From Coal Controversy in Appalachia:

When it comes to coal, perhaps the only thing more controversial than what to do about the heat-trapping carbon dioxide it generates is what to do about the social and environmental costs of getting it out of the ground. Nowhere is the debate over how far we are willing to go for inexpensive energy more contentious than in the coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains, where technology and engineering have allowed the scale of surface coal mines to reach gigantic proportions.

The most controversial mines are known as mountaintop removal mines because coal companies literally remove the tops of mountains with dynamite and earth-moving machines, called draglines, in order to reach coal seams. The waste rock—the remains of the mountains—is piled into neighboring hollows in towering earthen dams called valley fills. The largest fills can approach 800 feet in height and swallow more than a mile of streambed. In southern West Virginia, where the practice is most widespread, some of these behemoth mines are several thousand acres and still growing.

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