Here is Renee Schoof’s Lexington Herald-Leader article about the Science piece coming out today on mountaintop removal. Also check out the entertaining comments at the end of Renee’s article.
By RENEE SCHOOF – McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Scientific evidence that mountaintop-removal coal mining destroys streams and threatens human health is so strong the government should stop granting new permits for it, a group of 12 environmental scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
The consequences of this mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are “pervasive and irreversible,” the article finds. Companies are required by law to take steps to reduce the damages, but their efforts don’t compensate for lost streams nor do they prevent lasting water pollution, it says.
The article is a summary of recent scientific studies of the consequences of blasting the tops off mountains to obtain coal and dumping the excess rock into streams in valleys. The authors also studied new water-quality data from West Virginia streams and found that mining polluted them, reducing their biological health and diversity.
To continue: http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1086591.html
