As U.S. Coal Industry Declines, Destructive Mountaintop Removal Continues Harming Health, Environment

Interview with Vernon Haltom, executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The volume of coal delivered in the United States for uses other than power generation—primarily for manufacturing—decreased by about half over the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This type of coal is known as metallurgical, or “met coal,” and it comes from Appalachia, mostly West Virginia.

Even though the quantity has declined, extraction of met coal is still active through the devastating process known as mountaintop removal, where explosives blow the tops off mountain ridges to get at the coal seams beneath. This method of coal mining creates harmful air pollution and, over the past 20 years has buried 2,000 miles of streams under the rubble in the valleys below.

There was a small victory against the powerful coal companies operating in West Virginia, when on April 21, a federal judge blocked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant a Clean Water Act permit for valley fills associated with a mountaintop removal site on Coal River Mountain. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Vernon Haltom, the longtime executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch, who talks about the status of coal extraction in southern West Virginia and the significance of the recent federal court ruling.

(Web editor’s note: This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.)

VERNON HALTOM: They have a huge complex on Coal River Mountain. It is about over 10 square miles of mountaintop removal and sludge dams that are either permitted or operational. So in the case of this recent court win, what that was was the Army Corps of Engineers granted a permit for valley fills to metallurgical resources subsidiary Republic Energy. What that valley fill permit would allow them to do was to bury 3 1/2 miles of streams on Coal River Mountain under the mining rubble, under the broken up rock that would be on the mountain. So what has happened is they applied for that permit, they got that permit and now the federal court has blocked that permit. It’s important to know that that does not end mountaintop removal anywhere. It does not end mountaintop removal on this permit even, what’s called an Article 3 permit because of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act.

The Department of Environmental Protection grants what’s called an Article 3 permit. And that is the one that allows the company to blow up the mountain and conduct mountaintop removal.

MELINDA TUHUS: I’d like a little background about what’s been going on in the last 15 years. I don’t think they’re taking coal out like they were around 2010 in every conceivable manner.

VERNON HALTOM: It’s decreased somewhat. Much of that has to do with the cheapness of fracked gas. So there’s less mountaintop removal for thermal coal. But in this case, it’s metallurgical coal. So a lot of the same corporate mindset of cutting corners and just complying with regulations that are convenient is still there. I mean, Alpha has three fatalities since the beginning of 2025, so they have a long record of safety violations.
MELINDA TUHUS: Can you just say a sentence or two about why you’re opposed to mountaintop removal coal mining? What are the impacts and why you think it’s not a good idea?
VERNON HALTOM: The worst impact from mountaintop removal coal mining is that it kills people from cancer, heart disease, other things. It even is related to birth defects because people breathe this ultra-fine duct that is released when the coal companies detonate the vast bunches of (unintelligible). And that dust does not recognize the boundary. It’s not supposed to leave the permit boundary against the law, but it does anyway. The wind and the laws of physics and meteorology do not recognize maps. So what that does is it drifts into neighborhoods. Exposure to that leads to cancer, heart disease, birth defects, blood inflammation, a number of things like that. There are over 30 studies that show that mountaintop removal is hazardous to the health of neighboring people. That’s the main reason to oppose it. It also is related to flooding. When you remove the trees and remove the natural contours and remove the mountain, but that rain now finds other ways to go.
And it has caused floods that have washed away homes and killed people. The blasts also damage the aquifers that feed people’s wells so they lose their well water or the quantity or quality or both. Mountaintop removal destroys forests. Destroys all these vast acreages of forests, destroying the wildlife and the natural things that live there. Sensitive species like ginseng and endangered species like the northern long-eared bat and the Indiana bat. A lot of people don’t like to hear it, but it contributes to the climate crisis. I say that mountaintop removal is the cradle of climate crisis because you are deforesting these vast acreages, thousands and thousands of acres of carbon sink forests while extracting climate-killing coal.
For more information, visit Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net.
For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary