Removing Mountaintops for Energy

This editorial in the New York Times about removing mountaintops to get at the coal is enough to make me wish that all of our electrical power was from nuclear power plants. This is just way too sad.

It takes just a dozen guys with giant D-9 bulldozers about a year to wreck a mountain. They dynamite it, then shove the shattered vegetation and topsoil (called spoil or overburden) down into the valleys, followed by chunks of bedrock.

Everything in this horrific pile dies. Even the streams are buried. Every rain is a flood. Slurry ponds spill black sludge. People living near mine sites hear the cacophony of dynamite, dozers and coal trucks 24-7. Their houses flood and crack. Their children come home from school sick, covered with coal dust. The well water is black.