Mountaintop removal field trip planned
Heather Lowery
Issue date: 2/15/10 Section: News
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A Pittsburgh-based environmental activist is working with the RMU Students for Environmental Awareness to plan a field trip to southern West Virginia where they will see firsthand the widespread environmental devastation caused by mountaintop removal coal mining-- a mining technique in which the tops of mountains are cut off and bulldozed into the valleys beneath, burying pristine mountain streams under hundreds of feet of dirt and rock.
Sarah Landini, a previous environmental advocate for Restoring Eden and continued activist against mountaintop removal, is looking to lead a service learning trip to southern West Virginia in hopes of opening the minds of students to the destructive effects of the coal extraction process.
Landini has already led several trips with students from Pittsburgh-area colleges to see the Appalachian Mountains in southern West Virginia and the coal mining that is ravaging them.
Her main objective is to expose students to the mountaintop removal process. She explained that in order to fully grasp the concept of destroying a mountain, the student has to be able to see it in person.
"It's shocking, not in a good way, to see the coal field region there. It's hard to even imagine. You almost have to see pictures. You have to see it to believe it," Landini said. "You hear people talk about clean coal technology, but what they don't understand is that it is not burning coal that is the problem, it's mining it. Even if we could find a way to burn coal with zero emissions, getting it out of the ground would still be a tremendously destructive practice."
Opponents of mountaintop removal coal mining assert that the practice is especially unacceptable because of where it is conducted. The Appalachian Mountains contain the highest levels of biodiversity in North America. Many of the species of plants and animals that inhabit them live nowhere else. And after the pristine mountains and rich valleys ar destroyed, almost none of the original plant and animal species can ever survive in these areas again.
Landini says few people outside the coal fields realize the vast scale of the destruction. A single mining operation currently under way in southern West Virginia is 6,000 acres in size-- the equivalent of more than 30 RMU campuses placed end to end. So far, more than one million acres of forest have been destroyed. More than 500 mountains have been torn down and 2,000 miles of streams have been buried.
"First the trees are cut down. Beautiful, healthy forests are just mowed down like weeds and pushed into piles to burn or left to rot. Then the nutrient rich topsoil, the lifeblood of the forest, is bulldozed into the valley to expose the solid bedrock. Explosives identical to the type used in the Oklahoma City bombing are used to blast through hundreds of feet of bedrock until a coal seam is exposed. The broken rock is then dumped into the valley as well, forever burying any streams that flowed there.
An article published in the current issue of the journal Science says mountaintop removal mining is causing irreversible environmental degradation, but that federal and state environmental regulators have failed to stop it.
"I have an established relationship with the local activists down there. I care about environmental injustice. It shows the relationship between the poor and the earth. The poor are hurt the most. They lose their jobs because they work for non-union employer and when they get hurt on the job, they get fired. Mountaintop removal uses and abuses people like it uses and abuses the mountains," she said.
Landini explained that mountaintop removal coal extraction has been practiced for about 40 years. Before then, the technology just didn't exist to devastate such large areas profitably. But machines developed in recent decades have made it physically and economically feasible to coal companies to tear Appalachia asunder.
"The technology has also made it possible for the coal companies to do more with fewer workers. There were 120,000 mine workers in West Virginia 50 years ago and now there are only 20,000. Many coal miners believe that environmental activists threaten their jobs, but the coal companies have cut 100,000 jobs just for corporate profits," Landini explained. "The coal companies say their industry is the economic lifeblood of the regions, but West Virginia is the poorest state in the United States. I would say that it is actually comparable to that of a third world country within the U.S.," Landini commented.
The cost of the trip will be determined on the amount of students who go, transportation, and the length of the stay.
"Robert Morris has a van so that cuts down costs. The cost would probably be $100 per person. If we only spent one day there it would cost $50. But if we spent two or three days there it would $100. It depends on what the students would like to do. It depends if people want to do it or not. It would be a really good service learning trip," noted Landini.
At this point, a date has not yet been determined.
"The date will be based upon the interest of students. It could take place during spring break, sometime during the semester, or at the beginning of summer. It all depends on what the students want," she said.
For more information regarding the trip to West Virginia, contact Sarah Landini at slandini@gmail.com or Dr. William Dress or Dr. Ken Lasota, co-advisors of the Students for Environmental Awareness (SEA), at dress@rmu.edu or lasota@rmu.edu.
For more information about mountaintop removal visit www.ohvec.org
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