Mountaintop removal mining

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1. clearing
2. the upper seam group is extracted, the intermediate material is piled up in valleys
3. the lying seam is extracted with dragline dredgers and the mountains are piled up
4. parallel to the progress of the mining, the new surface is contoured
5. after the extraction is completed the final Surface contour created and the area recultivated.
Blasting on a partially eroded hilltop

Mountaintop removal mining (also mountaintop mining , German  mining through summit blasting , in the following MTR ) is a special form of open pit mining in the USA . This method is mainly used in the Appalachian Mountains , a large mountain range in the eastern United States - here mainly in the area of ​​the Appalachian Plateau ; the states of Kentucky , Ohio , Pennsylvania , Tennessee , Virginia and West Virginia are affected . Due to the storage conditions of the coal , the overburden consists of mountain peaks that cover the coal seams .

Because of the ecological effects of mountaintop removal mining , this mining method is controversial.

history

Since the end of the 19th century, coal has been extracted from civil engineering in the Appalachians . Coal mining in the region reached a peak at the time of the First World War - around 700,000 workers were employed in up to 12,000 mines . After the Second World War , mining in the Appalachians, which was too expensive, fell sharply due to increasing energy production from oil and gas. Only with the possibility of removing mountain peaks was it possible to recover competitive coal from the 1960s - initially only sporadically. Mountaintop removal was regulated by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA, 30 USC §1201) in 1977 under Jimmy Carter . In 1988, a controversial amendment to the Clean Water Act (CWA, 33 USC §1252) made it possible to backfill all overburden from open pit mining in valleys. This change in the law, increasing energy requirements, the exhaustion of near-surface seams in civil engineering and technical developments (particularly in the case of dragline excavators ) led to increased mining using mountaintop removal mining. Since the 1990s, blasting summits has been the most common type of coal extraction in the Appalachians.

Mining technology

The hanging wall or overburden of the deposit , which is a few meters to around 120 meters thick , is blown up and then cleared with excavators and large dump trucks . The mountains resulting from the mining of the upper seam group through the intermediate resources are usually piled up in a neighboring valley. Then the coal of the lower seam is extracted . The overburden that arises between the upper seam group and the deep seam is dumped on the level of the lower seam. Recultivation (application of fertilizer and bush clover seeds) can already begin during mining . If the coal in an area is mined, an artificial mountain plateau remains that can be renatured or used for other purposes.

Degradation losses

Due to the low overburden with comparatively high coal thicknesses, extraction in open-cast mining is more cost-effective than mining in underground mining. There are hardly any mining losses , which can amount to up to 50% in underground mining (for example using the room-and-pillar method). The use of open-cast mining equipment significantly reduces the number of personnel and thus increases the conveying capacity per employee.

Mountain damage

Underground mining is often not geomechanically controllable with these storage conditions . If the coal were to be mined, the mountain top would break. Such a fracture field would pose a danger to humans and animals and would therefore have to be secured against entry. Landslides could not be ruled out. Mining damage in the narrower sense does not arise, since changes in the substance of the mining area only affect the property of the mining company.

Environmental impact

The MTR coal mining leads to significant interventions in ecology , nature and landscape . They manifest themselves primarily in a change in the landscape - with associated effects on flora and fauna - and the quality of the groundwater.

Landscape changes

According to a study by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , around 5,700 square kilometers of land (mostly forest areas) in the Appalachian Mountains will be affected by 2012. Between the 1970s and 2008, around 500 mountain peaks were removed in the Appalachian Mountains from the beginning of mountaintop removal mining . The landscape is being destroyed over a large area and its character is profoundly changed by the removal of the mountain peaks. In Wise County , Virginia, the MTR opencast mines are already the county's second largest land user after forests. According to EPA specifications, the flattened mountains are to be renatured after the coal has been extracted. The renaturation measures taken, however, are not suitable to replace the forests that previously existed on the mountain peaks.

Water balance

By tilting of the overburden in adjacent valleys ( english valley fills ), often rivers run, it can cause massive interventions in the water regime come. These interventions lead to damage to the biological quality of the affected waters. According to the EPA, between 1992 and 2014 around 1200 miles (equivalent to around 1900 kilometers) of rivers were spilled by overburden. The tilting of the valleys requires approval and is subject to various American laws such as the "Clean Water Act" (CWA) and the "Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act" of 1977 (SMCRA). With the spoil, substances such as selenium , mercury , arsenic and aluminum can find their way into surface and groundwater.

health

Environmentalists and medical professionals point out the dangers posed by mountaintop removal mining for the health of the residents of neighboring areas. Various medical studies have shown a sharp increase in malformations in infants as well as heart, lung and kidney diseases.

In 2017, the Trump administration stopped a review study carried out by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to systematically examine the health hazards of mountain top removal mining. The reason for the termination of the study was that it was a waste of taxpayers' money. Previously, Donald Trump had always portrayed himself as a friend of the coal industry during the election campaign and the first few months in office and promised to create more jobs in coal mining.

Flora and fauna

The Appalachians are 80% forested. Forests are of global importance; they have one of the highest biodiversity in the temperate climate zone. They contain around 40 commercially usable tree species. The tree population to be managed has decreased considerably as a result of the MTR. The renaturation measures required by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) are mostly limited to the creation of dense, herbaceous vegetation on the former mining areas; later colonization by native trees is made more difficult.

Climate change

Due to the negative effects on forest areas and soils, mountain top mining results in increased emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide . Scientific studies have shown that, taking these factors into account, the carbon dioxide emissions of coal from mountain top mining are up to 17% higher than that of coal extracted from underground mining.

criticism

The severe environmental impact of MTR mining has for years led to criticism of operators, their business partners and regulatory authorities in the United States and increasingly also in Europe.

The population is also skeptical of the coal mining process. In a survey carried out on behalf of CNN in 2011, the majority of Americans rejected MTR. Again and again there are protests against the dismantling.

Power generation from Appalachian coal in Germany

The organizations Urgewald and FIAN , in cooperation with "Keepers of the Mountains", criticize the import of hard coal from the United States and other countries by German energy companies. Among other things, transparency as well as binding and verifiable social and environmental standards are required.

Financing MTR investments

Banks are also increasingly criticized for their financing of the MTR. The BankTrack organization has provided information on this. The UBS is denounced by activists since the year of 2010. It is one of the most important donors in the industry. The Credit Suisse joined the other hand, already in 2010, according to its own policies, financing of companies that are active in the MTR industry. In a press release in the summer of 2015, Deutsche Bank stated that it was not involved in the financing of coal mining, but would at most provide loans for recultivation or to finance the corresponding bonds.

Mingo Logan's lawsuit against EPA

From 2009 to 2014, a legal dispute over the revocation of an already issued mining permit in the MTR proceedings occupied several courts in Washington, DC.The multi-year dispute in which the pollution of water resources was to be assessed was decided in favor of the defendant (EPA). The media and environmental protection organizations rated the outcome as pointing the way for the future of MTR mining.

Trivia

In 2014 the novel Gray Mountain by John Grisham was published , the story of which takes place in the context of the MTR coal mining in the Appalachians. Both the coal mining companies and their legal representatives are portrayed negatively in the bestseller; the environmental degradation caused by the degradation process is emphasized.

Web links

Commons : Mountaintop removal mining  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Claudia Copeland, Mountaintop Mining: Background on Current Controversies , April 20, 2015, Congressional Research Service (English).
  2. ^ Bob Sloan: Moving Mountains. In: Earth Island Journal. 2007, accessed on September 13, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Mountaintop Mining / Valley Fill Process. In: Mid-Atlantic Mountaintop Mining. United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accessed August 10, 2013 .
  4. ↑ a b c What is mountaintop mining? In: Mid-Atlantic Mountaintop Mining. United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accessed August 10, 2013 .
  5. ↑ a b Away with the mountains. In the USA there is growing resistance to a brutal form of coal mining. In: The time . October 18, 2007, accessed August 10, 2013 .
  6. ^ A b Dietmar Ostermann: Virginia. The crests fly away. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . July 1, 2008, accessed August 10, 2013 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Andres Wysling: Obama effect hits mining and banks: UBS reviews its business policy in the “beheaded mountains” , December 22, 2010, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  8. ^ A b Charles C. Geisler, Who Owns Appalachia ?: Landownership and Its Impact , University Press of Kentucky, 2015, ISBN 978-0-8131-6193-8 , pp. 119ff .
  9. ↑ a b UBS provides brute coal companies with loans , May 2, 2012, Handelszeitung
  10. ↑ Elena A. Turner et al., Assessing Different Mechanisms of Toxicity in Mountaintop Removal / Valley Fill Coal Mining-Affected Watershed Samples Using Caenorhabditis elegans , September 16, 2013, at: Public Library of Science , (English).
  11. ↑ MA Palmer et al., Mountaintop Mining Consequences , in: Science Magazine, 327 (5962), 2010, pp. 148f. (English).
  12. ↑ Gregory J. Pond et al., Downstream effects of mountaintop coal mining: comparing biological conditions using family- and genus-level macroinvertebrate bioassessment tools ( Memento of the original of October 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / owpubauthor.epa.gov archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 8, 2008, at: The North American Benthological Society, 27 (3): pp. 717-737 (English).
  13. ↑ Mountaintop Removal: Pervasive and irreversible ”Damage in Appalachia ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.psr.org archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Physicians for Social Responsibility (English)
  14. ↑ Thomas von Grünigen: Environmental damage through coal mining. the role of UBS. In: Rundschau. Swiss radio and television , May 2, 2012, accessed on August 10, 2013 .
  15. ↑ Melissa M. Ahern, Michael Hendryx, Jamison Conley, Evan Fedorko, Alan Ducatman, Keith J. Zullig: The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996-2003. June 23, 2011, accessed August 10, 2013 .
  16. ↑ DC Holzman: Mountain top removal mining: digging into community health concerns. In: Environmental health perspectives. Volume 119, Number 11, November 2011, pp. A476-A483, PMID 22171378 , PMC 3226519 (free full text).
  17. ^ Trump administration held a study of mountaintop coal mining's health effects . In: Washington Post , August 21, 2017. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  18. ↑ Trump stops study on health threats . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 22, 2016. Accessed August 22, 2016.
  19. ^ A b c Carl E. Zipper et al., Restoring Forests and Associated Ecosystem Services on Appalachian Coal Surface Mines , April 11, 2011, in: Environmental Management (2011), 47, pp. 751ff., Springer Science + Business Media ( English)
  20. ^ Nicola Armaroli , Vincenzo Balzani : Energy for a Sustainable World - From the Oil Age to a Sun-Powered Future . Wiley-VCH 2011, p. 87.
  21. ↑ The survey commissioned by CNN was conducted by ORC International from July 18-20, 2011. 1009 full-year Americans were interviewed on the phone: 57% rejected MTR, 36% supported the dismantling process, 7% abstained.
  22. ↑ Michelle Rozsa and Robert Howell, Poll: Majority oppose controversial coal mining practice , August 11, 2011, CNN.
  23. ↑ Bitter Coal. (PDF, 1.35 MB) A dossier on Germany's hard coal imports. urgewald, FIAN Germany, April 2013, accessed on August 10, 2013 .
  24. ^ Mountain top removal coal mining. BankTrack, accessed January 26, 2017 .
  25. ^ Coal Mining , July 9, 2015, Deutsche Bank press release, accessed September 21, 2015
  26. ↑ John Grisham's 'Gray Mountain' remains No. 1 on US bestseller list , December 31, 2014, Reuters , (English).
  27. ↑ Patrick Anderson, Book review: John Grisham's 'Gray Mountain' is a searing look at Big Coal , October 19, 2014, The Washington Post.