An aerial view of the huge mountain top removal mining sites in southern West Virginia reveals miles of decapitated mountains and filled-in valleys. And this is just the beginning. Individual sites, now separated by green, forested, intact mountains, will eventually merge together as all the mountains are leveled as far as the eye can see. Land companies own the mountains and coal companies already have permits to mine many of them. Right now it looks like they won't stop until they've leveled every coal-bearing mountain in the state.

The huge Earth movers called draglines work around the clock every day. The largest of these shovels, nicknamed "Big John," is 20 stories tall and moves 130 tons of rock and dirt at a time. It only takes one person to operate a dragline. A hidden cost of this efficiency is jobs. There used to be 125,000 miners employed in West Virginia, but now there are only 18,000, although coal production has never been higher.

The Appalachians, the easternmost mountains on this continent, stretch from Georgia to Nova Scotia. What nature sculpted over hundreds of millions of years, we, with our modern technology, can destroy in a matter of months. Richard Bambach, professor of paleontology and geology at Virginia Tech, describes the genesis of the Appalachians. "Five hundred and forty million years ago, when the eastern portion of the continent was the ocean floor, layers of sediment were deposited over the base of volcanic and metamorphic rock. Three hundred and forty million years ago, the land mass that is now Africa bumped into the land mass that became North America and, over the next 100 million years, the Earth's crust buckled and folded from the Piedmont across the Blue Ridge area, sculpting the Appalachians into the magnificent landscapes of ridges, valleys, hollows and coves that characterize the region."

Today, the coal-rich mountains of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky are disappearing as a result of the latest, most cost-efficient method of mining coal: mountain top removal. In this process, 500 to 1,000 feet of the entire top of a mountain is removed to expose successive seams of coal. The overburden, or spoil (everything that isn't coal) that is removed during the process, is then trucked to adjacent coves and valleys and dumped. It's the most profound destruction imaginable, and it's forever.

The forests are clearcut from the mountain before it is decapitated and the remaining vegetation is burned. "Reclamation" means planting special grasses that grow without soil because there is no soil left. In addition to having to watch these mountains being razed, neighboring residents must endure the constant noise of the huge machinery and the effects of blasting: showers of dust and rock, structural damage to their homes and places of business, dried-up wells and contaminated water.

This form of strip, or surface mining (as opposed to deep mining, where miners tunnel into a mountain) began in the 1950s. Back then, operations were small and few. In the late '70s and early '80s, mountain top removal increased in scale. After amendments to the federal Clean Air Act passed in the early '90s requiring electric utilities to use cleaner-burning, low-sulfur coal, the number and size of mountain top removal sites has increased dramatically.

In 1977, in an attempt to protect the environment and coal field residents, Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), which requires coal companies to restore the "approximate original contour" of surface-mined land. However, operations that remove the entire tops of mountains are exempt from this rule. SMCRA, which was fought by mining interests from the beginning, gives states the power to permit mining operations and responsibility for the enforcement of SMCRA regulations.

But in West Virginia, King Coal really rules. In May, Governor Cecil Underwood, a retired coal-company executive himself, appointed Michael Miano, a Pittston Coal Company executive until late last year, as the director of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the agency overseeing coal mining activities. His appointment was confirmed even though federal regulations require coal executives to wait at least two years before taking a regulatory position involving issuing water pollution permits for coal mines.

The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, West Virginia Citizen Action Group and West Virginia Environmental Council have brought suit to force Miano's removal. Another lawsuit filed by the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and coal field residents charges the DEP and the Army Corps of Engineers with failing to enforce the Clean Water Act. The plaintiffs cite the fact that the DEP routinely approves surface coal mining permits for mountain top removal and valley fill, thereby allowing mining companies to bury the headwaters of West Virginia's streams under millions of tons of rock. A study by a US Fish and Wildlife biologist found that 469.3 miles of streams has so far been lost in five West Virginia watersheds as a result of surface mining and valley fills.

A week after the lawsuit was filed, Corps officials admitted valley fills cannot be permitted and therefore must meet state and federal water quality standards. When asked whether DEP monitors water quality downstream from mountain top removal sites and valley fills, Ed Griffith, the DEP Assistant Chief, said the only long-term study was conducted by Arch Coal Company. That study, he said, showed down-stream water quality was actually enhanced by the mining process! In response to the question, "Isn't that a bit like the fox guarding the hen house?" Griffith replied, "Individuals in the coal industry are honest, hard-working folks and they tell it like it is."

Actually, it seems that no one's guarding the hen house. Both Griffith and Tom Morgan, Acting Field Office Director for the Office of Surface Mining, said neither agency is capable of determining the number of active mountain top removal operations and/or the number of permitted sites on which operations have not yet begun. Morgan said the EPA, the Corps of Engineers and the Fish and Wildlife Service are just now working with OSM to determine the effects of valley fills on streams. Meanwhile, the mountains and valleys are being leveled at an alarming rate. Compared to that 540 million year timeline, King Coal can make a mountain disappear in less than a heartbeat.

For information on how you can help, please contact the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, 1101 6th Ave. Suite 222, Huntington, WV 25701, (304) 522-0246; mforman@marshall.edu.