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The Human and Environmental Costs of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in Appalachia (40 images)

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  • Southern West Virginia is ground zero for mountaintop removal coal mining, a radical form of strip mining where the entire peak is removed in order to extract the horizontal layers of coal that lay like icing between layers of rock. Massive and expensive machines called Draglines are used to moved the 'overburden' - trees, topsoil, rock - and dump it into the valley below, creating valley fills.

  • The most bio-diverse temperate forest in the world blankets the Appalachian mountains, the oldest mountain range in the world. Coal River Mountain, pictured here, has become a rallying point for the battle to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

  • Ed Wiley looks up at Clays Branch on Cherry Pond mountain above Bo Webb's home where Massey Energy's mountaintop removal operations causing clouds of poisonous dust and dangerous 'fly rock' to enter his yard.

  • As the dark clouds of a Spring thunderstorm roll through, the remnants of the once pristine Shumate Hollow stand stripped and denuded, then sprayed with 'hyrdoseed' to grow grass on the rock pile left behind. The ridge from where this image was shot is no longer has been removed.

  • Larry Gibson and his beloved Dog stand at the edge of his Kayford Mountain, land Gibson’s great-grandparents exchanged as part of their wedding dowry, as a blast implodes on Patriot Coal’s surrounding mountaintop removal operations. .

  • A blast explodes on Kayford Mountain, dwarfing the massive shovel sitting in front of it. Blasting in mountaintop removal uses diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate, the same lethal combination the Oklahoma City bomber used. Kayford Mountain is completely surrounded by the barren moonscape left behind in mountaintop removal. Gibson has been fighting more than 23 years to stop the practice, he is known as one of the leaders of the movement.

  • TURN OFF THE LIGHTS .Patriot Coal’s Samples mine, of the West Virginia’s largest, at night, October, 2008. The dragline on Kayford mountain has shut down since Patriot Coal announced the closure of surface operations at their Samples Mine in August, 2009.

  • As a fully-loaded coal train rumbles by, September 26, 2007, Maria Gunnoe prepares to depart for Federal Court in Huntington, WV where she testified on behalf of her neighbors over pending valley fills in Dry Branch, WV. This resulted in Gunnoe being singled out and targeted by the coal industry, forcing her to take special safety precautions for herself and her family.

  • Bo Webb photograhs just beneath a mountaintop removal blast above his home. Webb personally took his footage to Washington, DC to the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) prompting a team of inspectors to the site which was subsequently shut down for a short time. The operation is again in full swing.

  • A billboard at the foot of Kayford Mountain by the coal industry, which spends millions of dollars each year on advertising, attempting to burnish a good image.

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