The EPA should not permit mining operations based on regulatory loopholes and lax enforcement practices that have allowed mountain waterways to be treated as waste dumps. The people in Appalachia, like all Americans, have a right to clean streams, rivers, and drinking water — and it’s up to the EPA to look out for their interests. Today the agency fulfilled that duty, and now we expect the EPA to follow-up with the necessary actions to end — not to mend — the practice of mountain removal. Rob Perks, a blogger at the National Resources Defense Council , September 11, 2009.

People in Appalachia have lived and worked with coal for generations. Mining communities have endured countless struggles and tragedies associated with harsh conditions of mining underground and also with harsh environmental results of strip mining.

Since the 1970s, scientists, politicians and voters have debated economic, environmental and health effects of reliance on coal-fired energy. In 2006, Appalachians witnessed the Sago Mine underground disaster in West Virginia (photo, left), in which 13 men were trapped for two days and all but one lost their lives.

Now concerns are growing about about impact of the latest coal-mining method on water quality. This method is known as mountaintop removal.