Mountaintop mining

A group of 12 scientists who have studied the environmental effects of mountaintop mining strongly condemn the practice and recommend that the government stop granting permits for it.

Their report Friday in the journal Science calls the consequences of this type of mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia "pervasive and irreversible."

Blasting the tops off mountains to obtain coal also involves dumping the excess rock into streams in valleys. The scientists found that West Virginia streams were polluted from the practice.

The report argues against granting new permits "unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems."

Removing mountaintops and dumping the fill into valleys carries health risks, including contaminated well water, toxic dust and chemical damage to fish, the report said.

Lead author of the study, Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, said: "The reason we're willing to make a policy recommendation is that the evidence is so clear-cut."

The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged environmental damage of this type of mining — 2,040 square miles of land in Appalachia destroyed and more than 2,000 miles of streams buried, McClatchy Newspapers reported.

The environmental results are devastating and call these mining techniques into question.