mmalvic's blog

On Tuesday October 25, 2011 Bowling Green State University hosted one of a four series of movies that provoked students to consider current environmental threats. The film session I attended discussed nonrenewable fuels, in particular back coal. Coal is one of the most widely used fossil fuels in our country and is used in everything from power plants to home grills. Not only does burning coal released dangerous pollutants when being burned, but very harmful to the environment when being mined, excavated, and refined. The documentary was a great presentation that reinforces the topics discussed in classed, such as the trend of new facilities trying to be environmentally friendly.

The movie takes place in West Virginia, more specifically the Appalachian mountain ranges that dominate the landscape of the state. Everyday each person uses on average 16 pounds of coal to be burned and converted into electricity to fuel their daily activities. Considering that 50% of the electrical power needed by the millions living within the United States is fueled by coal, there is a huge demand for coal. The West Virginian Mountains have a large supply of coal inside their three dominant mountain ranges. One way mining companies are extracting their coal is by literally blowing the tops off of mountains. This as you could imagine is very toxic to the surrounding environment and communities as harmful dust is shot into the air. This dust and runoff contains very harmful contaminants that cause many health problems for locals and animals nearby. When the mining company is finished mining a mountain they attempt to rebuild the mountain with the rocky soil unearthed from the explosions. This soil is a very poor substitute as it can barely support grass. Not only is the mining and extraction a harmful process, but the refining is just as harmful. The process produces a very toxic sludge that contains radioactive materials, heavy metals, and dangerous chemicals which is then stored in large manmade reservoir dirt pit. On several occasions walls of these sludge pits have given away, spilling thousands of gallons of harmful liquid into the surrounding areas. This mining process needs to be stopped before we cause anymore unnecessary damage to the environment.

When watching the film I reflected upon what I had learned and class and the environmental issue being discussed in the movie. This movie basically described in detail why it is important to build environmentally friendly recreation facilities. Facilities that go after a LEED certification generally need less energy in daily operations than those without LEED certification. This means that less coal will be needed to be burned, which will lower the total demand for coal and eventually slow the need to mine coal via mountain top mining.