Speaker decries strip mining

Rachana Dixit /senior writer

A man living on an Appalachian mountain sought by mining companies criticized mountain top removal Wednesday night in Health and Human Services.

Some coal companies use mountaintop removal as an alternative method of mining. Instead of going underground, the top of the mountain is demolished with explosives and coal is removed by heavy machinery. Mining companies have blasted as much as 600 feet off a single mountaintop.

Larry Gibson, who resides on Kayford Mountain in Colford, W. Va., and David Cooper, an opponent of mountaintop removal from Lexington, Ky., led the presentation.

Gibson lives on 50 acres of Kayford Mountain and has a family cemetery there that adds another 20 acres. While Gibson’s land used to be the lowest elevation on the mountain, it is now the highest due to the blasts.

"I’ve been fighting for my land since 1986," Gibson said. In 1987, Gibson started hearing dynamite blasts and has been speaking nationally since 1996.

Cooper has been devoted to environmental issues after seeing his first mountaintop removal in 1999. "It was the most sickening thing I had ever seen," Cooper said. "These mountains will never come back."

Although mine sites have frequently been reclaimed, it is very difficult to re-grow vegetation and topsoil. Cooper said flattened mountains do not absorb rainfall and flash floods are more common.

Gibson discussed the Clean Water Protection Act and encouraged students to write to representatives about the bill. The Clean Water Protection Act (HR 783) would ban coal companies from depositing mining waste in water.

"If they destroy your own backyard, where are you going to go?" Gibson said. "The mountains give me life."