Mountain Top Removal-When Mountains Move, March, 2006 National Geographic Magazine
Mountaintop removal is a mining practice drastically transforming Appalachia. Entire mountaintops are dynamited away to obtain small seams of coal. Unwanted rock is pushed into valleys and streams destroying natural watersheds. Impoundments of heavy metals and slurry are held in ponds. The mountain culture as well as people's health is at risk. Coal is big business, used to pour our nation's electricity.
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Activist Larry Gibson leads two friends to a...
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Once this was a quiet rural community, but...
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Bulldozers fill trucks with excess rock at a...
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West Virginians have always lived with the...
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Lucious Thompson walks down the road in Tom...
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A family climbs into the woods to hunt ginseng...
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Snow accentuates the contours of a flattened,...
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Twisted Gun Golf Club is an 18-hole regulation...
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A four-wheeler drives up a rock-covered road...
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Attorney Brian Glasser talks with some of the...
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Kenny Stroud and sons Chase and Aaron react to...
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Caudill family members gather on weekends and...
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Family members visit at the end of a reunion of...
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Lorene Caudill prepares for their move by...
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As mountaintop removal mine permits allow the...
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Big John, a dragline, sits idle on a...
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The water is a toxic witch's brew of arsenic,...
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Mine workers load explosives into the earth to...
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Small mountaintop removal site employes a small...
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Truck carrying rock from mine site in...
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A slurry of water filled with toxic sludge--a...
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Mining companies can legally come within 100...
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Mountaintop removal is a mining practice...
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Children play on a trampoline outside their...
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Hugging her dog with a tame deer in the back...
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Communities get together in the spring to have...
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Therman Caudill carries a bucket to gather...
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Once the communities are gone--the houses...
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Twisted Gun golf course is a reclaimed...
