Mar 25: Mountaintop Removal Mining talk at CMU

Eric Blevins, a member of the Appalachia community, is heavily involved in actions against the expansion of coal companies using mountaintop removal. He will be speaking about mountaintop removal and the efforts involved in the struggle to end it.

Mountaintop Removal coal mining has been a major part of making coal powered energy so cheap. It is also working hard to destroy the landscape, ecosystems, and communities throughout Appalachia. It's a relatively new type of coal mining that began in Appalachia in the 1970s as an extension of conventional strip mining techniques. Mountaintop removal is occurring primarily in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies in Appalachia are increasingly using this method because it allows for almost complete recovery of coal seams while reducing the number of workers required to a fraction of what conventional methods require.

Mountaintop removal includes clear cutting mountains, devastating the topsoil, vegetation, ecosystems,
biodiversity, and the communities in the area. The mountains are blast apart, dug into, and the waste is dumped into nearby valleys, burying streams and irrevocably changing the landscape

5 p.m. in Porter Hall 125B on the Carnegie Mellon campus; free and open to the public.