Improving on God’s Creation

Mountaintop removal can do more than extract coal, “We have a chance to improve on God’s creation.” claimed Dink Shackleford, the former executive director of the Virginia Mining Association, a trade association that represents Virginia’s coal mining industry.

And thanks the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA). Some good use has come out of reclaimed mine sites. It's provided a number of West Virginia counties with the flat, buildable space to accommodate two high schools, two "premier" golf courses, a regional jail, a county airport and a 985-acre (3,986,169.5 square meters) complex for the Federal Bureau of Investigation near Clarksburg,.

The intent of SMCRA was to not allow coal companies to walk away from their surface mines and leave them denuded. Stripped mountainsides, the law declared, must be restored to their "approximate original contour" and stabilized with grasses and shrubs, and, if possible, trees. But putting the entire top of a topped-off mountain back together again was an altogether different—and more expensive—matter. So mountaintop mines were given a blanket exemption from this requirement with the understanding that, in lieu of contoured restoration, the resulting plateau could be put to some beneficial public use. Coal boosters claimed the sites would create West Virginia's own Field of Dreams, seeding housing, schools, recreational facilities, and jobs galore. In most cases it didn't work out that way. The most common "use" turned out to be pastureland (in a region ill-suited for livestock production).

"The coal companies have stripped off hundreds of thousands of acres," says Joe Lovett, an attorney for the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, "but they're putting less than one percent of it into productive use."

A study by the Virginia Cooperative Extension found that while reclaimed coal mines are widely discussed as potential development sites, modern reclamation rarely prepares mined areas for building-support purposes. Experience has shown reclaimed lands suitable for building sites will often require more than just a flat surface. Land reclaimed using the conventional practices will often remain subject to rate of post mining settlement that are considered unacceptable by most land developers for many building types-even years after mining. The study cited the construction of the Red Onion Maximum-Security prison built on a reclaimed mine site at the border of Wise and Dickenson Counties VA. The site was reclaimed using conventional procedures by the mining company in the late 1980s. A site investigation conducted in 1994 determined that the site’s subsurface provided insufficient support to allow the prison to be constructed effectively. The cost to prepare the 16-acre prison site for construction was 8 to 9 million dollars.

Are all abandoned mine sites left for ruin? Certainly not, some sites have been utilized for strong economic development for the surrounding communities, but the claims made by surface mining advocates that when the mining is finished development is ready to begin is just not true.

It is hard to imagine that in today’s economic climate private land developers or manufacturing plants are going to invest the money needed to utilize all of these sites.

Nobody in the mid-1970s envisioned the degree of mining-caused devastation seen in Appalachia today. Ideas about mountaintop removal were premised on what was known then: small-scale mountaintop mining.