Mining companies remove mountaintop areas to expose the coal.
The high-elevation, cold climatic phenomenon in Argentina is sometimes referred to as tundra climate and, in even colder mountaintop areas, as polar.
In Greene County, N.Y., several bridges were wiped out and numerous roads were impassable, stranding residents in remote mountaintop areas, said Shaun Groden, a county administrator.
Hendryx concluded: "Living in a mountaintop mining area was a bigger risk for birth defects than smoking".
According to Webb and other West Virginia residents, such a commitment to health must now be applied to mountaintop removal areas.
Another mandate, expressed through state conservation law, requires New York to protect mountaintop bird nesting areas, like the fir forests where the elusive nut-brown thrush returns every spring from its winters in the Caribbean.
According to the Appalachian Regional Commission charts on poverty, some of the highest levels of economically distressed communities in the nation reside in the areas of mountaintop removal.
They are in the process of shifting their lives (or have already shifted them) from the Washington area to the mountaintop, the high plateau that describes Garrett County, Maryland's westernmost county.
Some of the worst effects of strip mining in Kentucky, West Virginia, and other mountainous areas result from mountaintop removal.
Interior's inexplicable and inexcusable decision to delay appropriate regulatory action is a setback for the protection of Appalachian streams and rivers, as well as for the people who depend on clean drinking water in the areas affected by mountaintop removal.
