The Appalachian Mountains are not only a landmark of East Tennessee, but a landscape that has defined the history and culture of the region. However, just a few hours north of Chattanooga, mountaintop removal—a form of surface mining for coal—is destroying the very mountains that Tennesseans cherish, impacting an area the size of metropolitan Chattanooga (roughly 80,000 acres).
In an effort to end mountaintop removal in Tennessee, Appalachian Voices opened an office in Nashville last May. Led by J.W. Randolph, Appalachian Voices is working to educate citizens of the state about the impacts of mountaintop removal in Tennessee, which has 15 active surface mines in three counties: Campbell, Claiborne and Anderson.
“Tennessee has the opportunity to be a leader in the Southeast by creating rules and regulations that favor citizens and public health over destructive mining practices that take mountains and our money out of state,” says Randolph, who grew up outside of Chattanooga in Birchwood, Tenn. “Tennessee is a mountaintop removal state, but the coal industry does not have the same iron grip on Tennessee’s political process.”
Mountaintop Removal in Central AppalachiaCentral Appalachian coal—coal produced in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee—is a high-grade coal that dominates the U.S. metallurgical coal market and international markets. Currently, Tennessee supplies a small fraction of the coal used for electricity in the state and nation; however, as global markets for coal increase, the demand for Central Appalachian coal has the potential to grow, as well.
About 48 percent of coal in Central Appalachia is extracted through mountaintop removal, a surface mining technique. Topsoil and vegetation are cleared or burned, and millions of pounds of explosives are detonated to break through the surface to coal seams. Then, coal and debris are removed with huge earth-moving machines called draglines, which replace the manpower required in conventional mining. Afterward, the debris is bulldozed over the side of the mountain into valleys and streams below, a practice that has buried and polluted nearly 2,000 miles of headwater streams in Central Appalachia.
Coal sludge, the toxic byproduct of separating coal from rock, is then stored in massive lagoons or surface impoundments near mountaintop-removal sites. Hundreds of these impoundments, which contain dangerous heavy metals including lead, arsenic and mercury, are scattered across Central Appalachia. Occasionally, an impoundment fails, resulting in a tragic human health and environmental catastrophe.
It is estimated that nearly 1.2 million acres in Central Appalachia have been affected by mountaintop removal. According to Appalachian Voices, 501 mountains have been impacted: 293 mountains in Kentucky; 135 mountains in West Virginia; 67 mountains in Virginia; and 6 mountains in Tennessee.
There are currently no federal or state agencies tracking the overall extent or cumulative impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, according to Appalachian Voices. However, communities affected by mountaintop removal find the impacts to be far-reaching, including contaminated drinking water, forceful blasting near residential dwellings, increased flooding, and unsafe sludge and slurry impoundments. A 2009 study, “Mortality in Appalachian Coal Mining Regions,” found that compared to other regions of Appalachia and the nation, coal-mining areas had the highest mortality rates for every year from 1979-2005. Furthermore, despite required reclamation efforts, cleared areas rarely return to their original level of biodiversity.
“Mountaintop removal is not just an environmental issue – it’s a human rights issue,” explains Randolph. “We want everyone to know this is going on and to feel a bit of responsibility to bringing it to a close.”
Although surface mining has existed in some form since the 1960s, mountaintop removal became prevalent during the 1990s. However, this growth in production has not supported the Central Appalachian labor force—one of the poorest in the region—due to the replacement of manpower with heavy machinery and equipment. For instance, in the 1950s between 125,000 to 145,000 miners were employed in West Virginia, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 50 years later, only 16,000 miners were employed in the state despite a growth in coal production.
Appalachian VoicesFounded in 1997 in Boone, N.C., Appalachian Voices aims to reduce coal’s impact on the central and southern Appalachian region and advance a vision for a cleaner energy future. Randolph says the organization has three priorities in Tennessee: ending mountaintop removal; moving TVA away from purchasing mountaintop removal coal and toward job-creating measures such as energy efficiency; and increasing economic opportunities in Appalachian communities.
For Randolph, who grew up in a log cabin along the banks of the Tennessee River, the cause is personal. “Growing up in East Tennessee, I developed a deep appreciation for the landscape and community,” says the 2001 Baylor School graduate. “In 2005, I saw mountaintop removal for the first time – at Kayford Mountain in southern West Virginia – and I knew that I would be working on that issue until it was over. I felt violated when I saw it – I was really just crushed by the scale of it. I had seen pictures, but you cannot anticipate the scale of a mountaintop removal site until you step foot on it.”
Randolph joined Appalachian Voices in 2004 when mountaintop removal was relatively unpublicized. “At the time, we called mountaintop removal the best-kept secret in the United States,” he says. “It was a small regional issue that nobody knew about. “ Today, the environmental and health effects of mountaintop removal are reported more often. In 2009, the movie "Coal Country" helped bring the devastating effects of mountaintop removal to light in the Southeast.
While he has seen firsthand the devastating effects of mountaintop removal, Randolph is hopeful: “Through the work of thousands of citizen in impacted communities, we have created allies in people as different as John McCain and President Obama, and earned the support of more than 170 bipartisan members of the House and a dozen bipartisan senators to cosponsor legislation that would prohibit most mountaintop removal in Central Appalachia. Our victory will be a triumph of regular people like you and me, who chose to stand up and do something to improve our lot in life.”
In the coming year, Appalachian Voices in Tennessee aims to work with politicians to enact the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Act, finalize the North Cumberland Lands Unsuitable for Mining Petition, and stop mining of the Sewanee Coal Seam, one of the most toxic coal seams east of the Mississippi River. Randolph says Senator Lamar Alexander has been a leader on the issue of protecting mountains and communities from mountaintop removal, as well as Rep. Jim Cooper.
Visit the Appalachian Voices website to learn more about mountaintop removal. Randolph also encourages citizens to contact their state legislators to tell them to end mountaintop removal in Tennessee. “It is absolutely critical to our success that individuals contact their state legislators as early and as often as possible,” he says. “Ending mountaintop removal is an urgent issue for protecting the economy, ecology and communities of rural Tennessee.”
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