Strip Mining: Overview
Strip mining is a surface mining technique used to extract coal and other valuable minerals located near the Earth's surface. This method has gained prominence in regions like Wyoming, where flat terrain allows for large machinery to easily remove soil and expose coal deposits. In contrast, mountainous areas such as West Virginia utilize a more controversial approach known as mountaintop removal, where entire mountain summits are blasted away to access coal. While strip mining provides substantial amounts of energy, it is also a focal point in discussions about environmental impact and energy dependency. The practice raises ecological concerns, including land degradation, water pollution from waste materials, and deforestation. Furthermore, the shift from traditional underground mining to strip mining has significant socio-economic consequences, particularly in communities that have historically relied on coal mining for employment. Advocates of coal often highlight potential advancements in clean coal technologies, while critics argue for a broader move away from fossil fuels due to their contribution to global warming and air pollution. Overall, strip mining remains a complex issue intertwined with energy needs, environmental stewardship, and economic change.
Strip Mining: Overview
Introduction
Strip mining--a technique used to recover coal or other valuable ores lying near the surface of the Earth--provides an increasingly large amount of America’s energy production. The largest source of coal in the United States today is Wyoming, where strip mining is the exclusive means of harvesting coal that lies just beneath the Earth’s surface.
In flat areas like Wyoming, giant earth-moving equipment scrapes soil from the ground, allowing huge mechanical shovels to dip up the coal. Later, the dirt can be replaced. In mountainous areas like West Virginia, however, entire mountaintops are removed to expose coal. Once removed, these mountains cannot be replaced.
Strip mining is part of the national energy debate. On one hand, coal offers a possible source of independence from imported oil. On the other hand, burning coal produces carbon dioxide and other emissions that contribute to global warming.
Understanding the Discussion
Mountaintop removal: A relatively new form of surface mining in which the top of a mountain is removed to access ore deposits, typically coal, beneath the Earth’s surface.
Open-pit mining: A widely-used coal mining method in which a relatively thin layer of soil is scraped away and valuable minerals that lie near the surface of the earth are removed. Open-pit coal mining is widespread.
Overburden: The soil that lies on top of the coal or other valuable material to be mined via open-pit or strip mining.
Quarry: A term used to describe an open-pit mine that is extracting sand, gravel, or rocks used in construction. Quarries are usually shallower than open-pit mines.
Strip mining: A surface mining method of extracting valuable materials by digging from the surface after scraping away the surface soil (overburden). Strip mines are often associated with coal extraction.
Surface mining: Extracting minerals from the earth's surface by strip mining, open-pit mining, quarrying, or other mining techniques.
History
Prior to the 1940s, coal was extracted from underground mines, or tunnels deep into mountains that followed seams of coal. Since the 1940s, the introduction of enormous new equipment has made it feasible to extract coal that lies near the surface by first clearing away a thin layer of soil (the overburden) and then digging up the exposed coal.
Coal deposits that lie near the surface would not be accessible via traditional tunnels. Strip mining is a different kind of extraction, which exposes coal that was previously inaccessible. The economics of strip mining are also quite different than the economics of traditional tunnel mining. Previously, miners were paid to dig tunnels deep underground, chip away at coal deposits, and load the coal into small cars that were then pulled to the mine entrance. Strip mining is much less labor intensive. In West Virginia, for example, total coal production in 2003 was one and a half times the amount recovered in 1983, but the number of miners had been cut in half. The difference was due to the rise of strip mines.
Strip mines come in several varieties. Mountaintop removal is the newest method, gaining popularity in the 1990s. Prevalent in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, this technique involves the removal of an entire mountaintop by a combination of explosives and earth-moving equipment. It is labor-productive, as equipment is substituted for workers. Contour strip mining requires digging terraces around the sides of mountains and extracting coal near the surface. Open-pit mining is typically carried out on flatter surfaces, for example in Wyoming, and involves digging large holes, or scraping away the earth over an extended area, to expose coal that is near the surface. Quarries are usually a form of open pit mine; they usually extract gravel, sand, or rocks.
Strip mining has been criticized for its environmental and ecological consequences. In the case of mountaintop removal, the surface soil and waste material is sometimes dumped down the side of the mountain, polluting the valley and waterways below. This can impact water supplies for the region, as well as divert rainfall into new patterns. Another problem is deforestation. When coal produced by mountaintop mining is processed, slurry is created that is frequently stored in reservoirs behind large dams. Such dams have burst in the past, creating floods that have wiped out the communities below.
The welfare of people living near strip mines also raises concerns. The fact that mining companies can extract the same amount of coal via strip mining with far fewer miners has created economic hardship in communities that traditionally depend on coal mining for their livelihoods.
The subject of strip mining also involves the use of coal as a fuel, principally to generate electricity. Coal is controversial for two reasons. First, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which most scientists agree is a key cause of global warming. Second, older coal-burning plants emit soot, which is a major source of air pollution around the coal-burning plants as well as several hundred miles downwind—the distance from Pittsburgh and Detroit to New England, for example.
Strip Mining Today
Although strip mining is technically a technique, in reality the term refers to the process of extracting coal at low cost. Coal is America’s most abundant carbon-based fuel. United States production of oil reached a peak more than 30 years ago and has declined steadily ever since. As dependence on foreign oil is regarded as a diplomatic and political liability for the United States, coal has many supporters. As of 2013, the biggest coal-producing state was Wyoming, followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, respectively. All the coal extracted from Wyoming is obtained via strip mining.
Advocates of coal point to promising new “clean coal” technologies that will enable electric utilities to burn coal without producing air pollution. These technologies will enable coal to substitute for petroleum and, when combined with a program of reducing gasoline consumption, could make significantly reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil. In September 2008, the world’s first clean coal energy plant made its debut in Spremberg, Germany. The high cost of the technology was absorbed by the German government. However, funding for these endeavors remains a problem in many other countries around the world, including the U.S. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy discontinued funding for a project known as FutureGen, which would have built the nation’s first clean coal plant in Indiana. But in August 2010, the Department of Energy announced a revised plan called FutureGen 2.0, and began renewed efforts to get the project off the ground. By March 2013 the FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage project in Illinois was in phase 2.
Critics of coal argue that it is still a carbon-based energy source that produces carbon dioxide, a key element in global warming. America’s energy goal, these critics argue, should be to reduce all carbon dioxide emissions, and this precludes the increased use of coal. However, the mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen formed by the gasification of coal, known as Syngas, can be used as an intermediate in natural gas to reduce the effects on the environment. Others criticize strip mining, especially in Appalachia, as ruining the environment. The practice of storing slurry waste from coal production in reservoirs poses the threat of destructive floods. Moreover, dirt and debris from mountaintop removal techniques fill valleys below, clogging streams and threatening drinking water. In flatter terrain, like Wyoming, the soil removed to expose coal can be replaced after the coal is removed, making the environmental impacts temporary.
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