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RSS 1.0 feed Mountain Top Mining
in Politics
written by Playmaker on 06/24/2009
Mountain top mining is again in the news since Daryl Hanna and several other high-profile activists were arrested, including were NASA scientist James Hansen and former Rep. Ken Hechler, for blocking State Route 3 near a Massey Energy subsidiary’s coal processing plant in Raleigh County.
Mountain top mining is the practice removes earth and rock from around a coal deposit and then removes the coal, instead of digging a traditional mine and removing the coal from the inside out. Sort of the bizzaro coal mine.
This can be done because better mining technology has made it cheaper than a traditional mine. It does create a huge amount of waste debris -- far more than traditional mine tailings -- which late Bush Administration regulations allowed to be dumped in nearby streams. Needless to say the environmental impact of these mines is far greater than traditional mines as the practice, quite literally, completely removes mountaintops, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
Mountain top mining is an $8 billion a year industry, which is small in comparison to other major U.S. industries, but large enough to bring up that classic fight of the environment vs. the economy. Quite frankly, it would be hard for any thinking individual to look at the damage that comes from this form of mining and say that it is worth the money -- however Massey Energy and many other corporations turn a blind eye to the disaster under the auspices of providing jobs and boosting the economy.
They are now also ignoring a recent study co-authored by West Virginia University researcher Michael Hendry and Melissa Ahern of Washington State University submitted under the title of "Mortality in Appalachian Coal Mining Regions: The Value of Statistical Life Lost." This study proves that this type of mining actually costs more than it produces. In fact, Hendry and Ahern claim that mountain top mining actually costs some $42 billion related to premature deaths of miners and community residents.
In the face of this new study and the size of the industry, one has to ask who is actually getting a paycheck from mountain top mines. Well, of course it isn't the miner who has to suffer from premature death -- the very miners who showed up in force at the aforementioned rally making so much noise that the protesters could not deliver their scheduled speeches. These are the Appalachian poor, of who the coal companies have taking advantage since the beginning of the industrial age. It is these same miners who have a greatly increased risk of premature death. The government isn't profiting -- it is costing more to get the coal out of the ground than it is to sell.
It is the coal company executives who are making the lion's share of the $8 billion. It is a few at the top of these companies who can waltz into a poor community, promise jobs, buy the top of a mountain, dynamite it to rubble and walk out of that community with money in their pockets. We are selling of our lands and mountains so a few rich people can get richer, and isn't that what created our economic crisis in the first place. So here we are again, robbing the poor, pillaging our resources to pad the pockets of the wealthy.
Didn't we already do this on Wall Street? Must we tear the mountains down and fill the streams with rocks before we learn this lesson again?
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