Chapter 24 Exercises: Mountaintop Removal — When They Blew Up the Mountains

Exercise 1: Primary Source Analysis — Community Testimony

Read the following excerpt from testimony by a resident of Coal River Valley, West Virginia, before a congressional field hearing on mountaintop removal (2009):

"My name is Pauline Canterbury. I am seventy-two years old. I have lived on this creek my entire life. My parents lived here. My grandparents lived here. My great-grandparents are buried up on the hill behind my house. This creek used to run so clear you could see every rock on the bottom. We caught crawdads in it when we were children. We waded in it in the summer. We drew our drinking water from a well fed by a spring that came off the mountain above us.

Three years ago, they started blasting on the mountain above my house. The first blast cracked my foundation. The second one broke my windows. My well water turned orange and then brown and then it had a smell to it, a chemical smell, and I could not drink it anymore. The company brought me some bottled water, two cases a week, and told me my water was fine. I told them if it was fine they could drink it. They didn't drink it.

I can't sell my house because nobody would buy it. I can't leave because where would I go? I am seventy-two years old on a fixed income. This is my home. And they are destroying it from above me and from below me and from every direction, and nobody — not the DEP, not the governor, not my congressman — will do anything about it."

a) Identify the specific harms Canterbury describes. Categorize each as physical property damage, environmental contamination, economic harm, or psychological/cultural harm. Are any of these categories more important than the others, or are they interconnected?

b) Canterbury describes contacting multiple government entities — the DEP, the governor, her congressman — without result. Based on this chapter's discussion of regulatory capture, analyze why the regulatory system failed her. What structural factors prevented the government from protecting this citizen?

c) The coal company's response — providing bottled water while claiming the well water was safe — is described repeatedly in accounts from coalfield communities. What does this contradictory response reveal about the company's understanding of its own liability? Why would a company provide a remedy while denying the problem?

d) Canterbury says she "can't leave" because of her age, income, and attachment to the land. How does the coal industry's argument that opponents of mountaintop removal are "anti-progress" account for people like Canterbury? Write a response (300-400 words) that evaluates the economic arguments for mountaintop removal against the testimony of people who live with its consequences.

Exercise 2: Satellite Imagery Analysis — Before and After

Using Google Earth, Google Maps satellite view, or the USGS EarthExplorer (earthexplorer.usgs.gov), conduct a visual analysis of mountaintop removal in central Appalachia.

a) Navigate to the area around Kayford Mountain, Raleigh County, West Virginia (approximate coordinates: 38.12 N, 81.36 W). Zoom in and identify the contrast between remaining forested areas and mountaintop removal sites. Describe what you see. Measure the approximate area of the largest visible mining operation.

b) Navigate to Hobet 21, a major mountaintop removal complex in Boone and Lincoln counties, West Virginia (approximate coordinates: 38.10 N, 81.85 W). Hobet 21 was one of the largest mountaintop removal operations in Appalachian history. Describe the landscape you see. Compare it to the surrounding unaffected areas. Identify the valley fills — they appear as broad, flat-bottomed areas filling valleys that would otherwise be narrow.

c) If Google Earth's historical imagery feature is available, compare the current landscape of either site to imagery from the 1980s or 1990s. Describe the changes you observe.

d) Write a 400-word reflection on the experience of viewing mountaintop removal from satellite imagery. How does the aerial perspective change your understanding of the practice compared to reading about it in text? What details are visible from the air that are not apparent from the ground?

Exercise 3: Regulatory Analysis — The Gap Between Law and Practice

This chapter describes the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 and its failure to prevent mountaintop removal.

a) Read the text of SMCRA Section 515(d), which addresses the "approximate original contour" requirement. The text is available through the U.S. Government Publishing Office (govinfo.gov). Summarize the requirement in your own words. Then describe the AOC variance that allowed coal companies to avoid the requirement. How did the variance transform the law's intent?

b) The stream buffer zone rule was intended to protect waterways from surface mining damage. Research the rule's history: its original form, the 2002 Bush administration revision, the 2008 revision, the 2016 Obama administration revision, and the 2017 Trump administration repeal of the Obama rule. Create a timeline showing each change and identify the political and economic forces that drove each revision. What does this history tell you about the relationship between environmental regulation and political power?

c) The concept of "regulatory capture" describes a process by which regulatory agencies come to serve the industries they regulate. Identify at least three specific mechanisms of regulatory capture described in this chapter (e.g., the revolving door, underfunding, political pressure). For each mechanism, propose a structural reform that might address it.

d) Compare SMCRA's regulatory approach to the regulation of another extractive industry you are familiar with (oil and gas, hard rock mining, timber, etc.). Is regulatory capture unique to coal mining, or is it a general phenomenon in extractive industry regulation?

Exercise 4: Environmental Justice Mapping

The concept of environmental justice holds that environmental harms should not be disproportionately borne by particular communities based on race, income, or geography.

a) Using the EPA's EJScreen tool (ejscreen.epa.gov), examine the environmental justice indicators for three counties heavily affected by mountaintop removal: Boone County, West Virginia; Martin County, Kentucky; and Wise County, Virginia. Record the demographic and environmental data for each county. How do these counties compare to national averages on measures of income, race, educational attainment, and environmental exposure?

b) The chapter argues that the benefits of mountaintop removal (cheap electricity, corporate profits) were exported while the costs (environmental destruction, health impacts) were localized. Map this pattern: identify where the coal from central Appalachian mountaintop removal operations was burned (research the customer base of major Appalachian coal companies). Who consumed the electricity? Where did the profits flow?

c) Compare the environmental justice dimensions of mountaintop removal to another environmental justice case you are familiar with (e.g., Flint, Michigan water crisis; Cancer Alley in Louisiana; Standing Rock pipeline protest). What structural similarities do you observe? What is different about the Appalachian context?

d) Write a 500-word analysis of whether mountaintop removal constitutes an environmental justice violation. Use evidence from this chapter and from your EJScreen research to support your argument.

Exercise 5: The Economics of Extraction

This exercise examines the economic arguments for and against mountaintop removal.

a) Research the employment data for mountaintop removal in West Virginia and Kentucky. How many jobs did mountaintop removal create at its peak? How does this compare to the number of jobs created by underground mining in the same region? How does the economic output per worker compare between the two methods?

b) Mountaintop removal's defenders argue that the practice is economically necessary — that it produces coal more cheaply than underground mining and thereby supports coal-dependent communities. Its critics argue that the economic benefits are illusory — that the costs (health care, water treatment, infrastructure damage, lost ecosystem services) exceed the benefits, and that the profits leave the region while the costs remain. Research and present both sides of this argument. Which evidence do you find more persuasive?

c) The Coal River Mountain case, described in this chapter, presented an alternative: wind energy development on the same mountain that was slated for mountaintop removal. Research the economics of wind energy development in Appalachia. How do the job creation, tax revenue, and long-term economic benefits of wind energy compare to those of mountaintop removal?

d) Write an economic analysis (500-600 words) that evaluates whether mountaintop removal was, on balance, economically beneficial or harmful to the communities where it occurred. Include consideration of externalities — costs that were not reflected in the coal companies' financial statements but were borne by the community.

Exercise 6: Then and Now — The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal

Then: In the 1990s and 2000s, mountaintop removal operations destroyed hundreds of mountains across central Appalachia, burying thousands of miles of streams and displacing communities.

Now: Mountaintop removal has declined dramatically due to the coal industry's economic collapse, but the environmental damage remains.

a) Research the current status of mountaintop removal in Appalachia. How many active mountaintop removal permits remain in West Virginia and Kentucky? How does current production compare to peak levels?

b) Investigate the reclamation status of former mountaintop removal sites in your state (or in West Virginia or Kentucky if your state does not have mountaintop removal). How many acres have been "reclaimed"? What does reclamation look like in practice? Are the reclaimed sites supporting the land uses that were promised in the permit applications?

c) Research contemporary proposals for alternative uses of former mountaintop removal sites — solar farms, industrial parks, recreational areas, or other development. Identify at least two specific proposals and evaluate their feasibility.

d) Write a 400-word reflection on the concept of "reclamation." Can a destroyed mountain be reclaimed? What would genuine ecological restoration of a mountaintop removal site require, and is it achievable? What does the gap between the legal definition of reclamation and ecological reality tell us about the regulatory framework?

Exercise 7: Oral History — Living with Mountaintop Removal

a) If you have access to community members who have lived near mountaintop removal operations, conduct a brief interview (with permission) about their experience. What changes did they observe in their environment? How did the mining affect their daily life, their health, their community? How do they feel about the practice now?

b) If a direct interview is not possible, locate an oral history from the Appalachian Heritage Project, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition's archives, or similar collections. Transcribe a section that describes the personal experience of living near mountaintop removal.

c) Compare the testimony you have collected or found to the primary source excerpts in this chapter. What common themes emerge? What aspects of the experience are difficult to capture in official documents like EPA reports or regulatory filings?

d) Write a 500-word analysis of the value of oral history as a source for understanding the impacts of mountaintop removal. What can oral histories tell us that scientific studies and legal documents cannot?

Exercise 8: Community History Portfolio — Mountaintop Removal and Your County

This exercise is part of the ongoing Community History Portfolio project. For your selected Appalachian county:

a) Determine whether mountaintop removal or other forms of surface mining were practiced in your county. If so, identify the approximate acreage of surface mining permits, the companies involved, and the years of peak activity. The OSMRE's permit database and your state's environmental agency records are primary sources.

b) If surface mining occurred in your county, research its environmental impacts. Were streams buried? Were communities displaced? Were there water quality complaints? Check local newspaper archives, state regulatory records, and environmental group databases for documentation.

c) If surface mining did not occur in your county, explain why. Was it because the coal seams were too thin for surface mining? Because the geology was unsuitable? Because the county's economy was not coal-dependent? Understanding why some counties were affected and others were not is itself an important analytical exercise.

d) Write a 500-word assessment placing your county's experience with surface mining in the context of the broader history described in this chapter. How does your county's story connect to the regional pattern of mountaintop removal, environmental destruction, regulatory failure, and citizen resistance?