The Mountain Justice Summer website provides detailed diagrams of the mountain top removal process and many photographs of mountain top removal sites in central Appalachia. From that website you can learn about the devastating scope of this problem.
However, often when people see photographs of mountain top removal like those on the Mountain Justice Summer website, they think of mountain top removal as something that happens in remote places away from the places that people live. Unfortunately, moutain top removal happens in our backyards -- literally.
In the photographs from above, right and below you can see the progression of a mountain top removal strip mine in Hemphill community in Letcher, County Kentucky.
The first photo (above left) was taken in April 2007, the second photo (directly to the right) was taken in October 2007, and the third photo (below left) was taken in June 2008.
Forest has been removed, as has substantial amounts of the mountain itself.
June 2008
No matter what the coal industry says, coal will never be a "clean" fuel until the mining process itself changes. The extraction of coal through mountain top removal is devastating to our landscape and our communities, our streams and rivers, and has long term consequences for watershed which affects millions of urban dwellers down river.
To learn more about the problem of mountain top removal,
and to learn how to do something about it,check out these additional
websites:
http://www.ilovemountains.org/
The Mountain Top Memorial
site
Kentuckians
for the Commonwealth -- Mountain Top Removal