Pollution From Mining Activities

How serious is the pollution that results from mining activities? How clean are the coal mining activities in Kentucky, West Virginia, and other Appalachian areas where mountaintops are stripped away to get at the coal? What other mining activities cause pollution of the air, the land, and the waterways? This paper will delve into those mining activities and report the pollution that results from those strategies.

The Pollution from Mountaintop Removal Strategies

An article in National Geographic (Mitchell, 2006) points to the fact that miles of rivers and streams are simply filled in, drowned in dirt, coal waste, and rocks. And Mitchell discusses the pollution that results when the coal is mined and the waste and other chemical residues are dumped in ponds. Hundreds of billions gallons of "toxic black water and sticky black goo," which are byproducts of mountaintop mining, are dumped into "slurry ponds,...
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