Mining

Mountaintop Removal Mining (MTM) of coal is one of the most destructive forms of resource extraction, with devastating impacts on Central Appalachian communities and ecosystems. MTM involves clearing forests and using explosives to blast away ridge tops to expose coal seams. The process generates enormous volumes of waste rock, which is dumped into nearby valleys in a practice known as valley fill. Individual valley fills can contain up to 250 million cubic yards of waste material, permanently burying valleys and streams. Valley fills have buried roughly 2,000 miles of streams across Appalachia, posing immediate health and safety risks to local residents, threatening downstream water quality, and degrading or destroying some of the most ecologically significant forest and aquatic habitats on the planet.