"Wild, Wonderful" West Virginia's Decapitated Mountains and Deformed Fish
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/wild-wonderful-west-virginias-decapitated-mountains-and-deformed-fish/A scientist documents the poisoning of the state’s waters by the coal industry
By Jacqueline Gerson on September 19, 201
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I pull out a metal wand connected to a digital screen. By putting this sensor into the water, I can determine the amount of free-floating ions—positively or negatively charged atoms and molecules—some of which might be harmful, others harmless. A healthy stream will have a small number of ions, but one impacted by mountaintop mining can have up to 10 times this value. My reading today shows the stream that I’m standing in, which is close to a peakless mountain, has five times the ion concentration of the one I measured earlier in the morning.
After collecting water samples to analyze in the laboratory, I begin to kick around in the stream. Some of this kicking is the result of my frustration with the mining companies for causing such severe physical and chemical changes to the landscape. But mostly I am kicking around to loosen rocks and free any insects that may be living under or next to them. I hold a small net downstream of where I’m kicking, ready to catch these insects before they float away. After a few minutes I grab my net and have a seat on the stream bank to begin picking out the small bugs from among the leaf bits and sediment that have also entered the net.
By identifying the species as well as the number of individuals of each, I can determine the stream’s health—these small insects are extremely sensitive to contamination and can be used to indicate how much the water is affected by mining. This stream’s health, in turn, will impact the health of larger animals that live in the water such as salamanders and fish, which consume the insects. As I suspected, and as I’ve read about from other studies, the overall number of species I find is low. This does not bode well for more familiar charismatic animals that we love, such as deer, beavers and bears.
With a heavy heart, I record my findings in my notebook, pack my equipment back into the truck and continue down the road to record the chemistry and biology in the region’s other mined and unmined streams. Later, in the laboratory I will analyze the water samples I collected and find contaminants such as selenium are highly elevated in mining-impacted streams, which explains the fish with curved spines—birth deformities caused by these high selenium concentrations. It’s not just flattened bare peaks that have become the norm in mountaintop-mined West Virginia but also the pollution of streams and reduction in insects and animals that cannot survive under these conditions.
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logging roads and trails. Alas, I'm far too old and fat for that sort of thing now, but I do love hiking and driving on the mountain roads. It really is a beautiful area. 
My son and I love the trips up and down the rough terrain roads.
mountaintop removal. Maria is a wonderful person, courageous fighter, environmental advocate against coalfield mountain extraction, neighbor, mother and native West Virginian of Sioux heritage. She's been very ill, I need to check on how things are with her now.
>Maria Gunnoe: My Mountain Story. In 2000, the mountain ridge above Maria Gunnoe’s home became a mountaintop removal coal mining site. She and her family withstood ground-shaking explosions, clouds of harmful dust, severe floods, and poisonous contamination of the drinking water in their home, which was eventually destroyed by a flood, a common effect of mountaintop removal mining. The coal company told her it was an "act of God."
Her experiences transformed Maria from an everyday person into a courageous, outspoken organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, board member of the nonprofit flight tour organization SouthWings (which has made possible all of the aerial views and photos of mountaintop removal), and leader of the movement to stop mountaintop removal. Over the years, her bold work has opened countless eyes to the truth about coal and its path of destruction.
Her life has been threatened numerous times for her criticism of the coal industry, and she’s been assaulted and harassed, but she has refused to be silenced. In 2009, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize, or "Green Nobel," for her courageous activism against destructive mountaintop removal mining. In October 2012, Maria Gunnoe will be the 22nd recipient of the University of Michigan's Wallenberg Medal, a high honor for recognizing the world's preeminent humanitarian leaders. More, https://earthjustice.org/mountain-heroes/maria-gunnoe
