Peripheral gully and landslide erosion on an extreme anthropogenic landscape produced by mountaintop removal coal mining

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (9) ◽  
pp. 2078-2090
Author(s):  
Miles Reed ◽  
Steve Kite
Keyword(s):  
Coal Mining ◽  
Mountaintop Removal ◽  
Anthropogenic Landscape

What Are We Fighting For?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan T. McNeil
Keyword(s):  
Coal Mining ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Mountaintop Removal ◽  
Mountaintop Removal Mining ◽  
First Time

This chapter discusses how knowledge of the mountains and getting along in them has taken on renewed importance with the advance of mountaintop removal coal mining and restructuring in the coal industry. For generations, living in the mountains and mining the coal beneath them combined to become the distinctive markers of life in the Appalachian coalfields. The relentless expansion of mountaintop removal mining across the landscape since the late 1980s disrupted this symbiotic relationship between life inside and outside the mines. The spread of mountaintop removal brought a dilemma to dinner tables and living rooms across the region: are they coal people or mountain people? For the first time, many people felt compelled to choose because the two sources of identity, intertwined for so long, now seemed to be in stark opposition.

Fighting Back … Again

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan T. McNeil
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Coal Mining ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
Appalachian Region ◽  
Mountaintop Removal ◽  
Cumberland Mountains

This chapter introduces Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) as an organization and describes its formation, organization and growth over the first five to seven years of its existence. The outrage that greeted mountaintop removal coal mining in the late 1990s was by no means new to the Appalachian region. Time and again conditions of social relations and political and economic domination have given rise to reform movements. Author Stephen Fisher argues that for an enduring social movement to achieve substantive change in Appalachia, it must transcend single issues in ongoing, democratic, membership-driven organizations. He cited groups like Save Our Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition as existing examples of the activism he described.

Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining and Emergent Cases of Psychological Disorder in Kentucky

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (7) ◽  
pp. 802-810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will H. Canu ◽  
John Paul Jameson ◽  
Ellen H. Steele ◽  
Michael Denslow
Keyword(s):  
Coal Mining ◽  
Psychological Disorder ◽  
Mountaintop Removal

Anne Shelby

2020 ◽  
pp. 520-521
Keyword(s):  
Coal Mining ◽  
Mountaintop Removal ◽  
Methamphetamine Use

Teacher, activist, poet, and singer/songwriter Anne Shelby was born in Berea, Kentucky. Throughout her life, she has defined herself by her connection to home—and against that connection as well. Though she acknowledges the beauty of her rural Kentucky farmhouse and the historical roots that characterize her home, she does not shy away from writing about Appalachia’s problems, past and present, including methamphetamine use, divisive politics, endemic poverty, and mountaintop removal coal mining....

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Witt
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Coal Mining ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Processing Plant ◽  
Preparation Process ◽  
Coal Preparation ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Earthen Dam ◽  
Mountaintop Removal ◽  
Strip Mine

In the summer of 2009, I participated in a rally against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. The rally was held on the grounds of Marsh Fork Elementary, a school situated between the Coal River and Route 3 in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Sitting immediately below a slurry impoundment (a giant reservoir of toxic coal sludge produced by the coal preparation process and retained by an earthen dam), Marsh Fork Elementary also sat at the center of many debates surrounding the safety and justness of mountaintop removal. Activists cited increased health problems for Marsh Fork students due to their proximity to an active strip mine, such as abnormally high rates of asthma, and worried about the potentially disastrous consequences of any stresses or failures in the earthen dam retaining the slurry. The nearby mine and processing plant were owned and operated at the time by Massey Energy, one of the most controversial coal companies in the region. It was led by Don Blankenship, an outspoken and active opponent of labor unions and environmental regulations. Both Blankenship and his company were frequent targets for environmentalist outrage, and for his part, Blankenship seldom passed an opportunity to denounce “tree huggers” and others who, so he claimed, would destroy the jobs of hard-working Appalachian miners. In 2012 a new elementary school was built several miles from the original site, thanks to donations and ongoing political pressure; but in June 2009 these issues remained unsettled....

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