodell
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-04-03
Total Pages: 357
ISBN-13: 0547526628
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →New York Times–Bestselling Author:“Should be ready by anyone who owns a microwave, or an iPod, or a table lamp, which is to say everyone.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Coal is still a significant source of power in the United States—and coal mining is still a deadly and environmentally destructive industry. Much of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year comes from coal-fired power plants, and in recent decades air pollution from coal plants has killed more than half a million Americans. In this eye-opening call to action, Jeff Goodell explains the costs and consequences of America’s addiction to coal and discusses how we can kick the habit. “[A] compelling indictment . . . powerful.” —The New York Times Book Review “Goodell’s description of the mining-related deaths, the widespread health consequences of burning coal and the impact on our planet’s increasingly fragile ecosystem make for compelling reading, but . . . are not what lift this book out of the ordinary. That distinction belongs to Goodell’s fieldwork, which takes him to Atlanta, West Virginia, Wyoming, China and beyond.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Goodell does a first-rate job of balancing environmental concerns with interviews from the human faces associated with ‘Big Coal’.” —Library Journal
Author: Shirley Stewart Burns
Publisher:
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Coal is West Virginia's bread and butter. For more than a century, West Virginia has answered the energy call of the nation--and the world--by mining and exporting its coal. In 2004, West Virginia's coal industry provided almost forty thousand jobs directly related to coal, and it contributed $3.5 billion to the state's gross annual product. And in the same year, West Virginia led the nation in coal exports, shipping over 50 million tons of coal to twenty-three countries. Coal has made millionaires of some and paupers of many. For generations of honest, hard-working West Virginians, coal has put food on tables, built homes, and sent students to college. But coal has also maimed, debilitated, and killed. Bringing Down the Mountains provides insight into how mountaintop removal has affected the people and the land of southern West Virginia. It examines the mechanization of the mining industry and the power relationships between coal interests, politicians, and the average citizen. Shirley Stewart Burns holds a BS in news-editorial journalism, a master's degree in social work, and a PhD in history with an Appalachian focus, from West Virginia University. A native of Wyoming County in the southern West Virginia coalfields and the daughter of an underground coal miner, she has a passionate interest in the communities, environment, and histories of the southern West Virginia coalfields. She lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Author: Al Fritsch
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-03-17
Total Pages: 411
ISBN-13: 0813181747
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Tourism is the world's largest industry, and ecotourism is rapidly emerging as its fastest growing segment. As interest in nature travel increases, so does concern for conservation of the environment and the well-being of local peoples and cultures. Appalachia seems an ideal destination for ecotourists, with its rugged mountains, uniquely diverse forests, wild rivers, and lively arts culture. And ecotourism promises much for the region: protecting the environment while bringing income to disadvantaged communities. But can these promises be kept? Ecotourism in Appalachia examines both the potential and the threats that tourism holds for Central Appalachia. The authors draw lessons from destinations that have suffered from the "tourist trap syndrome," including Nepal and Hawaii. They conclude that only carefully regulated and locally controlled tourism can play a positive role in Appalachia's economic development.
