Over spring break, I and 18 other people from UR went to West Virginia to learn about coal mining and its effect on surrounding towns and the environment with a student organization called SEEDS. One of the many facets of coal mining we discussed was the water pollution that results from coal mining and how it affects the watershed.
Point source pollutants were prominent in coal mining areas which ultimately led to a wide variety of health issues in nearby towns. Attempts were sometimes made to remove heavy metals that contaminated the water before they escaped down the mountain through the construction of remedial lakes. The remedial lakes would act by allowing the pollutants to soak into the ground, but they could not direct all the polluted water into these lakes. Across the street from these remedial lakes, one could see abandoned coal mine shafts that constantly drained water into stream. At a small waterfall down the road, we witnessed aluminum stalactites that formed due to the flowing of water off a ledge. This was one of many sites that polluted the streams which flowed directly through towns which effectively decreased the biodiversity of the areas surrounding the creeks and caused adverse health effects to any animal or human that consumed the water. The water from these streams would then flow into the Kanawha river, Ohio River, Mississippi river, and finally into the Gulf of Mexico. It was startling to realize that the poor decisions of a company and lax enforcement of environmental policy could so easily result in the pollution of rivers that stretch across the United States and adversely affect wildlife and humans that frequented the main seam of a watershed.