Reading about mountaintop mining destruction is one thing; seeing it first-hand is quite another.  While in West Virginia, our delegation visited Larry Gibson, a prominent opponent of MTR who has refused to sell his property to coal interests.  Larry now lives within several hundred feet of the 12,000-acre Kayford mountaintop removal mine that has claimed all but 50 acres of the original 500-acre tract of land once owned by his family.  Larry and his family used to look up to the forested mountain ridges from his 50 acres.  Now they look down into a desolate moonscape that continues to expand.

SouthWings, a non-profit group of volunteer pilots took each member of the delegation on a regional fly-over of the mountaintop destruction.  From the ground what had appeared as a huge, yet isolated scar in the landscape was in actuality only a small sample of the multiple mining sites, coal slurry ponds and valley fills that cover the region.  In 2003 a US EPA Draft Programmatic EIS estimated that by 2020 approximately 1.4 million acres of land would be mined through mountaintop removal methods - an area larger than the state of Delaware.  By some estimates, over 2000 miles of streams already have been filled by mountaintop removal mining.
 
At the Coal River Mountain Watch, we learned of the local and national movements to stop mountaintop removal mining and heard stories from residents whose health had been affected by contaminated drinking water, whose property had been affected by increased flooding and whose safety has been jeopardized by coal slurry impoundments constructed uphill from communities.  

On the final leg of our trip we visited the Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County, WV.  Here, the Goals Coal Processing Plant and a 2.8 billion gallon sludge pond  have been constructed adjacent to a local school attended each day by over 230  children in grades K through 5.  Recently, Marsh Fork Elementary School has been at the center of national attention as residents fight to shut-down the coal facility or move the school.  Marsh Fork Elementary School has become an icon for the price we are willing to pay for "cheap" fuel and the concessions we are willing to make to the greed of the coal industry.

Despite its devastation and cost to society, mountaintop removal mining continues to be permitted. Even though MTR provides less than 7% of the coal used in the U.S., federal laws are allowing the total destruction of massive areas of Appalachia, areas that will never return to their original diversity or beauty.  Legislation has been proposed in both houses of Congress that would prevent the placement of mining waste in surface waters.  However, both bills have not moved beyond committee.  The US EPA, under the Obama administration, has agreed to "use the best science and follow the letter of the law".  In its role as a review agency, the US EPA is currently scrutinizing 79 applications submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by mining operators seeking permission to dispose of mountaintop waste in adjacent streams.  These are small but important steps in the journey to stop mountaintop removal mining altogether.