Moving mountains: Mountaintop mining in Appalachia

When a few years ago Redlands Aggregates proposed to quarry out a small hill in Harris to produce materials for road building, there was an outcry from many quarters against such a move. After many hearings, inquiries and submissions, Redlands backed down and the Harris hill was saved.

Things work in different ways on the other side of the Atlantic, in the USA, where big business and government meet fewer obstacles to their ambitions. Not just one hill, but whole mountains in the coal rich regions of Appalachia have been levelled by strip mining over a period of twenty years. The process has been introduced into Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia, but is at its most intense in south West Virginia, where five per cent of the land surface, and area equivalent to half of Luxemburg, has been affected by over 600 sites.