Infrastructure 10, 000 Miles Below Sea Level

First Look Inside Elon Musk’s Underground Transportation System Beneath Las VegasShow more

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-longest-tunnel-in-texas-feels-like-an-endless-underground-adventure/

Today, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) provided a first look inside Elon Musk‘s innovative underground transportation system located beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) campus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/us/chicago-ohare-elon-musk-rahm-emanuel.html

Chicago Says Elon Musk's Boring Company to Build High-Speed Link ...

The first-of-its-kind transportation solution, named the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, is operational and will be available when LVCC welcomes its first major convention, World of Concrete, in June 2021.

The $52.5 million system will serve as a fun and quick way to move convention attendees throughout the more than 200-acre campus, all 40 feet beneath the ground in all-electric Tesla vehicles.

Plans have been announced to develop an expanded system throughout the resort corridor, known as the Vegas Loop, which will ease traffic congestion and offer a new transportation option for visitors from as far north as Downtown Las Vegas, throughout the Strip and as far south as Allegiant Stadium.

“We are excited to have partnered with Elon’s company to bring this transportation ‘first’ to our valued convention customers,” says Steve Hill, LVCVA president and CEO. “The expanded Loop system, when developed, will be a game-changer and a new ‘must experience’ attraction for our visitors.”

The company constructed two one-way, .8-mile vehicular tunnels and three passenger stations to connect the existing convention center campus to the 1.4 million square foot West Hall expansion. The system will allow up to 4,400 convention attendees per hour to be whisked across the sprawling campus in just under two minutes, free of charge. By foot, the walk would take approximately 25 minutes. Instead, passengers are carried in all-electric Tesla vehicles to their destination.

Vehicles have capacity to go 150 mph but will travel at 35-40 mph due to the short distance of the tunnels. The system will be staffed with drivers initially with the plan to operate them autonomously in the future.

“We’re grateful to LVCVA and all local stakeholders for providing us the opportunity to construct our first commercial project in one of the world’s most dynamic destinations,” says Steve Davis, president, The Boring Company. “We are proud to have developed and delivered an exciting transportation solution to the Las Vegas Convention Center.”

The creation of the underground transportation system was born out of Musk’s desire to solve the problem of traffic gridlock. As a result, the company is focused on building low-cost, fast-to-build underground transportation systems to alleviate traffic congestion. Going underground has several advantages as tunnels are structurally safe, weatherproof, noise-free and can meet growing capacity by easily adding multiple levels.

The LVCVA moved from board approval to the excavation of both tunnels in less than one year, and fully developing the system in a year and a half, proving that Las Vegas embraces new ideas and executes them quickly. The tunnels measure 13.5 feet outer diameter and 12 feet inner diameter. The Loop system includes a command center to monitor the system to assure a safe and comfortable experience.

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2019/02/102777-waze-outfits-nyc-tunnels-beacons-underground-navigation

For more information about the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Convention Center Loop, visit www.vegasmeansbusiness.com

About the LVCVA

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) is charged with marketing Southern Nevada as a tourism and convention destination worldwide and with operating the 4.6 million square-foot Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). With nearly 150,000 hotel rooms and 14 million square feet of meeting and exhibit space in Las Vegas alone, the LVCVA’s mission centers on attracting leisure and business visitors to the area. The LVCVA also owns the Las VegasConvention Center Loop, an underground tunnel designed by The Boring Company and also owns the Las Vegas Monorail, an elevated 3.9-mile system with seven stops throughout the resort corridor. Both transportation systems will operate when conventions reconvene.

https://stupiddope.com/2021/04/first-look-inside-elon-musks-underground-transportation-system-beneath-las-vegas/

Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Pitched Texas on Tunnels for Cars, People, Water
Boring Co.
Tesla Inc. electric vehicles pass through an underground tunnel during a tour of the Boring Co. Convention Center Loop in Las Vegas last year. (Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg News)

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Before the end of Year One of the COVID-19 pandemic, Elon Musk did something a lot of other people were doing at the same time: He moved. Once in Texas, several of his business ventures followed, including Boring Co., a startup seeking to create underground transportation systems. The company, which had previously set its sights mainly on the coasts, is suddenly focused sharply on the Lone Star State.

Public documents obtained by Bloomberg show the extent of Boring’s ambitions in Texas. Over the last year, company representatives have pitched state officials on at least eight projects. The proposals range from kernels of ideas to detailed presentations. None has moved beyond the concept phase.

Most of the projects would be in the Austin area, near Boring’s headquarters in the suburb of Pflugerville. The pitches include transport for cars, groundwater culverts and a pedestrian walkway. Almost all of them have never been reported on before. Each was referenced in communications with Texas officials or other government documentation that Bloomberg received through a public information request. Here is the list of the Boring projects under consideration in Texas:
Underwater Tunnel to a Barrier Island

One of the first projects Boring sought to develop in Texas was an underwater tunnel for cars near the Gulf of Mexico. Brian Gettinger, Boring’s self-described “tunnel evangelist,” who joined as the business development head in May 2021, was pitching a tunnel under the Aransas channel after about a month on the job. Port Aransas near Corpus Christi is in a popular vacation destination for people from around the state. Roads and ferry routes there are routinely clogged.

Although the company has never dug under a body of water at this scale, it has pitched similar projects to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. So far, no one has offered Boring a contract, and a Texas official didn’t appear eager to take a risk on the startup. “Nothing new,” Valente Olivarez, the Texas Department of Transportation district engineer for the area, wrote in the last email on record about the proposal. “I’ll contact you if I need additional information.”
Texas Hyperloop

Before Boring, there was the Hyperloop. Musk envisioned a tubular, vacuum-sealed transportation system that would allow people to travel between cities at astonishing speeds. He urged engineers to build the systems to his specifications. Some tried, and none has yet succeeded. Boring’s own plans have faced resistance, in part from regulators who were not in a hurry to approve a system between New York and Washington, D.C.

The Hyperloop remains in Boring’s plans. A company presentation marked as confidential, which Gettinger emailed to a Texas transportation official in June 2021, said, “All loop tunnels are designed for the loading and sealing requirements to accommodate Hyperloop, allowing increases in speeds from Loop’s 150 mph to Hyperloop’s 600+ mph.”
Tunnel Between Two Major Highways

Musk, a former Angeleno, founded Boring in Southern California with the stated goal that it would “solve traffic.” Austin offers a challenge similar to the one in Los Angeles. Traffic in the Texas capital is terrible and getting worse. The population reached nearly 1 million in the 2020 Census, a more than 20% increase over the previous decade.

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Musk

In September, Gettinger asked a state transportation official whether his agency would support a project to create a new connection between two major roads running through Austin, US Highway 290 and Texas State Highway Loop 1. The latter is known colloquially as MoPac, named after the Missouri Pacific Railroad, a Civil War-era rail project. For Austinites, MoPac congestion is a routine source of frustration. (A popular Twitter account among locals is called Evil MoPac.) Highway 290 and MoPac already intersect in the southern part of Austin, but Gettinger apparently was envisioning an additional conjunction in the north. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority official, James Bass, called Gettinger the next day, but the documents contained no description of their conversation.
Subterranean Route Connecting Downtown Austin, the Airport and a Tesla Factory

Perhaps the most promising development in Texas so far — and the only one on this list that has been previously disclosed— is one that Gettinger took to calling “the project.” In November, he met with state transportation officials and asked for diagrams of structures, geotechnical data and the depths of various roads. The focus was on streets around Tesla Inc.’s Gigafactory, where the company manufactures cars, and ones near the airport and through downtown.
Underground Walkway for a Public High School

Pflugerville, where Boring is now based, is a big football town. The Pflugerville High School Panthers regularly play to crowds of 10,000 people at their stadium. In January, Gettinger floated an idea: Would the Texas transportation department help pay for a pedestrian tunnel from the school to the stadium? “Likely about $3 million in all. Certainly less than $5 million,” Gettinger wrote. The official said he forwarded the email to his colleagues. It’s not clear what, if anything, transpired.

Musk has outlined big ambitions for Boring, but the company has expressed plenty of interest in small, suburban developments. On May 3, the city council in Kyle, Texas, approved a preliminary engineering study of a Boring tunnel that would connect a housing estate to a retail development about two miles away.

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Tunnel Under an Unused 28-Mile Rail Line

MoKan, an abandoned railway track near Austin, has long been the subject of debate among regional authorities. Should the corridor be used for hiking and biking trails or a new highway? Gettinger offered another idea: What about a tunnel? The subject was on the agenda for an online meeting between Boring and the state transportation department on Feb. 4. Two days later, Gettinger followed up by email: “Could be a great tunneled application, and not just in Pflugerville.” Officials suggested Gettinger inquire about a subterranean lease.
Drainage for Groundwater

Boring’s only commercial project, in Las Vegas, is designed to transport people in modified Tesla cars. The startup intends to do more, though. It pitched two water drainage systems in Texas. One in Austin would service Interstate 35. “Our standard tunnel offering is likely in the right size range to be useful and would be substantially less expensive,” Gettinger wrote on April 18. “We aren’t hydraulic engineers but with local Austin resources we could do the civil/structural/technical planning and design of this work and then build it.” It’s unclear if the engineer was open to the suggestion. Gettinger proposed another drainage system in Houston in March, although the procurement deadline had already passed earlier in the month without an application from Boring.

US: Deregulating Mountaintop Removal Threatens Drinking Water and Public Health

For 20 years, coal companies blasted off the mountaintops around the house of Rick Bradford, a retired teacher in Edwight, West Virginia, to excavate thin coal seams buried hundreds of feet deep. After detonating millions of pounds of explosives, trucks the size of his house dumped the loosened waste rock, called overburden, into the nearby valleys, burying the streams below. “It’s like a bomb hit,” Bradford said of the mountains he hiked since a child and where many of his loved ones are buried.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220621-what-if-roads-went-underground

Mountaintop removal, a form of surface mining, has already leveled or severely impacted 500 mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, according to Appalachian Voices, an activist group opposed to mountaintop removal. An Environmental Protection Agency assessment calculated that mountaintop removal has buried more miles of stream than the entire length of the Mississippi River.

Coal companies continue to operate these mines without stringent regulation, even as public health researchers have amassed significant evidence over the last decade showing that people like Bradford who live near mountaintop mines disproportionately suffer and even die from a litany of health problems, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. A study conducted by West Virginia University researchers revealed that tiny dust particles released to the air in Edwight promoted cancer growth when injected into human lung cells, while another by the United States Geological Survey, a science agency within the Interior Department, found that nearby streams have lost half their species of fish.
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Citing “advances in science,” the US Department of the Interior, which oversees mining in the country, enacted the Stream Protection Rule in 2016 to mitigate some of mountaintop mining’s harmful effects. The rule required mining companies to monitor and restore streams polluted by their activities, but Congress got rid of it in one of its first acts under the Trump administration.

This was only the beginning of an avalanche of deregulation under President Donald Trump, who promised not to stop until the number of federal regulations is “less than where they were in 1960.” To do so could be devastating for public health and the environment since it would return the US to a time when there were virtually no federal laws prohibiting companies from dumping toxins into the air and water. Trump has blamed regulations for depressing wages and extolled a vision that prioritizes unfettered business activity. He has appointed industry lobbyists and insiders to top regulatory positions, many of whom opposed health and safety regulations.

This report examines how, following aggressive industry lobbying, Congress rolled back a modest regulation, making it easier for the coal industry to destroy mountains and bury the waste rock in streams, and the Interior Department canceled a study it had funded assessing the practice’s potential health impacts. It is based on research conducted over the course of one year that included reviewing dozens of scientific studies and government and court documents, as well as 42 interviews with mining and health experts, impacted residents, and others over five visits to the coalfields in West Virginia. The report finds that Congress’ decision to repeal the rule ignored significant evidence indicating mountaintop removal poses a health risk to nearby residents and gave undue consideration to a deeply flawed industry-funded study that implausibly concluded that the rule jeopardized nearly all the jobs in the coal industry. Compounding all of this, the Trump administration abruptly withdrew funding from a study that could have built new consensus around the practice’s health impacts.

The government’s response to the health risks of mountaintop removal offers a cautionary tale on the danger of viewing regulations solely as corporate burdens when in fact they are intended to protect health and other basic human rights. Where evidence indicates that corporate activities pose risks to public health or other human rights, the US federal and state governments have a duty to regulate these activities so as to effectively mitigate these risks. They should not eliminate existing regulations that serve to protect people from harm without putting in place effective alternative protections.

Yet that is exactly what the Trump administration has done, particularly by prioritizing the coal industry and aggressively dismantling regulations related to it. Perhaps no industry’s history better captures the sheer amount of human tragedy buried in hard fought protections for workers, communities, and the environment that the government now seeks to eliminate. Sherry Walker, whose husband and father were coal miners and who sued a coal company that she believes contaminated her well, noted that supporting mining goes hand-in-hand with protecting miners and their families. “I have nothing against coal mining. It’s my family’s trade; it’s our way of life. But if you damage someone’s property, take responsibility,” she said.
One of the mine’s valley fills. The rocks replace a buried stream and water collects in a sediment pond below, feeding into a stream that runs alongside a row of homes, all of which rely on private wells.
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One of the mine’s valley fills. The rocks replace a buried stream and water collects in a sediment pond below, feeding into a stream that runs alongside a row of homes, all of which rely on private wells. © 2018 Human Rights Watch

The Trump administration is in the process of rolling back many important regulations meant to mitigate the health and environmental impacts of the coal industry– from monitoring the health of surface miners to safely disposing of coal ash. This report focuses on how Congress invoked the Congressional Review Act, a little-used law that gives it veto power over federal agency rules, to cancel the Stream Protection Rule, enacted after eight years of agency review, that required coal companies to monitor their impact on streams and restore them at the end of a mining project. The Trump administration subsequently canceled a half-completed federally-funded study the National Academy of Sciences was conducting on the potential health effects of surface mining in central Appalachia, even though dozens of scientific studies indicate that it poses serious threats to the health of nearby residents and destroys their environment. In doing so, the administration not only assured the continuation of a hazardous form of mining but also robbed the public of an important tool to assess its true cost.

Trump has justified this deregulation of the coal industry as necessary to save jobs. But the much larger threat to jobs comes from changes to the industry itself that the Trump administration and Congress have largely ignored. The level of US coal production in 2017 was roughly the same as it was in 1980, yet the industry then employed five times the number of workers it does today. Ironically, the sharp rise in surface mining, including mountaintop removal, has helped cause the loss of tens of thousands of mining jobs, since it requires much fewer workers than underground mining.
The Health Threat of Mountaintop Removal

Beginning around 2009, Dr. Michael Hendryx, the then director of West Virginia University’s Rural Health Research Center, found higher rates of disease and death consistently clustered in areas where mountaintop coal mining was prevalent in the coal producing counties in Appalachia, a mountainous region that stretches across 13 states in eastern United States. Since then, he and other researchers have published over a dozen peer-reviewed studies showing significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease, lung and other types of cancer, birth defects, and overall mortality, even after they controlled for factors such as poverty, smoking, obesity, education, race, and metropolitan setting. For example, one study Hendryx co-authored calculated an excess of 1,200 deaths in mountaintop removal counties annually since 1990, when the practice became prevalent, after adjusting for other factors, while another found that babies born between 1997-2003 had nearly double the chance of having circulatory or respiratory birth defects.

The voluminous data is consistent with anecdotal suspicions long held by many residents of these areas and some of the doctors who serve them. “No one is really healthy around here, but it’s hard to know why,” Bradford said. Nicole C., who lives near a mountaintop removal mine in Wyoming County, West Virginia, told Human Rights Watch she constantly worries about the health effects of exposing her two young children, one of whom has Down syndrome, to the household’s contaminated water, which she believes is due to the mountaintop mine above her house. James C., her miner husband, and his father, a retired miner, were born in the valley, known as a hollow, and both said they had clear water until it turned bright orange from iron soon after mining began. “I’m worried about my babies. Is it safe to bathe them?” Nicole said. She said was also worried about the dust coming from the mine site. “If I kept my son’s toys on the porch, they’d become black. I couldn’t get the stuff off,” she said.
A satellite image of mountaintop removal mines in southern West Virginia.
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A satellite image of mountaintop removal mines in southern West Virginia. © 2018 Human Rights Watch

Doctors and nurses Human Rights Watch spoke with were cautious about drawing conclusions from the anecdotal experience of Nicole and others, but several said they were struck by the number of their patients who had respiratory and other health problems and suspected mining-related environmental causes. “My goodness! We get all kinds of symptoms,” Dr. Wesley Lafferty, a primary care physician in Boone County, West Virginia, said. “Rashes, restrictive airway disease [including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], dermatitis, generic skin disease. I definitely feel there is an environmental component to that.”

Human rights law protects the right to health and access to safe drinking water. The US government has a duty to prevent or regulate activities that pose risks to human rights. This can extend to activities that have not been conclusively shown to cause harm, where there is good reason to believe that they may. Because of the diffuse nature of many environmental harms and the long period it may take for health impacts to manifest, governments should take precautionary measures based on the best available science. They should also endeavor to carry out or support studies that will establish the human rights risks in a definitive way.

While proving causation should often not be a precondition for regulation, a recent group of studies by West Virginia University researchers examining air particles in communities near mountaintop removal sites provides evidence suggesting that mountaintop mining is not only associated with poor health but may cause cancer and cardiovascular disease. Air samples revealed high levels of inhalable particles consisting mostly of silica, a toxic heavy metal commonly found in rock dust. Researchers didn’t test for potentially hazardous inorganic substances, such as residue from explosives, chemicals used to process coal, and constant diesel emissions from massive trucks. Rather, they sought to gauge the danger to residents’ health by injecting the particles into mice and human lung cells. Multiple experiments showed that they promoted tumor growth and changed cellular function in ways consistent with cardiovascular disease.
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The kitchen sink, discolored by iron and manganese in water, in a home near a mountaintop removal mine on Coal Mountain in Wyoming County, West Virginia. © 2018 Human Rights Watch

A team of researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, as well as the US Geological Survey, have conducted extensive research on streams near mountaintop removal and concluded that they are severely polluted by the practice. The US Geological Survey found that impacted streams “have less than half as many fish species and about a third as many fish as non-impacted streams,” and other studies similarly found adverse impacts on birds, insects, and even bacteria. Impacted streams’ conductivity – a unit often used as a proxy for pollution – frequently measures more than six times the level the Environmental Protection Agency identified as the limit for preserving their health.

The research assessing potential health risks of human exposure to water contaminated due to mountaintop removal is less developed than research on air pollution, but the lack of research and data collection on this issue is itself worrisome. Many people in these communities still rely on private wells, which are not subject to state or federal water standards or monitoring. Human Rights Watch visited seven families who live near Coal Mountain in Wyoming County, West Virginia and allege that an active mountaintop removal mine near their homes is responsible for contaminating their well water.

Although users of public water systems may be less at risk of negative health impacts from their water because federal law requires regular monitoring and treatment, water quality in public systems may nonetheless be adversely impacted by mountaintop mining pollution if not properly managed and monitored. Hendryx conducted a survey of public water treatment facilities in West Virginia from 2001-09 and found that mountaintop removal counties had over five times the number of Safe Drinking Water Act violations, principally for lack of monitoring, than in other Appalachian counties. Some facilities, particularly small ones, may find it difficult to monitor due to a lack of resources, but it nevertheless raises concerns that authorities and residents may be unaware that water contamination from mountaintop removal has negatively impacted both the source water for public systems and the water these systems then supply to users.

Health experts with whom Human Rights Watch spoke recognized that other factors, such as high levels of poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, smoking, and obesity in these areas undoubtedly contribute to residents’ poor health. But many noted that these added stressors can also make people more vulnerable to air and water pollution from mountaintop removal. “All of our systems push us to homeostatis,” Paul Locke, a scientist who chaired the halted National Academy of Sciences’ study, explained, “but the more insults I have, the more difficult it is to return to homeostasis.” In other words, the pollution attributed to coal activities may exacerbate health problems it is not itself the cause of.
201811bhr_unitedstates_mtr_birthdefectschart
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Source: Based on Melissa M. Ahern et al., “The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996-2003,” Environmental Research, vol. 111, 2011, p. 842. © 2018 Human Rights Watch
The Coal Industry’s Response

As the drumbeat of health studies linking mountaintop removal to poor health intensified, coal companies, and their key trade group called the National Mining Association, launched aggressive efforts to discredit the evidence and beat back any attempts at regulation. The industry had been fighting legal challenges to mountaintop removal since a group of West Virginians sued the federal and state government in 1998, claiming that the practice violated a surface mining rule that, according to its author, was specifically designed to counter the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal and that the government issued the industry permits through a process that violated rules under the Clean Water Act.

The US government settled most of the case’s claims by agreeing to conduct a comprehensive study on mountaintop removal’s environmental impacts. However, in 2002, the US Army Corps of Engineers worked together with the Interior Department, which was under the direction of a former coal lobbyist, to change the Clean Water Act rules to allow coal companies to easily obtain permits to fill a valley with mountaintop removal overburden (known as valley fills), circumventing one of the legal problems the lawsuit identified. The agency later released a version of the environmental impact study that included no recommendations to limit mountaintop removal or address its toxic legacy. Instead of proposing limits on mountaintop removal, it proposed changing a surface mining rule to remove another legal obstacle to valley fills that the lawsuit raised.
A satellite image of mountaintop removal mines in southern West Virginia.
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A satellite image of mountaintop removal mines in southern West Virginia. © 2018 Human Rights Watch

Beginning in 2010, the emerging evidence of mountaintop removal’s health risks presented a new threat to the practice. Several of the West Virginia University researchers involved in these studies told Human Rights Watch they had the impression that the coal industry, which is a major university funder, put pressure on the university’s administration to end the research. While they said the university protected their academic freedom, in October 2011 the university’s public relations director wrote to the leading environmental journalist for West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette requesting that he refrain from using the term “WVU study” in order clarify “that the institution itself takes no position on the findings.” Coal companies also began to fund research, including a $15 million grant to Virginia Tech, a university, to establish a coal research institute; the grant produced the only studies that found mountaintop removal had no adverse health impacts.

The Obama administration, after studying the issue for eight years and receiving 94,000 public comments, adopted the Stream Protection Rule on December 20, 2016. The rule disappointed environmental activists because it did not ban mountaintop removal. Instead it required coal companies to monitor and restore streams impacted by their activities – an issue that most significantly affects mountaintop removal because of its reliance on valley fills that bury and contaminate streams. A government-funded assessment of the rule’s impact found it would cost $52 million to implement and ultimately cost several hundred jobs.

The National Mining Association aggressively opposed the rule and funded a rival assessment, based only on coal operators’ opinions of the rule’s impact. On that basis, the industry study claimed it could wipe out as many as 77,000 jobs – which amounts to nearly the industry’s entire workforce. Stoking the fear of potential massive job losses in already hard-hit areas was an incredibly effective tactic. Congressional representatives who voted to repeal the rule cited this study exclusively, ignoring voluminous scientific evidence of mountaintop removal’s environmental and health impacts. Congress canceled the rule within weeks of starting its term by invoking a little-used law called the Congressional Review Act in February 2017. All but one of the 54 senators who voted in favor had received campaign donations from the coal industry since 2012, the earliest year their term could have begun, totaling over $3.25 million, compared to only 12 senators who voted to keep the rule, who received a total of $45,000.
A valley fill with rocks replacing the buried streambed in the background and the surviving stream in the foreground
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A valley fill with rocks replacing the buried streambed in the background and the surviving stream in the foreground © 2018 Human Rights Watch

Six months later, the Interior Department ordered the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to halt a half-completed study it had funded on the potential health effects of surface coal mining operations in central Appalachia, claiming the agency was reviewing all studies over $100,000. But a NAS spokesperson said that none of its other studies for the agency were stopped and such a decision was highly unusual. Emails obtained by a journalist through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and viewed by Human Rights Watch, although heavily redacted, indicate that the “review” focused solely on this study and that the decision was made almost immediately after it began. Critics of the decision point out the suspicious timing to argue it was the product of inappropriate political interference.

The disregard for public health risks in Congress’ decision to cancel the Stream Protection Rule and the Interior Department’s decision to halt the NAS study exemplifies the problem with carrying out deregulation with industry’s interests as the primary consideration. With no proper assessment of a rule change or rollback’s health risks, Americans, especially the tens of millions of people who rely on private wells, are left vulnerable to paying the price with their health.

Related Content
December 10, 2018 News Release
US: Deregulating Mountaintop Removal Threatens Drinking Water and Public Health

Canceling rule, study endangers Appalachian coal communities
201811bhr_unitedstates_mtr_cover
Recommendations
To the US Department of the Interior

Ensure rigorous enforcement of all current rules applicable to mountaintop removal, including the Stream Buffer Rule. Take effective action when state governments fail to adequately enforce these rules.
Enact a new rule that protects people living near mountaintop removal from health risks and other adverse impacts, including protecting their water and air quality. Ban the practice entirely if no other regulatory approach offers adequate protection from serious harm.
Reinstate, complete, and publish the canceled National Academy of Sciences study assessing the potential health effects of surface mining operations in central Appalachia.
Adopt rules and a transparent process to guide agency decisions to halt scientific studies.

To the US Environmental Protection Agency

Rigorously enforce the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act in areas where mountaintop removal mining is prevalent. Ensure the permitting process is commensurate with the mining practice’s impact on streams, including, if appropriate, no longer issuing permits for valley fills.

To the US Congress

Enact a law setting out specific criteria federal agencies must meet when deciding to halt or alter the terms of reference for scientific research they have agreed to fund and a transparent, consultative process for determining whether those criteria have been met.
Enact a law that better protects private wells from the risk of industrial contamination. Such a law should require a risk assessment before an agency may issue a permit where there is a reasonable risk that such contamination may occur. It should also establish mechanisms for monitoring potential impacts on well water while the permit is active and providing redress in cases where contamination has been established. The law should require companies to engage with potentially impacted residents, including by providing them with accurate and accessible information and a grievance mechanism.

To state environmental agencies where mountaintop removal occurs

Rigorously enforce all current rules applicable to mountaintop removal, including the Stream Buffer Rule.
Identify residents in mountaintop removal areas who rely on private wells. Ensure the safety and acceptability of residents’ water, including by regulating, monitoring, and treating toxins that go beyond federal requirements where appropriate. Where treatment cannot sufficiently or economically reverse pollution, either extend the municipal water system to impacted areas or ensure the provision of safe water through other means. Consider levying a “water tax” on coal companies in the event revenue is an obstacle to remedying mining-related water contamination.
Enact and enforce rigorous policies to protect against undue corporate influence over the regulatory process, including protecting the independence of scientific research.

To coal companies and the National Mining Association

Ensure that any industry-funded research is accurate, independent, and peer-reviewed, and refrain from undermining the impartiality and objectivity of any academic or scientific research.
Mitigate any adverse health risks of company activities, including in cases where substantial scientific evidence indicates potential impacts. Consider refraining from any activities whose severe harmful impacts cannot be sufficiently mitigated.
Conduct public meetings in residential areas where well water may be negatively impacted by mining activities prior to initiating mining and periodically throughout the life of the mine. Inform residents of the risks of water contamination and develop a complaint mechanism whereby residents who believe their well water has been damaged can seek redress.

Methodology

This report examines the health impact of mountaintop removal, a form of coal mining that involves destroying mountains with explosives to access coal underneath, and then filling valleys with the overburden. It also looks at the ways in which the close relationship between government officials and the coal industry has led Congress to cancel a regulation that would have required coal companies to monitor and restore streams impacted by their activities and prompted the Interior Department to halt research vital to assessing mountaintop removal’s health risks.

In researching this report, Human Rights Watch reviewed hundreds of documents, including numerous peer-reviewed, scientific studies related to mountaintop removal’s impact on air quality, water quality, and public health. We also reviewed raw health and mining data and relevant regulatory documents, as well as media articles and other publicly available information.

Human Rights Watch staff conducted field research in areas of southern West Virginia where mountaintop removal is most prevalent, including Boone, Raleigh, Kanawha, Logan, Fayette, and Wyoming counties, as well as in northeastern Tennessee. During five visits conducted in November 2017, and between March and August 2018, Human Rights Watch interviewed scientists, doctors, mining specialists, lawyers, environmental activists, and impacted residents. We conducted additional interviews by phone. In all, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 people. All interviewees freely consented to the interviews, and Human Rights Watch explained to them the purpose of the interview and did not offer any remuneration.

Human Rights Watch wrote letters to the Interior Department; Environmental Protection Agency; United States Army Corps; West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection; Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia; National Mining Association (NMA); Ramboll Environs, a consulting company hired by the NMA to produce a study on the Stream Protection Rule’s impact; Dynamic Energy, a coal company with mountaintop removal operations; Appalachian Research Initiative for Environmental Science (ARIES), an academic initiative funded in part by coal companies; and a scientist who published a study funded by the coal industry. We received substantive responses from the Environmental Protection Agency; United States Army Corps; National Mining Association; ARIES; and the scientist, which are integrated into the report and included in full as an annex.

The findings of this report are based overwhelmingly on the scientific evidence of mountaintop removal’s health impact and other documents indicating the government and coal industry’s response to these studies.

I. Background

Since Donald Trump became president in January 2017, his administration and Congress have canceled, withdrawn, or weakened hundreds of rules enacted to protect workers, communities, and the environment.[1] At a press conference capping his first year in office, Trump celebrated this deregulation and made clear he was only getting started.[2] Standing triumphantly beside a mountain of paper containing all current regulations and a much smaller stack containing regulations in effect in 1960, he promised: “When we’re finished . . . we will be less than where we were in 1960.”[3]

The date he chose is significant. The 1960s marked a fundamental shift in how the US government regulates businesses. The visible rise in pollution – from the acrid emissions of cars and power plants blackening the air to oil spills and industrial waste poisoning fish – brought public attention to the environmental degradation wrought by unregulated industry. At the same time, a steady drumbeat of ground-breaking studies began to link exposure to various toxins with serious health problems.[4] The nation’s sense of alarm went beyond air and water pollution as concerns began to emerge about synthetic chemicals and other hazardous substances that had become ubiquitous in consumer products, food, and workplaces.[5]

Capping a decade of growing concern, in 1969, sparks from a train passing through northern Ohio flew onto floating oil-slicked debris on the Cuyahoga River and ignited a fire that flared to 50 feet high. The images of the fire lighting up the heavily polluted river captivated the country, seeming to encapsulate the failure of a system that gave businesses virtually unfettered freedom to pollute the environment with impunity.[6] Public pressure jolted the government into action, and within two years Congress passed three landmark pieces of legislation that remain the pillars of the environmental regulatory framework in the United States.

The Clean Air Act, passed in 1963 to provide federal funds for research, was updated in 1970 to set broad federal emissions standards. Also in 1970, President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. Two years later, Congress overrode Nixon’s veto to pass the Clean Water Act, which placed restrictions on the discharge of pollutants into US waterways.[7] A third law passed in 1970 established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to ensure worker safety by limiting their exposure to hazardous substances. In addition to these wide-ranging laws, Congress passed numerous laws around this time to address specific pollutants that studies had shown posed risks to public health.

In the decades since, new laws and regulations have been put in place or old ones amended to reflect changes in industrial practices, products, and other business activities, as well as new evidence of health risks to workers, consumers, and communities. Governments may legitimately prune rules that are unnecessary or excessive, but the Trump administration’s speed, limited public consultations, devaluation of science, and close relationship with industries standing to benefit from deregulation have driven a reckless approach that threatens workers, public health, and the environment.

Trump and senior officials in his administration have broadly painted regulations as an assault on businesses, the economy, and an impediment to creating jobs rather than a set of protections for the public at risk of being harmed by business activities. In its first semi-annual report, the US Office of Management and Budget dismissed 860 rules that the administration withdrew or canceled as “ineffective, duplicative, or obsolete” without even bothering to list them. The director, Mick Mulvaney, who ensures the work of federal agencies conform to the president’s policies and produces the president’s budget, said such a list is not necessary because “none of them are very sexy…None of them rise to the level of getting national attention.”[8]

There are numerous examples of industry-backed deregulation under President Trump that threaten public health, but perhaps none better captures the contradictions inherent in claiming deregulation is good for workers and rural communities so well as the administration’s ongoing war on coal regulations. Parroting the industry’s claim of a war on coal, Donald Trump made deregulating coal a centerpiece of his campaign promise and, since becoming president, his administration’s policy agenda; voters in West Virginia, a state where coal has historically been central to the economy, elected Trump by a margin of more than 40 points, the highest of any state.[9]

Fifty years ago, West Virginian and other Appalachian miners were at the forefront of demanding government protection from mining companies that they saw as taking their lives and health for granted. As described below, miners’ strikes and protests across Appalachia were instrumental in securing the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act in 1969, the first industry-wide set of regulations of its kind that predated even the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Coal Unregulated

The coal industry has a very long record of opposing regulations to protect public health.[10] By the 1880s, when coal overtook wood as the primary source of energy in the US and the industry employed around a quarter of a million miners, the dangers of the coalfields were already well documented.[11] Scientific studies since have greatly refined Americans’ understanding of the health risks associated with mining, transporting, storing, and combusting coal. In recent years, these concerns have been amplified by greater awareness of coal’s contribution to climate change and the impacts of climate change on human health, including its potential to exacerbate some of the localized health risks of coal mining.[12] Still, mining, rail, and power companies profiting from coal continue to wage a more than century-old battle against rules protecting workers and communities from coal’s immediate harm to human health.[13]
Denial of Black Lung Disease

It has long been known that exposure to silica, the second-most common element in the earth’s surface, can cause a form of lung disease called silicosis.[14] This makes any person whose job involves blasting, drilling, or handling rock dust susceptible to the disease, including coal miners.[15] But as early as the 1830s, doctors began documenting coal miners coughing up black tar that eventually made them unable to breathe, symptoms distinct from silicosis.[16] In the following decades, doctors began to sound the alarm as they documented thousands of cases of miners suffering from what came to be known as black lung disease.[17] Yet the coal industry largely denied its existence, with some representatives even arguing that the black tar coating miners’ lungs was good for their health.[18]

In one illustrative anecdote from 1901, a coal foreman who served on the health board of a coal community took the rare step of presenting a paper at the Pennsylvania Sanitary Convention that alleged that one in two miners had “miner’s asthma.”[19] A representative of the coal industry countered that “there is nothing in the mining industry that makes it unsanitary” and blamed miners’ health problems as “doubtless closely related to the rum shop.”[20] Similarly, a 1909 union activist lamented that his fight for stronger ventilation standards was defeated because the employer says “it is not necessary” and that the cost “is going to put the mines out of business.”[21] Miners were hard-pressed to fight back without medical data tracking the prevalence of the disease.[22] No law required doctors to collect relevant data and health clinics in coal communities were unlikely to do so voluntarily since most were controlled by coal companies.[23]

This is an early illustration of a tactic that remains central in the fights around regulation in the country: opponents of regulation exploit the absence or uncertainty of data to fend off rules, including those requiring better data collection and disclosure, even where significant evidence indicates that their activities are causing harm.[24] In the 1960s, several doctors who had treated thousands of miners for black lung disease, including Dr. Donald Rasmussen and Dr. Isadore Buff, launched a public campaign to persuade the medical community to recognize the disease and politicians to act. In 1968, they formed the Black Lung Association along with miners and others, leading grassroots protests and massive strikes across Appalachia.[25] Even then, many industry representatives and government officials continued to deny the existence of the disease.[26] Activist pressure, however, ultimately prevailed and legislation protecting miners was finally passed in December 1969, further discussed below.[27]
Mining Accidents

Black lung wasn’t the only thing killing miners: mining accidents claimed thousands of lives each year. It wasn’t until 1910, after a mine explosion killed at least 367 workers in Monongah, West Virginia, that the federal government established the US Bureau of Mines to promote mine safety. By then, nearly 43,000 miners had been killed in accidents.[28] The Bureau’s work was restricted to research, trainings, and rescue assistance and it had only a minimal impact in reducing mining fatalities. In 1941, Congress empowered the Bureau to inspect mines, but the inspections had little value without legally mandated health and safety standards.[29]

Congress first passed a law requiring minimal mine safety standards in 1947. Although there was no enforcement mechanism and the standards expired after one year, it marked a turning point in miner fatalities: whereas on average 25 out of every 10,000 miners were killed annually from 1943 to 1947, that number dropped to an average of 15 over the next five years.[30] In 1952, Congress passed a new set of standards with limited enforcement power, but the average fatality rate largely held steady until Congress passed the first comprehensive legislation to protect coal miners in 1969.[31]
Coal Regulated
Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969

In the fall of 1968, there was an explosion in a mine in Farmington, West Virginia where 99 miners were working.[32] Twenty-one managed to escape, but repeated explosions made it impossible for rescuers to continue their work and nine days later they sealed the mine, leaving no hope for the trapped 78 miners. The mine had a long history of violating safety standards, including high levels of methane, poor ventilation, and excessive amounts of combustible coal dust that had already caused several fatal explosions.[33] In the months before the explosion, both federal and state inspectors who had visited the mine did not cite the company for violations, even though the fire boss charged with the mine’s safety recorded serious problems with its ventilation equipment.[34]

The protracted drama of this and similar disasters brought national attention to the persistent dangers of mining, giving added fuel to the Black Lung Association’s struggle for safer conditions.[35] In 1969, President Richard Nixon signed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, marking a sea change not only in the protection of coal workers, but in the regulation of hazardous business activities more broadly.[36] The law, often called the Coal Act, provided for a number of measures to protect underground and surface miners, including limiting exposure to dust. It also provided for regular inspections and criminal and civil penalties for violations, respiratory health surveillance to underground (but not surface) miners, and compensation for miners with black lung disease.[37]

Coal industry representatives largely opposed the law, arguing variously that it would harm the national economy, was overly burdensome, and overstepped the proper role of the federal government.[38] In another example of exploiting scientific uncertainty, a senior member of the National Coal Association argued that more research was necessary to determine safe dust exposure levels.[39] While miners and their allies were ultimately successful in getting the law passed, it demanded constant vigilance to ensure enforcement and protest efforts to weaken it.[40] The law’s black lung compensation requirement was particularly poorly implemented, leading to miner strikes and the Black Lung Benefits Act in 1973.[41]
Subsequent Legislation

These legislative achievements improved the situation of miners, but mining disasters and black lung continued to claim lives.[42] In 1972, a dam failed above Buffalo Creek in West Virginia, sending an avalanche of black slurry, residue from cleaning coal, down the mountain. The disaster killed 125 people and swept away hundreds of homes, bringing attention to the risks to nearby communities of mining.[43] The plight of these communities, which had been all but ignored, was further brought into focus by the rise in surface mining and its visible devastation of the environment.[44]

In response to these developments, President Jimmy Carter signed a new law that strengthened the 1969 Coal Act and transferred enforcement from the Interior Department to the newly established Mine Safety and Health Administration housed under the Department of Labor.[45] While the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, limited some water pollution from mining, in 1977 Congress enacted the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) to more comprehensively address pollution caused by surface mining.[46] The law established the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, an agency under the Interior Department.[47]

This legal framework remains in effect today, effectively dividing the regulation of mining between three federal agencies (see text box). In the decades since, these agencies have updated the rules implementing the relevant laws to reflect technological and scientific changes. The Obama administration promulgated several new rules that affect the coal industry. Some target practices that expose workers and others to immediate health risks, while others seek to reduce the industry’s contribution to climate change. This report focuses on the Stream Protection Rule, which required coal companies to monitor streams impacted by their activities for contamination and restore them at the end of a project.[48] The rule primarily targeted mountaintop removal, a form of surface mining that heavily pollutes nearby streams and evidence indicates exposes nearby communities to serious health risks.[49] The Obama administration also enacted a rule lowering workers’ permissible exposure to coal dust and expanding the monitoring of respiratory health to include surface miners.[50]

Other Obama-era rules affect power companies rather than the mining industry. One such rule regulates the disposal coal combustion residuals – a heavily toxic byproduct of burning coal that is often dumped into unlined pits that leach heavy metals into groundwater and present the risk of a catastrophic spill.[51] Two other rules limit the amount of toxic metals power plants may discharge into waterways and clarify that tributaries and wetlands are under federal jurisdiction as “waters of the US.”[52] Rules addressing climate change include the Clean Power Plan, which mandates a 32 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and another rule limiting methane emissions.[53]

The coal industry responded to these regulations by claiming that they constitute a “war on coal,” inaccurately blaming them for the decline in the domestic demand for coal.[54] Many industry representatives and government officials who agree with them have even claimed that President Obama’s real goal was to put the industry out of business.[55] The Trump administration is currently in the process of weakening or doing away with virtually all these Obama-era rules. But while their rollback might help coal and power company executives, it is at the price of risking the health of their employees, nearby communities, and the environment on which we all depend.
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© 2018 Human Rights Watch

HOW THE US GOVERNMENT ENACTS AND ENFORCES REGULATIONS

The process of enacting and enforcing regulations in the United States is a complex interplay between Congress, the president, federal agencies, and state governments. Under the US Constitution, Congress, made up of a 100-member Senate and 435-member House of Representatives, has sole authority to pass laws, and the president must faithfully execute them. In practice, presidents often influence legislation by working closely with members of Congress to pass – or oppose – bills, and they have the power to veto laws that Congress passes.

Moreover, presidents oversee and have some influence over the large network of federal agencies that make, and often enforce, the rules necessary for implementing laws. For example, in 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which granted the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate pollutants in the “waterways of the United States.” The EPA, under the direction of an administrator appointed by the president, is charged with defining these terms and setting pollution limits. However, agencies are expected to make such decisions independent of political considerations and must follow specific rule-making processes, which generally include consulting with other agencies and state governments, a public comment period and public hearings, a review of scientific literature, and an assessment of the rule’s impact.

Some federal laws, especially environmental ones, grant states the right to enforce them. States may exercise this right by passing a law at least as protective as the federal law and its implementing regulations. In that case, the relevant federal agency oversees state governments to ensure they are adequately enforcing the law.

The 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act sets requirements to protect the health and safety of miners. It is implemented and enforced by the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Department of Labor.

The 1972 Clean Water Act empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate pollutants in “waterways of the United States.” The US Army Corps of Engineers shares authority in enforcing the Clean Water Act and, since 1989, it has been responsible for issuing permits for mountaintop removal valley fills. The Clean Air Act, which is implemented and enforced by the EPA, may also be relevant to surface mining due to the dust it generates, but it has rarely been enforced in this way.

The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act lays out specific requirements for preventing, mitigating, and addressing the environmental impacts of surface mining. The Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement, housed within the Department of Interior, is responsible for implementing the law. In enacting rules, it often relies on the scientific findings of the US Geological Survey, an agency within the Interior Department, or the National Academy of Sciences, an independent institute established by a law passed in 1863. All Appalachian states where mountaintop removal is present, except for Tennessee, have opted to enforce the law on their own.
Mountaintop Removal

Beginning in the 1970s, mining companies began to experiment with new ways of excavating coal from the central Appalachian Mountains, an area that covers parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. Rather than hauling coal piece by piece through underground tunnels, they began to remove sections of the mountain to expose buried coal seams.[56] Within a decade, these surface mines became more ambitious, eventually removing hundreds of vertical feet of entire mountains to expose ever-larger areas of coal, a form of mining now known as mountaintop removal.[57] Official mining data does not generally disaggregate different types of surface mining, but according to Jack Spadaro, a mining engineer and mountaintop removal expert, the vast majority of surface mining in central Appalachia is mountaintop removal.[58]

Between 1985 and 2015, 2,900 square kilometers (1,120 square miles) of land, an area around the size of Rhode Island, was newly surface mined in central Appalachia, according to a mapping project using satellite imagery that was done by SkyTruth, Appalachian Voices, and Duke University.[59] A separate Appalachian Voices study, based on satellite imagery and mining permit data, found that by 2009, mountaintop removal had severely impacted or leveled more than 500 mountains.[60] These figures update the scarce publicly available government data on the extent of mountaintop removal. In 2002, the EPA calculated that permits approved in the prior decade allowed coal companies to mine around 1,600 square kilometers of forested mountain – roughly three to four percent of the Appalachian coal region.[61] A separate EPA-commissioned study found that few trees, or even shrubs, survive on the reclaimed mines, threatening 244 terrestrial species and eliminating a major source of carbon capture.[62] Although the amount of mountaintop removal has significantly declined over the past decade, it continues to produce millions of tons of coal per year, particularly in southern West Virginia.[63]
Regulatory Context

Removing a mountain to extract coal has dramatic environmental consequences not only for the densely forested mountains that are demolished, but also for the streams that run through their valleys. In order to reach coal seams, miners clear a mountain of its trees and topsoil and drill holes deep in its surface in which they then detonate thousands of tons of explosives, blasting off up to 400 feet of vertical rock.[64] They then use 100-ton haul trucks to dispose of the loosened soil and rock, called overburden, by dumping it into the nearby valley, filling an area as much as 1,000 feet wide and one mile long and burying streams below.[65] According to the EPA, there were nearly 7,000 valley fills by 2005 and that number was expected to grow to bury 2,400 miles of stream by 2012, for a total distance longer than the Mississippi River.[66] Duke University scientists estimated that valley fills have severely damaged an additional 2,500 miles of streams by contaminating them with heavy metals.[67]

The environmental ravage caused by mountaintop removal was immediately obvious, even if it is only in the last decade that scientific research began measuring its impact on human health. Yet the ways in which the regulatory agencies charged with protecting the water and air from mining pollution have approached the problem has shifted constantly over the past 35 years, shaped by countervailing political pressures and legal rulings. The two principle laws regulating mountaintop removal’s impact on streams are the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act and the 1970 Clean Water Act.[68] The decades-long struggle over the language, interpretation, and enforcement of these laws is addressed in detail in Chapter IV of this report.
Economic Context

As might be expected in a state whose residents call themselves mountaineers, mountaintop removal is not popular in West Virginia, or elsewhere in the Appalachian states where the practice occurs. A 2011 poll conducted by three major environmental groups found that, after a short description of the practice, just 20 percent of voters across the four states where it is prevalent favored allowing it to continue.[69] Those findings were similar to a CNN poll that found only 37 percent of the general public supported mountaintop removal.[70] Despite its unpopularity, the coal industry has successfully upended efforts to better implement existing rules or create new ones that would mitigate mountaintop removal’s environmental impact by emphasizing the potential loss of well-paying jobs. According to the US Energy Information Administration, a federal body that collects energy-related information, there were 4,878 people in central Appalachia employed as surface miners in 2017, making it a modest, but not trivial, source of employment in one the poorest areas in the United States.[71]

The coal industry’s public concern for preserving jobs, however, stands in sharp contrast to its decades-long history of shedding jobs as it increased surface mining production, including mountaintop removal, because of automation and other developments. A sharp decline in coal production in recent years has brought levels to roughly where they were in 1980, when the industry employed 242,000 people compared to today’s 52,000.[72]
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The industry was able to increase production while decreasing employment largely by increasing surface mini

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