Mountaintop removal in West Virginia: An environmental sacrifice zone

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of one of the most ecologically and socially destructive strip-mining techniques, mountaintop removal, in one of the poorest regions in the United States, West Virginia. It is argued that West Virginia has become an environmental sacrifice zone, providing efficient, low-sulfur coal to the centers of accumulation and consumption at the expense of its own environment and community. Feeding this process is a system in which the owners of the coal corporations control the core technological forces and labor power that are used to extract this nonrenewable resource-a resource over which they also exercise ownership rights. Although the coal industry is regulated by the state and national governments, the regulators, it is argued, have been captured by Big Coal. The result is one of the most egregious and little-known instances of environmental degradation taking place in the United States today.