A Dirty Little Secret

Imagine one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, one that rose from the earth around 480 million years ago. They have been exquisitely formed, these mountains, by inexorable natural processes; 480,000 millennia worth of rain, snow, and wind has shaped their peaks, their passes, their eminences and declivities. They’re stunted and wizened, yes, diminutive and unprepossessing, but also soft and round, wooded and green, lovely and mysterious and ancient. They roll, they rise, they fall—always gently—across more than 1,500 miles of their home continent.

The mountains are also an ecological treasure trove, home to more species of flora and fauna than any other temperate forest in the world. Their waters teem with a profusion of fish and amphibians that can be found nowhere else on earth. These mountains, in a purely objective, biological reckoning, are of incalculable value, and from an aesthetic standpoint, they are irreplaceable (what assumes the place of a mountain in one’s sightline?). To their human inhabitants, who number in the millions and have developed a distinctive culture inextricably entwined with these mountains—their physiology and grace and peculiar dispensation of resources—they are a home of centuries, and in some cases, even longer.

Now imagine that these mountains contain a valuable mineral resource. (Utopia becomes dystopia.) The government of the land on which most of these mountains unfold their purple majesty is interested in extracting the resource, and in some cases permits industry to literally flatten the mountains in order to more easily plunder the mineral wealth within. Flatten means flatten: every tree is felled; explosives are inserted into rock; detonation after detonation brings the mountain down. Enormous machinery removes the resource and fills the surrounding valleys with worthless rubble from the destruction. What was once a mountain peak and valleys, bristling with green forests and plant and animal life, is now a perfectly level and arid and lifeless moonscape of rock.

Now imagine that things get worse. Imagine that the mountain rubble used to fill those valleys is full of other minerals, less profitable ones, metals like selenium and zinc, in addition to chemical compounds such as arsenic and sulfates that are either toxic or known carcinogens. The metals and compounds leach from the rubble into mountain streams that have been covered up in the hasty resettling of the rock. These streams feed private wells and water supplies throughout the region. Well water, in many cases, turns to brown sludge. These are the lucky households, ones with clear signals not to drink; others, without obvious prohibitive cues, consume the contaminated water every day. Cancer rates in some areas skyrocket. The incidence of diseases of the lungs, kidneys, and heart among local populations increases significantly. The government, confronted with evidence of the ecological and human damage wrought by the practice, refuses to ban it outright.

Where in the world are we? China, perhaps? Russia? In some benighted developing world nation where a cash-strapped government is desperate for export income? Somewhere in Africa maybe? In fact, the nightmare I’ve described is unfolding in the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia today. Energy companies have leveled, and continue to level, millions of acres of the Appalachians in order to extract coal, meanwhile destroying vistas 480 million years in the making, essential plant and wildlife habitat, and filling and contaminating more than 1,500 miles of streams. Mountaintop mining, as the practice is known, is America’s dirtiest environmental secret.