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01/16/2005:

"They flattened this mountaintop to find coal - and created a wasteland"

A ravaged US state is fighting back against mining bosses who backed Bush.

Maria Gunnoe sits at the top of the valley her family has called home for three generations and points to the artificial moonscape that has replaced the once wooded and rolling hills.

Above her home there now sits a huge strip mine. Two more strip mines are eating away the hills on the opposite side of the valley. 'I'm being attacked on all sides,' she said.

This is not ordinary strip mining. This is mountaintop removal - activists dub it 'strip mining on steroids'. It is the stuff of science fiction and it is booming in the Appalachian mountains, bringing with it environmental degradation and human despair. It is fuelled by a mining industry that has paid millions of dollars into Republican campaign coffers and received in return an unprecedented relaxation of rules.

Mountaintop removal mining does exactly what it says - in order to get at thin seams of coal that lie within, like cream through the middle of a sponge cake. Millions of tons of rock are blown up, scraped away and poured into surrounding valleys, filling them to the brim. What was a mountain range is turned into a flat and almost barren desert of rock.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk