Coal Mining In Appalachia

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How Coal Mining has Affected Appalachia The mining of “black diamonds” or coal has been going on as early as the eighteenth century. It was only small scale then because coal was only used for blacksmiths’ fires. It was not until the Civil War ended and the Industrial Revolution started when the rush for the precious mineral begun. The demand for it has a lot of negative effects, but it also has its perks as well. Our nation really needs to get its stuff together and figure out a way to conserve the environment it effects. The process of coal mining was and still is very hard and tedious work. Before machines were made, people had to go into the mines with pick axes or dynamite to extract the coal. Then they would have little trollies that were either pulled by hand or by mules to transport it out of the caves. Also they used trees from the nearby woods to support the walls from caving in. Since it was such hard labor it took a lot of time to mine, so the impact was really not that recognizable until the new machinery came out. Once they came into the picture the slow process of doing it by hand became obsolete. This lead to a process called mountain top removal, which is basically what it says. It completely takes off the tops and pushes the excess debris off the side of the mountain. This caused runoffs that went into nearby streams and lakes that basically poisoned the water. Also there is no way that the vegetation could ever grow back and be the same. To top things off, methane gases that are released into the atmosphere make holes in our ozone layers, thus causing changes in the weather. It may seem like coal mining is nothing but a hazard to people and their environment, but it does have some positive effects. For people that live in the rural regions it provides lots of jobs, including working in the mines and running local stores that provide
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