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18 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 455 (2010-2011)
The Potential of State Coal-Purchasing Legislation to Decrease Mountaintop Removal Mining

handle is hein.journals/nyuev18 and id is 461 raw text is: STUDENT ARTICLES THE POTENTIAL OF STATE COAL-PURCHASING LEGISLATION TO DECREASE MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL MINING SARA GERSEN* INTRODUCTION Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) is a method of extracting coal by blasting off mountain peaks in order to access thin underlying coal seams. The practice continues to have major environmental and social consequences in the parts of Appalachia where it occurs. Leveling mountaintops has permanently changed the Appalachian landscape and destroyed riparian ecosystems in underlying valleys, where huge amounts of overburden must be dumped. People living near the mine sites also suffer an array of health problems and other disturbances. For over a decade, anti-mountaintop removal activists have responded to these harms with a variety of strategies. They have sued in federal court to curtail mountaintop removal by demanding enforcement of environmental laws. Mountain preservation activists have also pushed change in the political branches by proposing amendments to the Clean Water Act in Congress that would make it more difficult to fill valley streams with mining debris. Anti-mountaintop removal efforts have also targeted the executive agencies that shape environmental policy, making mountaintop removal a presidential campaign issue since at least 2004.1 Nonetheless, new MTR projects continue to receive federal * Law Fellow, Environmental Law Institute. J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), 2010. I would like to thank Professors Eric Biber and Steve Weissman for their insight and support. Also, many thanks to Aaron Love, Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, and Peter Miljanich for their thoughtful input and skilled editorial advice. Hannah C. Halbert, Note, From Picket Line to Courtroom: The Changing 455 Imaged with Permission from NYU Environmental Law Journal

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