Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has asked the federal government to restrict mountaintop removal mining along a 500-mile stretch of a state-owned mountain ridgeline, the first time a U.S. governor has petitioned for land to be protected from the controversial practice. Much of that ridgeline is included in the state’s so-called “Connecting the Cumblerland” conservation initiative; Bredesen’s plan would protect a 1,200-foot-wide swath of ridgelines covering 67,000 acres. In a petition to the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining, Bredesen calls for the preservation of what he calls the region’s “important cultural, recreational and scientific resources.” Mountaintop removal is a practice in which mining companies blast off the tops of mountains to get at coal seams below, and then dump the debris in valleys. Across Appalachia, the practice has buried more than 2,000 miles of streams in mining debris and damaged more than a million acres of forest.
Watch an e360 video on mountaintop mining
Watch an e360 video on mountaintop mining