One thing that has stymied me is mountaintop removal. In a country that is supposed to be among the best in the world when it comes to environmental regulations—NEPA, the Clean Water Act, state and federal historical preservation laws, etc.—it is difficult to believe that there are no legal repercussions to a coal company blasting the top off of a mountain and sending the resulting rock and dirt into surrounding valleys and pristine streams. That these companies could do this once or twice is hard to believe. That they have flattened hundreds of mountains and destroyed hundreds of miles of streams in Appalachia astounds the imagination.
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| Just One of the Hundreds Moutaintop Removal Mines in Appalachia |
We, as a society, decided that acidic rainfalls caused by the emissions of power plants could no longer destroy the lakes and streams of New England and other parts of the East. We decided that thick smog could no longer choke the residents of our larger cities. We decided that we were no longer going to have rivers that had so much pollution in them and trash floating on them that they caught on fire.
How is it that we let the destruction of the coal-rich Appalachian Mountains to be left out of our concerns for our health and our environment? It is as though a big EXEMPT were stamped on the remote eastern mountains of our country, letting the coal companies write their own rules when it comes to extracting as much coal as they can for as cheaply as they can.
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