In Appalachia, that means blowing the tops off mountains to get at the coal seams inside — a process that cuts company costs, but also ravages neighboring communities, poisoning wells and waterways, contaminating air, killing off wildlife and flooding nearby homes. Leading scientists say the effects are irreversible.

This week, a coalition of Appalachian environmentalists launched a campaign they hope will mitigate the disconnect between the electricity Americans use and the devastating processes that keep it so cheap, unveiling a national TV ad that could bring mountaintop removal into living rooms nationwide. The idea is simple: If consumers knew they were contributing to the destruction of the country’s oldest mountains, perhaps they would demand an end to the practice.

For effect, the ad borrows from one of the most famous commercials in the history of television: Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 “Daisy Girl” spot, in which a young girl plucking flower petals looks up to see a nuclear explosion in the distance. (In the MTR version, of course, the nuclear blast is replaced by the elimination of an Appalachian peak.)

“These are the stakes,” the narrator says. “We can allow the land, water and people of Appalachia to be sacrificed. Or end mountaintop removal coal mining.”

If the explosions aren’t enough to captivate interest, the coalition has brought on Ashley Judd, a longtime MTR critic, as the narrator.

The [EPA's] guidance for approving mining permits, based on these new scientific studies, will help control the damage caused by mountaintop removal mining. But the science shows us that if we are to truly protect our mountains, streams and the people who depend on them, we must bring the practice of mountaintop removal mining to an end.

Last year, Alexander and Cardin introduced legislation that would classify mining debris as a pollutant, which would force coal companies to truck their mining waste to off-site dumping grounds — something the industry claims would make mountaintop removal economically unfeasible (which, of course, is the whole point of the bill).

Last June, Cardin staged a hearing on the issue, the first of its kind in nearly a decade. At the time, the Maryland Democrat vowed to hold another, though none has yet been planned. The offices of both Cardin and Alexander are closed today for the Easter holiday.

Conveniently, Alexander has a bill that would do just that. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), would redefine mining waste as a pollutant, thus barring companies from dumping debris into valleys below their mountaintop projects. The idea is that if it becomes too expensive to truck the debris off-site, then companies will stop blowing up mountains altogether.

“The new EPA guidelines are useful in stopping some inappropriate coal mining in Appalachia but Congress still needs to pass the Cardin-Alexander legislation that would effectively end mountaintop removal mining,” Alexander said in a statement issued Thursday. “By mountaintop removal, we mean blowing the tops off of mountains and dumping the waste in streams.”

Such statements put Alexander at odds with a number of Appalachian lawmakers, who view any new environmental protections in coal country as a threat to jobs in the region. But there’s good reason why Alexander has adopted his position. Tennessee is home to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, by far the most visited national park in the country. Last year, nearly 9.5 million people visited the Great Smoky, compared to 4.3 million visitors to the Grand Canyon, which ranks second.

Considering those tourism numbers, Tennessee’s lawmakers have no interest in wrecking the same mountains that are drawing those people in. Indeed, they’ve discovered a way to create sustainable local jobs without poisoning their waters and communities.

“Coal is an essential part of our energy future,” Alexander said, ”but it is not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal to meet our needs.”

A mountaintop coal mine in West Virginia (Rick Eglinton/Toronto Star/ZUMA Press)

In a show that the Obama administration is serious about putting the teeth back into the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency today jump-started a process that could kill one of the largest mountaintop coal mining operations ever allowed in Appalachia. The decision — which is already being attacked by powerful coal-country Democrats — marks the first time in the EPA’s history that it has invoked its CWA authority to question the legitimacy of a permitted project.

[Environment1]Mountaintop removal refers to the process of blowing the tops off of mountains to uncover the seams of coal inside. The soil, rock, trees and other debris are then pushed into adjacent valleys, often burying tiny streams representing the headwaters of larger rivers below.

West Virginia’s Spruce No. 1 Mine, approved under the Bush administration, would devour 2,278 acres of wooded mountains in southern Logan County. The operation would fill six Appalachian valleys with 110 million cubic yards of debris, burying more than seven miles of headwater streams over the next 15 years.

Most of the project has been stalled in recent years by a series of lawsuits filed by community activists. But the EPA under the Obama administration has also taken a great interest in the project. Today they took that interest a step further, issuing a “proposed determination” that could lead to restrictions on the extent of the mining — or a veto of the permit altogether.

Among the EPA’s concerns surrounding Spruce No. 1, officials said the mine “will cause adverse impacts to drinking water, native aquatic and water-dependent communities in the Spruce Fork watershed.” Runoff from the project is likely to include selenium and other pollutants, which will “adversely affect the naturally occurring aquatic communities.” All told, the mine will result in “the cumulative loss of water quality, aquatic systems, and forest resources.”

That the EPA has the authority to stop such a project is not in question. The Clean Water Act empowers the agency to restrict or prevent dumping when the debris “will have an unacceptable adverse effect on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas (including spawning and breeding areas), wildlife, or recreational areas.” But laws are only as good as their enforcement, and EPA officials under the Bush administration spent eight years looking the other way as permit after permit was approved for mountaintop removal mines.

The reason is clear. The coal industry is a juggernaut of influence on Capitol Hill. And its defenders were quick on Friday to blast the EPA’s intervention as a threat to jobs in one of the most destitute nooks of the country. The National Mining Association, for example, argued that the EPA’s decision “adds further uncertainty for jobs and economic security throughout Appalachia.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) weighed in as well, calling it “wrong and unfair for the EPA to change the rules for a permit that is already active.”

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.V.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee who represents Logan County, agreed, calling the EPA’s move “an unprecedented, unjustified and undeserved decision.”

“The owners of the Spruce Mine worked in good faith over the course of many years with State and Federal permitting agencies, including the EPA, and the permit was issued after the conclusion of a full environmental impact statement,” Rahall said. “To come back now and pull the rug out from under this mining operation is unconscionable.”

He’s right about one thing; the move is unprecedented. Under the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers makes most permit decisions, but the EPA can step in to delay pending permits — or veto existing ones — if the agency has reason to believe the disposal sites will harm water supplies or ecosystems. EPA has used its CWA veto authority just 12 times since 1972, the agency claims, and never before has it done so for a project that was already permitted.

EPA officials defended their decision Friday, arguing that the agency is simply fulfilling its obligations under the CWA. “We must prevent the significant and irreversible damage that comes from mining pollution — and the damage from this project would be irreversible,” Shawn Garvin , EPA regional administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, said in a statement. “EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”

Environmentalists were quick to throw their support behind the move as well. Ed Hopkins, director of environmental quality at the Sierra Club, said the news is indication that evidence-based decision-making is returning to the EPA after eight years in the wilderness under the Bush administration. “The best available science tells us that proposed mines like the massive Spruce Mine would pollute waterways, destroy mountains and devastate communities,” Hopkins said in a statement.

The EPA’s proposed determination will be published in the Federal Register on April 2, with a 60-day public comment period to follow.

“We hope that the agency follows through on this recommendation,” Hopkins said.

“The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country,” Blankenship told a packed house at the University of Charleston. “This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese.”

He has a point: Coal is cheap, and more than 50 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated from it. But the critics aren’t arguing against the importance of coal, they’re arguing against the destructive method by which the industry is harvesting it in Appalachia. And those are two different things.

The Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. has been following this topic for years, and has the debate rundown here and here. (And for real devotees, West Virginia Public Broadcasting has the full audio here.)

For those unfamiliar with mountaintop removal, the gist of the issue is this: Coal companies have learned that they can save time and money by blowing the tops off of the Appalachian Mountains — the oldest range in the country and among the oldest in the world — in order to reach the seams of coal contained inside. The heavy machinery used in the process means that the companies need fewer laborers; and lax enforcement of environmental laws, both federal and state, has allowed companies to dump the waste into adjacent stream valleys, which saves the cost of trucking it to more distant dumping sites. That the process violates the Clean Water Act has been no problem in the eyes of West Virginia’s powerful Democrats.

The industry argues that this process creates much needed jobs in a downtrodden part of the country — ignoring the inconvenient fact that harvesting the coal by other methods would create even more jobs. Environmentalists, for their part, say that mountaintop removal comes at the too-high cost of poisoning waterways, contaminating air, killing off wildlife and flooding nearby homes.

“This is the worst environmental crime that has ever happened in our history,” Kennedy said. “These companies are liquidating this state for cash with these gigantic machines.”

The 90-minute debate wasn’t going to change any minds among the hundreds of miners and environmentalists in attendance. But as ABC News accurately noted, “the real audience extends far beyond West Virginia and central Appalachia; it’s the millions of Americans who don’t know a strip mine from a slurry impoundment, but whose anger or acceptance of mountaintop mining could tip the political balance one way or the other.”

Indeed, the more exposure this issue gets, the tougher it will be for Washington lawmakers to accept the decimation of the country’s oldest mountain range.

In an article appearing in the journal Science tomorrow, the scientists will present new evidence they say “unequivocally documents irreversible environmental impacts” associated with mountaintop removal, in which the tops of Appalachian peaks are blasted away and the debris pushed into nearby streams.

“The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable,” Margaret Palmer, environmental scientist at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study, said in a statement previewing the article. “Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes.”

Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken some steps to ensure that mountaintop coal projects don’t harm local waterways. But the message has been mixed, with the agency refusing some new permits, while approving others even when it means burying miles of mountain streams.

Appalachian lawmakers on and off Capitol Hill have been critical of that inconsistency, arguing that it leaves the mining industry — not to mention its thousands of employees — in a constant state of uncertainty.

Earlier this week, officials in West Virginia, site of some of the largest mountaintop operations, took a long step toward reining in the practice themselves. In an interview with The Charleston Gazette Wednesday, Randy Huffman, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, announced the state’s own moratorium on new mountaintop projects that impact streams. Huffman said that mixed signals from the Obama administration leave the state no choice but to craft its own stricter guidelines.

“If EPA’s not going to give us answers, we need to get our own,” Huffman said. “We need to get our own posture on this, and the end result is going to be a reduction in the size and scope of these operations.”

That’s a far cry from Huffman’s statement before Congress last summer, when he warned lawmakers that stricter regulations would threaten jobs in the state.

“The people that live in the steep, narrow terrain of southern West Virginia need the opportunities created by surface mining,” Huffman said at the time.

In a private gathering adjacent the governor’s mansion in Charleston, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D), Rep. Nick Rahall (D), Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) and Gov. Joe Manchin (D) met with industry leaders regarding the mixed signals coming from the Environmental Protection Agency on mountaintop removal, a method of mining in which the tops of mountains are blasted away and the debris pushed into nearby streams.

And here’s a hint: the lawmakers are none too happy with the EPA’s actions so far. From the Gazette:

Rockefeller said the White House meeting doesn’t have to involve President Obama, but must be with someone who can provide “good, hard information” about exactly what new environmental constraints EPA wants to place on mountaintop removal.

Rahall said coal executives at Tuesday’s meeting expressed frustration with EPA permit reviews, delays in permit decisions and general confusion about what — if any — new standards EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is imposing on Clean Water Act permits for strip mines.

“We need to know what the rules of the game are,” Rahall said. “We need clarity. We need EPA to get its act together.”

The meeting was originally scheduled to be public, Ward reports, but was moved to a private tent at the last minute. Organizers might have feared the arrival of anti-mountaintop removal activists, though no protesters showed up, Ward notes.

Both sides have reason to feel anxious. Earlier this year, the EPA approved dozens of new mountaintop mining permits, causing some alarm among environmentalists that the Obama administration was poised to follow in the footsteps of the hands-off Bush White House on the issue. More recently, however, the EPA announced that it was withholding 79 pending applications for new mountaintop removal projects in order to assess their impact on local waterways. Then last month the agency took an even bolder step, threatening to revoke the permit for the Spruce No. 1 Mine, the largest mountaintop mine in West Virginia, unless the owner changed the design to protect local streams. It marked the first time since the 1972 passage of the Clean Water Act that the EPA had invoked its CWA authority to halt an existing coal mining permit.

Calls to Capitol Hill today weren’t returned. (Today, after all, is Veterans Day, and many offices are vacant.) But the EPA said last month that other existing mountaintop operations can breathe easy — the agency isn’t likely to target them as it did the Spruce project.

EPA does not expect to review additional mining projects in circumstances where the [Army] Corps has already issued a permit. Spruce is a very large mine, with correspondingly significant environmental and water quality impacts.

EPA’s letter today confirms that all 79 permits initially identified on September 11 must undergo additional evaluation by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. EPA’s final list was transmitted in a letter to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Jo-Ellen Darcy.  The 79 permits represent all of the backlogged surface coal mining projects under review by the Army Corps of Engineers. After a careful evaluation of these surface coal mining projects, EPA determined that each of them, as currently proposed, is likely to result in significant harm to water quality and the environment and are therefore not consistent with requirements of the [Clean Water Act].

As Ward points out, this doesn’t mean that the 79 projects will be rejected. But they could be altered if the EPA — which has been a more aggressive environmental watchdog under this administration than under the last — determines that they do indeed violate the Clean Water Act.

Environmental groups were quick to applaud the decision. Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, issued a statement saying the further review “will surely prove that this most destructive form of coal mining is incompatible with clean water.”

Not terribly interested in seeing his Smoky Mountains become moonscapes, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has been an active supporter of eliminating mountaintop removal in favor of techniques less damaging to the environment. Indeed, Alexander and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) have introduced legislation that would effectively end the practice. After all, the Smokies are a magnet of tourism, and what visitor wants to come to the mountains only to find a sea of mud?

Turns out, there are a few.

Based on Alexander’s opposition to mountaintop removal, miners in surrounding states have vowed recently to boycott the entire state of Tennessee. The Washington Post last month talked to one of the creators of the movement.

“This is nothing against the people of Tennessee, but we will not spend money in Tennessee as long as they have an individual like Lamar Alexander who is not looking at the whole picture of how what he does affects other people,” said Roger Horton, a West Virginia miner. He hatched the boycott idea with fellow miners on a bus returning from a June 25 Senate committee hearing on the Alexander-Cardin Appalachian Restoration Act.

The miners, it turns out, had reason to be feeling vindictive after that hearing. That’s because a large group of environmentalists and community activists — many traveling from Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia — arrived hours before the hearing began, formed a long line outside the door, and filled all the seats when the doors were opened. The miners, stuck at the end of the line, were forced to watch the proceedings on a television from an overflow room. One community activist said afterward that the miners were none too happy to hear that they wouldn’t be allowed to watch the show live. “They’re not used to not getting their way,” the activist said.

Meanwhile, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that claims 1.2 million “members and activists,” is calling on those folks to visit Tennessee as a counter-punch to the miners’ boycott.  “We commend Senator Lamar Alexander for his leadership and we will continue to support his home state and its irreplaceable natural resources,” Frances Beinecke, NRDC president, said Thursday in a statement.

Alexander, for his part, has dismissed the boycott threat, arguing that the threat to tourism if the mountains are decimated is the much larger concern. “Every year, millions of tourists come to Tennessee and spend millions of dollars to see our scenic mountaintops,” he told The New York Times, “not to see mountains whose tops have been blown off and dumped into streams.”

It’s worth noting that Alexander has shown much more courage taking on the powerful coal industry than the Obama administration has.

His wrap-up of what’s at stake:

Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day — the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly — to blow up Appalachia’s mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains — encompassing about a million acres — buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region’s air and water.

On this continent, only Appalachia’s rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not — obliterating the hemisphere’s oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas — while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining…

America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains — with their impoverished and alienated population — are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

Last month, the Obama administration took steps to rein in mountaintop removal, vowing to examine each new mining application to ensure the projects won’t have lasting effects on neighboring waterways. But the effort got off to a dubious start. Indeed, of the first 48 pending applications reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency, 42 were approved. Thirty-one of the 42 will bury at least one valley with mining debris, which often contains toxic heavy metals that wash into waterways below. At least one of the 42 will bury six valleys in mining waste.

When asked how burying six Appalachian valleys could have no detrimental impact on water quality, an EPA spokesperson replied that neither the number nor the size of valley fills are, by themselves, enough to determine a mine’s effects on water quality.

Considerations including the nature of the soils and rock to be disturbed by mining activities, the extent of previous mining in the watershed, the hydrology of streams to be impacted by the valley fills, materials management plans being employed to reduce exposure of contaminated soils and rock, and other considerations directly affect the extent of potential downstream water quality impacts. The agencies can not conclude categorically that 6 valley fills in a particular circumstance is too many, just as we can not conclude that three valley fills is categorically not enough to result in water quality impacts. Consideration of the potential impacts to water quality and the environment requires a project specific evaluation of all relevant factors.

But there’s another factor that goes unmentioned: the power of the coal industry to influence congressional lawmakers. Indeed, in the name of job creation and energy independence, the lawmakers representing the Appalachian states have a long history of defending the coal industry even as it levels the mountaintops and poisons local communities. In the middle of a recession, with energy costs already a concern on Washington’s collective mind, the White House has clearly avoided taking on the coal industry and its congressional supporters for fear of the political backlash.

It’s a dynamic not lost on Robert Kennedy Jr.

America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains — with their impoverished and alienated population — are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.