Stripping Mountains to Power D.C.

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Coal Does More Than Keep the Lights On

Some communities in West Virginia say Washingtonians are unaware of the true cost of "mountaintop" mining.

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"This will never, ever be like that again," she said. Nearby, the small creek where her siblings had played has been buried under rubble. Lucille Miller and her husband live in Mud part time.

Elsewhere, neighbors complain about flash floods bursting out of denuded mine sites and about explosions that can disrupt the water flowing from wells. "It starts off looking like orange juice, and then it starts looking like chili, and then you don't have none," said Barbara Chafin of Mingo County, W.Va.

Biologists say the effects can fall even harder on the environment, suffocating the life in Appalachian streams.

"It destroys the streams. I mean, it eradicates them. It's dead. It's gone," said Margaret Palmer, head of the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

It is impossible to know which of the mines in the region provide coal to the power plants around Washington. The mines' owners, Constellation Energy of Baltimore and Mirant of Atlanta, would not reveal the mines from which they bought coal.

Federal records show, however, that both companies' plants bought mountains of coal from the region. More than 90,000 tons were shipped last year from surface mines in Boone County, home to part of the mine near Mud, to the Brandon Shores plant in Anne Arundel County, and 237,000 tons went to the nearby Herbert A. Wagner plant. The Potomac River plant in Alexandria bought coal in the past from Mingo County, where Chafin's water turned muddy.

At Constellation, which owns the Brandon Shores and Wagner plants, spokesman Lawrence McDonnell said the company had not heard concerns from customers about using coal from mountaintop mining.

"That may come at one time, but the market is not there yet," he said.

Environmentalists in West Virginia have said they want big-city electricity users to try to conserve power.

In West Virginia, home to the majority of the mountaintop mines in the region, they are a fiery political issue. Last year, activists won a lawsuit challenging the mines on environmental grounds, and a federal appeals court in Richmond will hear that case next month. The debate is so heated that a Christian group has called for a statewide fast around the court date to clear minds and settle emotions.

If the mines were shut down, there could be serious economic ripples in the region, where the coal companies can be the dominant employers. Larry Lodato, of the economic development authority in Boone County, W.Va., said he worried that environmentalists would succeed in stopping permits for new mountaintop mines.

"We're hurting" if that happens, Lodato said. "A lot of our companies would be looking elsewhere. There would be a lot of jobs lost."