Appalachian states like Kentucky have a long, turbulent history with coal and mountaintop removal—an extractive mining process that uses explosives to clear forests and scrape soil in order to access underlying coal seams. Without trees to buffer the rain and soil to soak it up, water pools together and heads for the least resistant path—downhill. A 2017 Environmental Science and Technology study looked at how mountaintop-removal mining might actually help store precipitation. When a mountaintop is rocked by explosions, leftover material is packed into areas known as valley fills. These compounds are subsequently washed into streams during heavy rain, a process known as alkaline mine drainage.

Source: New York Times August 14, 2022 07:37 UTC