Mountaintop removal - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mountaintop removal mining is a form of surface mining

Surface mining

Surface mining , is a type of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed...

that requires the removal of the summit

Summit (topography)

In topography, a summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a local maximum in elevation...

or summit ridge of a mountain in order to permit easier access to the coal seams. After the coal is extracted, the overburden

Overburden

Overburden is the material that lies above an area of economic or scientific interest in mining and archaeology; most commonly the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. It is also known as 'waste' or 'spoil'...

(soil, lying above the economically desired resource) is either put back onto the ridge to approximate the mountain's original contours or dumped elsewhere, often in neighboring valleys. Mountaintop removal is most closely associated with coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

in the Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

in the eastern United States.

Peer-reviewed studies show that mountaintop mining has serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address, including loss of biodiversity, as well as human health impacts from contact with affected streams or exposure to airborne toxins and dust.

Overview

Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining

Surface mining

Surface mining , is a type of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed...

that involves the topographical alteration and/or removal of a summit

Summit (topography)

In topography, a summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a local maximum in elevation...

, summit ridge, or significant portion of a mountain, hill, or ridge in order to obtain a desired geologic material.

The MTR process involves the removal of coal seams by first fully removing the overburden

Overburden

laying atop them, exposing the seams from above. This method differs from more traditional underground mining, where typically a narrow shaft is dug which allows miners to collect seams using various underground methods, while leaving the vast majority of the overburden undisturbed. The overburden waste resulting from MTR is either placed back on the ridge, attempting to reflect the approximate original contour of the mountain, and/or it is moved into neighboring valleys.

The process involves blasting with explosives to remove up to 400 vertical feet (120 m) of overburden to expose underlying coal seams. Excess rock and soil laden with toxic mining byproducts are often dumped into nearby valleys, in what are called "holler fills" or "valley fills."

MTR in the United States is most often associated with the extraction of coal in the Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

, where the United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

(EPA) estimates that 2200 square miles (5,698 km²) of Appalachian forests will be cleared for MTR sites by the year 2012. Sites range from Ohio to Virginia. It occurs most commonly in West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

and Eastern Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

, the top two coal-producing states in Appalachia

Appalachia

Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...

, with each state using approximately 1,000 tonne

Tonne

The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...

s of explosives per day for surface mining. At current rates, MTR in the U.S. will mine over 1.4 million acres (5,700 km²) by 2010, an amount of land area that exceeds that of the state of Delaware.

Mountaintop removal has been practiced since the 1960s. Increased demand for coal in the United States, sparked by the 1973

1973 oil crisis

The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...

and 1979 petroleum crises

1979 energy crisis

The 1979 oil crisis in the United States occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979 and the Ayatollah Khomeini soon became the new leader of Iran. Protests severely disrupted the Iranian oil...

, created incentives for a more economical form of coal mining than the traditional underground mining methods involving hundreds of workers, triggering the first widespread use of MTR. Its prevalence expanded further in the 1990s to retrieve relatively low-sulfur coal, a cleaner-burning form, which became desirable as a result of amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act that tightened emissions limits on high-sulfur coal processing.

Process

Land is deforested

Deforestation

Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....

prior to mining operations and the resultant lumber

Lumber

Lumber or timber is wood in any of its stages from felling through readiness for use as structural material for construction, or wood pulp for paper production....

is either sold or burned. According to the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), the topsoil

Topsoil

Topsoil is the upper, outermost layer of soil, usually the top to . It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth's biological soil activity occurs.-Importance:...

is supposed to be removed and set aside for later reclamation. However, coal companies are often granted waivers and instead reclaim the mountain with "topsoil substitute." The waivers are granted if adequate amounts of topsoil are not naturally present on the rocky ridge top. Once the area is cleared, miners use explosives to blast away the overburden

Overburden

, the rock and subsoil

Subsoil

Subsoil, or substrata, is the layer of soil under the topsoil on the surface of the ground. The subsoil may include substances such as clay and/or sand that has only been partially broken down by air, sunlight, water, wind etc., to produce true soil...

, to expose coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

seams beneath. The overburden is then moved by various mechanical means to areas of the ridge previously mined. These areas are the most economical area of storage as they are located close to the active pit of exposed coal. If the ridge topography is too steep to adequately handle the amount of spoil produced then additional storage is used in a nearby valley or hollow, creating what is known as a valley fill or hollow fill. Any streams in a valley are buried by the overburden.

A front-end loader or excavator

Excavator

Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform . The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. A cable-operated excavator uses winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements. They are a natural progression from the...

then removes the coal, where it is transported to a processing plant. Once coal removal is completed, the mining operators back stack overburden from the next area to be mined into the now empty pit. After backstacking and grading of overburden has been completed, topsoil (or a topsoil substitute) is layered over the overburden layer. Next, grass seed is spread in a mixture of seed, fertilizer, and mulch made from recycled newspaper. Depending on surface land owner wishes the land will then be further reclaimed by adding trees if the pre-approved post-mining land use is forest land or wildlife habitat. If the land owner has requested other post-mining land uses the land can be reclaimed to be used as pasture land, economic development or other uses specified in SMCRA.

Because coal usually exists in multiple geologically stratified

Stratum

In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...

seams, miners can often repeat the blasting process to mine over a dozen seams on a single mountain, increasing the mine depth each time. This can result in a vertical descent of hundreds of extra feet into the earth.

Economics

Just under half of the electricity generated in the United States is produced by coal-fired power plants. MTR accounted for less than 5% of U.S. coal production as of 2001. In some regions, however, the percentage is higher, for example MTR provided 30% of the coal mined in West Virginia in 2006.

Historically in the U.S. the prevalent method of coal acquisition was underground mining which is very labor-intensive. In MTR, through the use of explosives and large machinery, more than two and a half times as much coal can be extracted per worker per hour than in traditional underground mines, thus greatly reducing the need for workers. In Kentucky, for example, the number of workers has declined over 60% from 1979 to 2006 (from 47,190 to 17,959 workers). The industry overall lost approximately 10,000 jobs from 1990 to 1997, as MTR and other more mechanized underground mining methods became more widely used. The coal industry asserts that surface mining techniques, such as mountaintop removal, are safer for miners than sending miners underground.

Proponents argue that in certain geologic areas, MTR and similar forms of surface mining

Surface mining

Surface mining , is a type of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed...

allow the only access to thin seams of coal that traditional underground mining would not be able to mine. MTR is sometimes the most cost-effective method of extracting coal.

Several studies of the impact of restrictions to mountaintop removal were authored in 2000 through 2005. Studies by Mark L. Burton, Michael J. Hicks

Michael J. Hicks

Michael J. Hicks is an economist and columnist. He is currently the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and Associate Professor of Economics at Ball State University..-Early Life & Military Career:...

and Cal Kent identified significant state level tax losses attributable to lower levels of mining (notably the studies did not examine potential environmental costs, which the authors acknowledge may outweigh commercial benefits).

Legislation in the United States

In the United States, MTR is allowed by section 515(c)(1) of SMCRA. Although most coal mining

Coal mining

sites must be reclaimed

Land rehabilitation

Land rehabilitation is the process of returning the land in a given area to some degree of its former state, after some process has resulted in its damage...

to the land's pre-mining contour and use, regulatory agencies can issue waivers to allow MTR. In such cases, SMCRA dictates that reclamation must create "a level plateau or a gently rolling contour with no highwalls remaining."
Permits must be obtained to deposit valley fill into streams. On four occasions, federal courts have ruled that the US Army Corps of Engineers violated the Clean Water Act

Clean Water Act

The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Commonly abbreviated as the CWA, the act established the goals of eliminating releases of high amounts of toxic substances into water, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that...

by issuing such permits. Massey Energy Company is currently appealing a 2007 ruling, but has been allowed to continue mining in the meantime because "most of the substantial harm has already occurred," according to the judge.

The Bush administration

George W. Bush administration

The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...

appealed one of these rulings in 2001 because the Act had not explicitly defined "fill material" that could legally be placed in a waterway. The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers changed a rule to include mining debris in the definition of fill material, and the ruling was overturned. However, if passed, the Clean Water Protection Act

Clean Water Protection Act

The Clean Water Protection Act is a bill introduced in the 111th United States Congress via the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure...

(H.R.1375), a bill in the House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

, would revert this change by specifying that coal mining waste does not constitute fill material, in effect disallowing valley fills.

On December 2, 2008, the Bush Administration made a rule change to remove the Stream Buffer

Riparian buffer

A riparian buffer is a vegetated area near a stream, usually forested, which helps shade and partially protect a stream from the impact of adjacent land uses...

Zone protection provision from SMCRA allowing coal companies to place mining waste rock and dirt directly into headwater

Source (river or stream)

The source or headwaters of a river or stream is the place from which the water in the river or stream originates.-Definition:There is no universally agreed upon definition for determining a stream's source...

waterways.
A federal judge has also ruled that using settling ponds to remove mining waste from streams violates the Clean Water Act. He also declared that the Army Corps of Engineers has no authority to issue permits allowing discharge of pollutants into such in-stream settling ponds, which are often built just below valley fills.

On January 15, 2008, the environmental advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity

Center for Biological Diversity

The Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Arizona, is a nonprofit membership organization with approximately 220,000 members and online activists, known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action and scientific petitions...

petitioned the United States Fish and Wildlife Service

United States Fish and Wildlife Service

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats...

(FWS) to end a policy that waives detailed federal Endangered Species Act reviews for new mining permits. The current policy states that MTR can never damage endangered species or their habitat as long as mining operators comply with federal surface mining law, despite the complexities of species and ecosystems. Since 1996, this policy has exempted many strip mines from being subject to permit-specific reviews of impact on individual endangered species. Because of the 1996 Biological Opinion by FWS making case-by-case formal reviews unnecessary, the Interior's Office of Surface Mining and state regulators require mining companies to hire a government-approved contractor to conduct their own surveys for any potential endangered species. The surveys require approval from state and federal biologists, who provide informal guidance on how to minimize mines' potential effects to species. While the agencies have the option to ask for formal endangered species consultations during that process, they do so very rarely.

On May 25, 2008, North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

State Representative Pricey Harrison

Pricey Harrison

Mary Price "Pricey" Harrison is a Democratic member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, representing the 57th district since 2005.-External links:* official NC House website* profile*Follow the Money - Mary Price Harrison...

introduced a bill to ban the use of mountaintop removal coal from coal fired power plants within North Carolina. This proposed legislation would have been the only legislation of its kind in the United States; however, the bill was defeated.

Environmental and health impacts

Critics contend that MTR is a destructive and unsustainable practice that benefits a small number of corporations at the expense of local communities

Local community

A local community is a group of interacting people sharing an environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.- Overview...

and the environment

Natural environment

The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....

. Though the main issue has been over the physical alteration of the landscape, opponents to the practice have also criticized MTR for the damage done to the environment by massive transport trucks, and the environmental damage done by the burning of coal for power. Blasting at MTR sites also expels dust and fly-rock into the air, which can disturb or settle onto private property nearby. This dust may contain sulfur compounds, which corrodes structures and is a health hazard.

A January 2010 report in the journal Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....

reviews current peer-reviewed studies and water quality data and explores the consequences of mountaintop mining. It concludes that mountaintop mining has serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address. For example, the extensive tracts of deciduous forests destroyed by mountaintop mining support several endangered species and some of the highest biodiversity in North America. There is a particular problem with burial of headwater streams by valley fills which causes permanent loss of ecosystems that play critical roles in ecological processes. In addition, increases in metal ions, pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids due to elevated concentrations of sulfate are closely linked to the extent of mining in West Virginia watersheds. Declines in stream biodiversity have been linked to the level of mining disturbance in West Virginia watersheds.

Published studies also show a high potential for human health impacts. These may result from contact with streams or exposure to airborne toxins and dust. Adult hospitalization for chronic pulmonary disorders and hypertension are elevated as a result of county-level coal production. Rates of mortality, lung cancer, as well as chronic heart, lung and kidney disease are also increased. A 2011 study found that counties in and near mountaintop mining areas had higher rates of birth defects for five out of six types of birth defects, including circulatory/respiratory, musculoskeletal,central nervous system, gastrointestinal, and urogenital defects. These defect rates were more pronounced in the most recent period studied, suggesting the health effects of mountaintop mining-related air and water contamination may be cumulative. Another 2011 study found "the odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment compared to the non mining environment in ways not explained by age, sex,smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history.”

A United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) environmental impact statement

Environmental impact statement

An environmental impact statement , under United States environmental law, is a document required by the National Environmental Policy Act for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An EIS is a tool for decision making...

finds that streams near some valley fills from mountaintop removal contain higher levels of minerals in the water and decreased aquatic biodiversity

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...

. The statement also estimates that 724 miles (1,165 km) of Appalachian streams were buried by valley fills between 1985 to 2001. On September 28, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) independent Science Advisory Board (SAB) released their first draft review of EPA’s research into the water quality impacts of valley fills associated with mountaintop mining, agreeing with EPA’s conclusion that valley fills are associated with increased levels of conductivity threatening aquatic life in surface waters.

Although U.S. mountaintop removal sites by law must be reclaimed after mining is complete, reclamation has traditionally focused on stabilizing rock formations and controlling for erosion, and not on the reforestation

Reforestation

Reforestation is the natural or intentional restocking of existing forests and woodlands that have been depleted, usually through deforestation....

of the affected area. Fast-growing, non-native

Introduced species

An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...

flora such as Lespedeza cuneata
Lespedeza cuneata
Lespedeza cuneata is a species of flowering plant in the legume family known by the common names Chinese bushclover and sericea lespedeza, or just sericea...

, planted to quickly provide vegetation on a site, compete with tree seedlings, and trees have difficulty establishing root systems in compacted backfill. Consequently, biodiversity

Biodiversity

suffers in a region of the United States with numerous endemic species. In addition, reintroduced elk

Elk

The Elk is the large deer, also called Cervus canadensis or wapiti, of North America and eastern Asia.Elk may also refer to:Other antlered mammals:...

(Cervus canadensis) on mountaintop removal sites in Kentucky are eating tree seedlings.

Advocates of MTR claim that once the areas are reclaimed as mandated by law, the area can provide flat land suitable for many uses in a region where flat land is at a premium. They also maintain that the new growth on reclaimed mountaintop mined areas is better suited to support populations of game animals.

Books and films

Many personal interest stories of coalfield residents have been written, including Lost Mountain by Erik Reese and Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice From Big Coal
Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice From Big Coal
Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice From Big Coal is a 2007 book published by the University of Kentucky Press. The award-winning book is written by Virginia resident Penny Loeb, a former senior editor at U.S...

by Penny Loeb. In April 2005, a group of Kentucky writers traveled together to see the devastation from mountaintop removal mining, and Wind Publishing produced the resulting collection of poems, essays and photographs, co-edited by Kristin Johannesen, Bobbie Ann Mason

Bobbie Ann Mason

Bobbie Ann Mason is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and literary critic from Kentucky.With four siblings Mason grew up on her family's dairy farm outside of Mayfield, Kentucky. As a child she loved to read, so her parents, Wilburn and Christina Mason, always made sure she had...

and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall -- Missing Mountains: We went to the mountaintop, but it wasn't there. In 2007, Ann Pancake

Ann Pancake

Ann Pancake is an American fiction writer and essayist. She has published short stories and essays describing the people and atmosphere of Appalachia, often from the first-person perspective of those living there...

released the novel Strange As This Weather Has Been, the first major fiction work about the subject. Mountaintop removal is a major plot element of the 2010 best-selling novel Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...

, wherein a major character helps to secure land for surface mining with the promise that it will be restored and turned into a nature preserve.

To date, Dr. Shirley Stewart Burns, a coalfield native, has written the only academic book on mountaintop removal, titled Bringing Down The Mountains, which is loosely based on the 2005 Ph.D. dissertation of the same name. Cultural historian Jeff Biggers has also published The United States of Appalachia examined the cultural and human costs of mountaintop removal.

In 2006, Catherine Pancake

Catherine Pancake

Catherine Pancake is an American filmmaker and musician, based in Baltimore, Maryland since ca. 1993. A native of West Virginia, she is a relative of the writers Breece D'J Pancake, Ann Pancake, and actor Sam Pancake...

released the first comprehensive feature-length documentary on mountaintop removal, Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Search for Coalfield Justice, a selection in the Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

. The film features Julia Bonds who won the 2003 Goldman Prize

Goldman Environmental Prize

The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists, one from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The prize includes a no-strings-attached award of...

. A 2007 documentary, Mountain Top Removal
Mountain Top Removal (film)
Mountain Top Removal is a 2007 documentary film directed by Michael O'Connell. The film explores how Mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia has affected local communities...

, focuses on Mountain Justice Summer activists, coal field residents, and coal industry officials. On April 18, 2008 the film received the Reel Current award selected and presented by Al Gore at the Nashville Film Festival

Nashville Film Festival

The Nashville Film Festival , held annually in Nashville, Tennessee, is the oldest running film festival in the South and one of the oldest in the United States. In 2009, Nashville Film Festival received close to 2000 submissions from 86 countries, programmed nearly 260 films and had an attendance...

. Another feature documentary, titled Burning the Future: Coal in America
Burning the Future: Coal in America
Burning the Future: Coal in America is a 2008 documentary film produced and directed by David Novack. The film focuses on the impacts of mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, where mountain ridges are scraped away by heavy machinery to access coal seams below, a process that is cheaper and faster...

, was awarded the International Documentary Association's 2008 Pare Lorentz award for Best Documentary.

In 2011, the film "The Last Mountain" directed by Bill Haney detailed the effects on the land and people living near mountaintop removal and coal burning sites. Maria Gunnoe, the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and others present the devastation, confront the politicians and corporate interests, and offer wind power as one solution for Coal River Mountain, WV.

External links

United States EPA - Mid-Atlantic Mountaintop Mining
100 Arrested at White House Calling for End to Mountaintop Coal Removal - video report by Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Overview

Process

Economics

Legislation in the United States

Environmental and health impacts

Books and films

See also

Further reading

External links