The impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining on water quality in Appalachia : hearing before the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, June 25, 2009.

This book assesses the state of the science on the environmental impacts of mountaintop mines and valley fills (MTM-VF) on streams in the Central Appalachian Coalfields. These coalfields cover about 48,000 square kilometers (12 million acres) in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, USA. This book focuses on the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, which, as its name suggests, involves removing all--or some portion--of the top of a mountain or ridge to expose and mine one or more coal seams. The excess overburden is disposed of in constructed fills in small valleys or hollows adjacent to the mining site. Conclusions are drawn, based on evidence from peer-reviewed literature, and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement released in 2005, and that MTM-VF lead directly to five principal alterations of stream ecosystems: (1) springs, and ephemeral, intermittent, and small perennial streams are permanently lost with the removal of the mountain and from burial under fill, (2) concentrations of major chemical ions are persistently elevated downstream, (3) degraded water quality reaches levels that are acutely lethal to standard laboratory test organisms, (4) selenium concentrations are elevated, reaching concentrations that have caused toxic effects in fish and birds and (5) macroinvertebrate and fish communities are consistently degraded.

We turn on our air conditioning and TV and plug in our chargers without an awareness of where the energy for our electricity comes from. We don't know that about half of our electricity comes from coal. We don't know that some of this coal comes from mountaintop removal coal mining that has devastated families and communities throughout the Appalachian Mountains. Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining: Why Mountains Are Going Missing and What We Can Do About Itis a resource for understanding and connecting the dots between flipping on the light switch and coal mining, flooding in Appalachia, air and water pollution, health problems, and global warming. Reader-friendly and hopeful, this book offers suggestions for how each of us can make our voices heard and make changes in our everyday lives to prevent further destruction of our country's majestic mountains and our magnificent planet. Jenifer Garlitz grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. She is refreshed spending time in the Appalachian Forest of southwestern Pennsylvania every summer. She received a bachelor's degree in elementary education and a master's degree in reading and literacy. She has worked for over ten years as a reading teacher and a reading specialist. Presently, she lives in Joliet, Illinois, with her husband and teenage son. In addition to working as a reading specialist at Creekside School in Plainfield, Illinois, she leads an Environment Club for fifth grade students at her school. Besides her work, she enjoys gardening, biking, reading, and visiting with her therapy dog.