Big government and natural resource destruction. This isn’t about oil – but mountain top removal. It may sound strange, but its impact is environmentally and socially unsound.

Coal companies literally explode the tops off of mountains – to flatten them – mainly in the Appalachian region, and then mine the coal underneath. Sure this might be a nice efficient practice for the coal companies, but it creates huge problems for other people.

The debris created from the top of the mountain coming off is thrown to the base of the mountain where it blocks and pollutes many streams. Scientists working for federal agencies say that about 1,200 miles of steams have either been buried or polluted between 1985 and 2001. Even though the parts of the mountain are natural, they contain high amounts of heavy metals that taint water supplies.

This egregious type of mining also destroys the forests. Scientists estimate that by the end of the decade, mountain top mining would destroy 1.4 million acres of forest – an area the size of Delaware.

If you don’t care about the environmental impact, the practices still affect the locals who live around the areas. Many times, the blocking or filling of the streams creates very unstable dams that can burst and floods that destroy people’s homes in Appalachia. You’d think you would have probably heard of this, because you always hear of the mudslides in Malibu, but because the people in Appalachia have no money, I guess they don’t matter.

The tops of the mountains that are destroyed during mining can be regenerated, but that rarely happens. The tops of the mountains are so deprived of nutrients that basically nothing can grow there. So, many times they are forced to put a non-native species of grass, or Astroturf, on it. This, as you could imagine, really messes with the ecosystem.

But of course they have a backup plan if the environment fails to regenerate; they could build stores there! Many companies plan to put commercial or industrial developments on top of the mountains once they are done, though this hardly happens and nothing is usually done. That’s right, instead of a scenic mountain range or just a nice place away from sprawling towns, there’s going to be a Wal-Mart.

The Bush administration has been the lackey of the coal companies the whole way through. The Bush administration changed the wording in the Clean Water Act so that the parts of the mountains were labeled debris instead of waste, which makes it easier for the coal companies to wreak havoc on Appalachian ecosystems. It’s always a good time when more things stop being labeled waste!

The Bush administration also changed a scientific report in a pretty amazing way. The report, which was produced by many scientists of varying agencies, was stripped of the terms “severe” and “significant” in relation to any environmental impact. A Bush administration steering committee also threw in a revision that included concerns of top coal company officials.

The most outrageous part is that while the report was in the making for years, once a Bush administration member stepped in, the focus of the report was changed to “focus on centralizing and streamlining coal-mining permitting.”

The administration member, J. Stephen Griles, also happened to be a former lobbyist for the National Mining Association.

Anyone else see a slight conflict of interest? It’s simply irresponsible to appoint someone with that background to that post. Clearly the Bush administration cares nothing about the environment and people of Appalachia, and only the advancement of its supporters.

The Bush administration keeps stripping our natural resources away by appointing energy company officials to posts that are supposed to be pro-environmental, or at least unbiased about the situation. These irresponsible tactics will eventually lead to largely irreparable damages to our country’s landscape.