Mountaintop Removal mining (MTR) has become the preferred method for extracting coal in North America. This technique involves deforesting, exploding and clearing away the top layer of mountains to harvest coal from the seams buried underneath.
This method is extremely labor efficient, meaning far fewer miners are required to extract the same amount of coal from year to year. 1970 was the year that the very first MTR Site came into the world, at Bull push Mountain in Fayette County, West Virginia. Since then, over 15, 094 jobs have been shed from the West Virginia surface mining industry(Mountaintop Removal Mining, n.d.).
More so, mountaintop mining can involve removing 500 feet or more of the summit to get at the buried seams of coal. The earth from the mountaintop is then moved into neighboring valleys(US EPA, 2013).
What’s an industrial practice that, despite its economic benefits, sparks strong debate about its environmental or social costs? Let’s discuss these complex trade-offs.
References:
-
Mountaintop Removal Mining. (n.d.). Cooperedu. Retrieved May 28, 2025, from https://cooper.edu/about/mountaintop-removal-mining
-
US EPA, O. (2013, September 26). Mountaintop Mining Research [Overviews and Factsheets]. https://www.epa.gov/water-research/mountaintop-mining-research
