Environment: The Price of Strip Mining

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The U.S. Interior Department has estimated that to repair damage caused by strip mining in Appalachia would cost at least $250 million of taxpayers' money. About 10,500 miles of once-clear Appalachian streams are contaminated by acids, sediments and metals draining from exposed coal beds. Even worse in the residents' eyes are the landslides of debris from "contour" strip mines, which encircle mountains.

Dumped over deep cuts high in the mountains, the "overburden" piles up —until the rains come. Then the mud and boulders roar downhill, snapping big trees like toothpicks and tumbling onto farms, gardens and homes in the hollows below. "I just dread the day," says Alice Slone, principal of a school in Cordia, Ky., "when I'll pick up the phone and find one of the children has been buried in a strip mine slide."

Ravenous Machines. The effects of strip mining are not confined to the hidden valleys of Appalachia. The flatter the land over coal deposits, the more easily surface miners can deploy their fantastic King Kong technology. Some new power shovels can scoop up 200 tons in a single bite, then take another gulp a minute later. Even with such ravenous machines working round the clock, all 52 motors screaming, the coal will not run out for centuries. Only 4.5 billion of the nation's 108 billion tons of strippable coal have been touched so far.

The great machines are now crawling over new fields in Arizona and North Dakota, gouging up the mineral mainly to fuel new power generating plants. Reclamation efforts are officially described as "behind schedule." More huge reserves will be tapped in Montana, Utah and Wyoming. Even the landowners who stand to gain the most from sale of their property fear the result: 42,000 sq. mi. of land—an area larger than Ohio—might be turned into a sterile wasteland.

Nixon's Way. What can be done? West Virginia Congressman Ken Hechler has proposed federal legislation to outlaw strip mining entirely. Though his bill carries the names of 35 co-sponsors from 16 states, no one expects Congress to pass it. Until other safe energy sources are developed, the nation's power plants demand the cheap coal that stripping can provide. Other critics urge that mined-out areas become garbage dumps for nearby cities which have a pressing need for disposal grounds. The rationale is that decomposing organic matter would eventually enrich the sour earth.