No way to avoid strip mining's dangers

The same week the Environmental Protection Agency issued yet another permit to lop the top off a mountain in West Virginia for the coal underneath, a group of scientists presented more evidence that strip-mining causes irreversible and unavoidable damage to the environment and human health.

In a report published in the journal Science earlier this month, researchers from the University of Maryland, Duke University and elsewhere concluded that U.S. regulators should not continue to ignore the wholesale destruction of forests and streams, increased flooding from stormwater runoff and the toxic effects on air and water quality.

Over the last 30 years, "mountaintop removal" mining has increased in southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. Mining companies clear-cut forests, strip off the topsoil and blast away underlying rock to reach veins of coal. The debris is routinely dumped into valleys and streams.

An estimated 1,500 miles of streams have been destroyed so far. "It obliterates stream ecosystems," Emily Bernhard, a Duke professor and co-author of the study, told The Washington Post. "They've been wiped from the landscape."

Chris Hamilton of the West Virginia Coal Association contends that the damage to streams is usually "very short term," about 18 months. But researchers said the preponderance of studies show the coal industry's reclamation efforts are ineffective and that the damage could last hundreds or even thousands of years. The mountaintops, of course, are irreplaceable.

None of this is news to the Obama administration's EPA. Last year, officials drew the industry's ire when they ordered more extensive review of permit applications. And, in response to this month's study, the agency issued a press release stating that the research "underscores EPA's own scientific analysis regarding the substantial environmental, water and health impacts."

But the permits continue. A more decisive response is needed from the Obama administration.

Coal is likely to remain a part of our nation's energy portfolio for some time. But shearing off mountaintops isn't an acceptable, or necessary, way to extract it.

The short-term gains from strip mining do not outweigh the long-term damage to the environment or to people who live nearby - damage that will last generations for mining communities and for the nation as a whole.