After review of mountaintop mining, scientists urge ending it

WASHINGTON Scientific evidence that mountaintop-removal coal mining destroys streams and threatens human health is so strong the government should stop granting new permits for it, a group of 12 environmental scientists report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The consequences of this mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are "pervasive and irreversible," the article finds. Companies are required by law to take steps to reduce the damages, but their efforts don't compensate for lost streams nor do they prevent lasting water pollution, it says.

The article is a summary of recent scientific studies of the consequences of blasting the tops off mountains to obtain coal and dumping the excess rock into streams in valleys. The authors also studied new water-quality data from West Virginia streams and found that mining polluted them, reducing their biological health and diversity.

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Surprisingly little attention has been paid to this growing scientific evidence of the damages, they wrote, adding: "Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science."

New permits shouldn't be granted, they argued, "unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems."

The Science article cites a number of potential health risks from removing mountaintops and filling in valleys, including contaminated well water, toxic dust and fish that are tainted with the chemical selenium. It also looked at environmental damage to the mining and fill areas and to streams below them.

"The reason we're willing to make a policy recommendation is that the evidence is so clear-cut," said Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, the lead author of the Science study and a specialist on the ecology of streams. Palmer has personal ties to Appalachia. Her family is from western North Carolina, and she spent much of her childhood there.

The assessment came days after the Environmental Protection Agency approved a permit under the Clean Water Act for Patriot Coal Corp.'s mountaintop Hobet 45 mine in West Virginia. The EPA reached a deal with Patriot to change the original plans. Instead of burying six miles of streams, the company will bury three. The EPA said that other changes would reduce stream contamination and protect public health.

At the same time, the agency acknowledged the environmental costs.

Mountaintop-removal mining has destroyed roughly 2,040 square miles of land in Appalachia and buried more than 2,000 miles of streams, EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said in an e-mail.

In a news release about its approval of the Hobet 45 mine, the EPA said:

"Scientific studies have increasingly identified significant water quality problems below surface coal mining operations that can contaminate surface waters for hundreds of years. Data from coalfield communities also indicate that coal mining is responsible for causing fish kills and contaminating fish and wildlife."

The statement says that the EPA is "committed to use its Clean Water Act regulatory authorities to reduce environmental and water quality impacts associated with surface coal mining."

The EPA's approval of the Hobet 45 mine, announced Tuesday, was the first major mountaintop mining permit the agency has approved from a batch of 79 that it said raised concerns. The mine is expected to employ 460 unionized miners.

Environmental groups condemned the decision and said that even with the changes, the mine would destroy forests and streams.

The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act calls for balancing environmental protection with the nation's need for coal. Half the nation's electricity comes from burning coal. According to the Department of Energy, coal also contributes 36.5 percent of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas that's accumulating in the atmosphere.