What effects does Mountian top removal have on the economy? Despite claims that mountaintop removal increases local tax revenues, counties that produce coal are devastated by poverty, school closings, and unemployment. McDowell County has produced more coal than any other county in West Virginia, and for many years in the nation, yet the median household income is $19,931 and 37.7% of residents live in poverty.

http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/mtr/economics/

Why is it bad for the environment?

http://www.ilovemountains.org/resources/#mtrenvironment

Mountiantop Removal

Mountaintop removal is devastating hundreds of square miles of Appalachia; polluting the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans; and destroying a distinctly American culture that has endured for generations.

http://ilovemountains.org/

America's Addiction to Coal

We get 52 percent of our electricity from coal-fired plants. They emit 2 billion tons of CO2 a year. Can clean coal technology be developed -- and in time?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/view/4.html

Coal states in the U.S.

Coal is mined in 26 states, but more than two-thirds of it is taken from Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. While Wyoming produces the lion’s share of U.S. coal, West Virginia employs the largest number of miners, more than 20,000 in 2006. Nearly 18,000 coal miners worked in Kentucky that year, compared to more than 5,800 in Wyoming.



http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=289373

coal fire burning plant

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=132629
150 major new coal-burning plants.
what impact?

the brutal mountaintop removal that operators currently favor as the fastest way to extract Appalachian coal has buried more than 1,200 miles of previously free-flowing streams and caused loss of more than 1 million acres of the world’s most productive hardwood forests.