Tyler Bray

Dr. Hooper

ENG 110

12 November 2017

The Appalachian Mountains are being blasted and disfigured every day by the process known as mountaintop removal mining. The natural landscape is being forever changed and the effects are detrimental to the environment surrounding it and the people surrounding it. It benefits a small number of corporations at the expense of the environment and communities existing in neighboring areas. In fact, over 1.2 million acres of once lush forests and over five-hundred mountains in the Appalachia’s have been completely destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining (Perks 1). Mountaintop removal mining has created an extensive amount of problems in the Appalachians including human health, community, …show more content…
The process of mountaintop removal mining is complicated and can take out acres of forests every time it is done. The first stage of the process is called the “clearing” stage. Before any mining is done, all greenery and topsoil in the area must be taken out. As bad as that sounds, it gets worse. The trees that are taken out are not even used commercially, but they are burned or sometimes illegally dumped into valleys. Once the clearing stage is completed, the “blasting” stage starts. As self-explanatory as it sounds, the blasting stage is done by using a large number of explosives to remove several hundred feet of elevation. Once that stage is completed, up next is the digging part. Draglines, giant machines that can dig up large amounts of earth, dig up coal and other objects in the way. The draglines can stand up to twenty-two stories tall and can replace hundreds of miners, which benefit the companies running the removal process (Writer). The fourth stage of this disastrous process is properly called “dumping waste”. This is when the companies dump all or most of the …show more content…
Weak regulations have led to coal companies having major leeway in how closely they follow those same weak regulations. Residents of the communities are also struggling to have officials stand up to the companies. The population of counties are decreasing dramatically in order to keep themselves safe. Poisoned drinking water is one of the biggest issues when facing communities in the area. The large amounts of dumping and pollution into the valley fills affect the water people get. One community, Prenter Hollow, West Virginia, was devastated by the drinking water epidemic by coal sludge contaminating their drinking water. Jennifer Hall-Massey, a resident, stated that there was an “emergence of a ‘brain tumor cluster’ in which six people in a ten-house neighborhood were diagnosed with brain cancer,” (AppVoices) and it was a direct effect of the contamination. Another issue is the flying rock that is resulted from the gigantic explosions made during the blasting stage of the mountaintop removal mining process. The rocks have even killed some residents in surrounding areas (AppVoices). During the clearing stage if the process, trees and vegetation are removed, and rainfall can gather at dangerous levels causing a threat to communities that would not have occurred had the mining process not been conducted so carelessly. Communities all around the Appalachian area are suffering and