Mountaintop removal coal: What's the problem? -- Ohio Citizen Action

Coal companies have already destroyed 500 Appalachian mountains . . . and they are just getting started.

Mountaintop removal is a radical form of coal mining where mountains are literally blown up -- devastating communities throughout Appalachia, polluting drinking water and destroying rivers.

The coal company first strips all the trees, plants and topsoil from the mountain and dumps it down the mountainside into a stream.
Then the company detonates millions of pounds of explosives, which can remove 500 feet or more of the mountain, again dumping the debris down the mountainside.
Next the coal is washed, creating coal sludge containing coal dust, clay and toxic chemicals such as arsenic, mercury, lead, copper, and chromium. The contaminated West Virginia streams and rivers empty into the Ohio River, from which millions of Ohioans get their drinking water.
Real reclamation is not possible. Most sites receive little more than a spraying of exotic grass seed. It will take hundreds or thousands of years to re-grow a forest on the headless mined mountain.

Who's paying for this atrocity? We are.

Coal companies sell this coal to electric utilities, including FirstEnergy, AEP, Dayton Power & Light, and Cincinnati Gas & Electric/Duke Energy. Even AMP-Ohio is apparently planning to use mountaintop removal coal for their proposed new coal plant in Meigs County. The Ohio utilities burn it to make the electricity you are using right now. When we pay our electric bill, we are paying for the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains.