Shear Madness
In pursuit of the nation's highest-grade coal, vast mining operations are taking the tops right off of West Virginia's mountains. Mining companies say this is good for the state, but people who live near the mines have a different view.
Nowhere are the failings of the regulatory apparatus clearer than in arson-plagued Blair. The drag line can work within 300 feet of homes. Blasting raises clouds of dust. Even when DEP officials stiffened the dust rules, state records show, the dust continued, leading residents to complain. "It's intolerable; I don't blame them," DEP's Ailes said. "If we knew then [when we gave the mine permit] what we know now, we could have dealt with it better. . . . We may end up limiting areas of mining in the future."
The future, however, will be too late for Charles Bella Jr. The 68-year-old saved his salary from working in the mines to build a new ranch house with blue siding on Blair's main road. But months of black dust on his white porch were too much. He sold in early April to the real-estate subsidiary of Arch Coal--and agreed not to protest the coal firm's application to mine yet another mountain nearby. "I wish I hadn't done it," he said as he watched his former neighbor's house burn that April night.
West Virginia coal mining [Map is not available.] Areas of coal mining: Julian, Blair, Wharncliffe, Beech Creek, Cabin Creek,(r)NJ¯ Montgomery, Kayford Mountain, White Oak, Beckley, Lorado (Buffalo Creek) Source: Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement
Taking the mountaintops Coal has been mined in West Virginia for more than a century. In the late 1800s, many landowners sold the rights to the rich minerals beneath their property for several hundred dollars an acre. Since then, coal has been extracted through mineshafts, by auger and contour mining, and now by mountaintop removal.
Deep mining: 1860-present Digging deep. Originally, coal was mined by digging into the sides of mountains to reach the horizontal seams. This underground mining--first done with pick and shovel and now with machinery--still produces at least half the coal mined today.
Auger and surface mining: 1970s-present Augering in. In the 1970s, miners used bulldozers to dig around mountainsides, creating ledges as platforms for operations. Then augers drilled deep inside to bore out the coal. An auger at work. Augers drill up to 250 feet into a coal seam. Auger holes can be up to 4 feet in diameter.
Mountaintop mining and draglining: Present Mountaintop removal. Today, mining companies use a powerful machine called a dragline that can be as high as 20 stories to remove completely the top of a mountain to get at the coal below. The dragline. This $100 million machine weighs 8 million pounds and contains enough steel to build 2,700 cars. An enormous extension cord feeds it up to $50,000 worth of electricity a month. The bucket. The dragline's bucket could hold 26 Ford Escorts. It bites off 110 cubic yards of earth in a single scoop. Blasting out the coal. Once the topsoil is removed, the rock above the coal seams, called overburden, is blasted into pieces and removed by a dragline and dump trucks. The exposed coal is then blasted and removed. Acid mine pollution. During mining, minerals in rocks oxidize and release iron, manganese, and other metals, which can drain into streams, turning them orange. Valley fill. Excess rock and earth are dumped into valleys, covering the streams. Serious flooding can result from the runoff of unforested hillsides.
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