by Elyse Johnston
Haney, Bill, director. The Last Mountain. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6neS-dVOh_BM.
This source is an informative documentary. It was released by Uncommon Productions in 2011. It extensively discusses the controversy over the mountaintop mining of Coal River Mountain in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. Concerned citizens of West Virginia are fighting (sometimes to the death) a Big Coal corporation (Massey Energy) about the use/preservation of Coal River Mountain because of the devastating effects of mountaintop removal on their community.
Lindsay, Rebecca. “World of Change: Mountaintop Mining, West Virginia: Feature Articles.”NASA, Earth
Observatory. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/hobet.php.
This source is an academic text. It was published by NASA’s Earth Observatory. It mainly contains a photographic timeline of the degradation of the Hobet Coal Mine from 1984 to 2015. I found this source incredibly useful because of this timeline. It also discusses the controversy over mountaintop removal, the growth of Hobet Coal Mine, and a brief history about Hobet Coal Mine.
Rucker, Patrick. “How Big Coal summoned Wall Street and faced a whirlwind.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 5 Aug. 2015. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usacoal-hobet/
This source is an informative article. It was written by Patrick Rucker for Reuter’s, an international news agency. It mainly discusses the crooked history of Hobet Coal Mine over the last 40 years. It focuses on the business side of the coal industry, which was interesting and very informative to read. It extensively examines the major coal swings (i.e. number of employers and coal production in the coal industry), the rise and fall of the Hobet mine, and the history of Hobet’s buyers.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The Effects of Mountaintop Mines and Valley Fills on Aquatic Ecosystems of
the Central Appalachian Coalfields.” www.epa.gov.
This source is a scholarly article. It was published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2011. It lengthily discusses the environmental impacts of mountaintop mines and valley fills on streams in the central Appalachian coalfields, focusing on the aquatic effects. It lists four major aquatic impacts: loss of headwater resources, impacts on water quality, and impacts from aquatic toxicity. The EPA used peer-reviewed literature and the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fills in Appalachia to obtain most of the information in the report.
Wickham, James et al.* “The Overlooked Terrestrial Impacts of Mountaintop Mining.” BioScience. vol. 63, no. 5,
2013, pp 335-348., doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.5.7.
This source is a scholarly article. It was published by BioScience in 2013. It discusses the ecological research conducted on mountaintop mining, specifically focusing on the terrestrial impacts. It extensively looks into six major effects: the loss of topographic complexity, forest loss and fragmentation, forest succession and soil loss, forest loss and carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and human health and well-being. They found that terrestrial impacts of mountaintop mining are widely overlooked, even though they are quite severe and broad.
*Note: et al = James Wickham, Petra Bohall Wood, Matthew C. Nicholson, William Jenkins, Daniel Druckenbrod, Glenn W. Suter, Michael P. Stager, Christine Mazzarella, Walter Galloway, and John Amos