Mountaintop removal is a mining practice drastically transforming Appalachia. It is an antiseptic term used to describe the most profound assault on land imaginable.
Like a cancerous mutation of strip mining, entire mountaintops are blasted away to obtain a small seam of coal. Unwanted rock is pushed into valleys and streams, destroying natural watersheds, leaving no vegetation, and turning the terrain into unusable land.
So many small streambeds are dumped with the excess rock and dirt that the length of the Ohio River is filled in. The result is a threat to clean water and the biodiversity of the ecosystem. Flash flooding occurs where it never has before.
The Central Appalachian Plateau was created 4 million years ago, and one of its richest …
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