In recent years, the labor union has supported the high-efficiency mining method, which is widely opposed by environmentalists and some residents of the nation’s eastern coalfields. In mountaintop removal mining, rocks and dirt are blasted and scraped away to reveal coal seams. The debris is dumped in valleys.

The UMW understands that people who live near mountaintop mines have concerns about the practice and the union is willing to talk with people who want to ban it, spokesman Phil Smith said at the Appalachian Studies conference in Huntington last week.

Smith’s comments came in response to a challenge issued by West Virginia Highlands Conservancy Vice President Julian Martin.

“All of these other things are fine goals,” Martin said, “but if we can’t save the Appalachian mountains, the rest of the country better watch out.”

Smith didn’t oppose the notion.

“As a long-term goal, I don’t think we would be opposed to that,” he said. “This is something we ought to be talking about.”

The UMW has opposed surface mining in the past. In the 1950s, former President John L. Lewis spoke against a 4,700 acre strip mine in what is now Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest. Later, however, the union opposed federal strip mining rules and pushed for state regulation.

Smith said the UMW has to weigh its opinion of mountaintop removal mining against the interests of its members.

Those members can’t be abandoned, Smith said.

Government records show 760 of the state’s 5,400 surface mine employees are represented by unions.

“If there were suddenly 5,000 jobs in mountaintop removal, there would be a political element within the union to deal with that.” Smith said.