What is mountaintop removal and how does it threaten the atmosphere and the environment, in general?
Mountaintop removal (MTR) has been called strip mining on steroids. It is a relatively new type of coal mining that began in Appalachia in the 1970s as an extension of conventional strip mining techniques. Primarily, mountaintop removal is occurring in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies in Appalachia are increasingly using this method because it allows for almost complete recovery of coal seams while reducing the number of workers required to a fraction of what conventional methods require. MTR involves clear cutting native hardwood forests, using dynamite to blast away as much as 800-1000 feet of mountaintop, and then dumping the waste into nearby valleys, often burying streams. MTR is a destructive and unsustainable practice that annihilates ecosystems, transforming some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world into biologically barren moonscapes. With coal responsible for such a tremendous quantity of CO2 emissions, it would be far
