Mountaintop coal mining

Mountaintop coal mining -- dubbed "mountaintop removal" by opponents -- scrapes away vegetation and topsoil, then blasts exposed rock to uncover coal seams. Leftover dirt, rock and vegetation is dumped into adjacent valleys. The practice is most heavily used in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

Surface mining in the Appalachian Mountains accounts for about 11 percent of U.S. coal production annually and directly employs 31,000 in the region, where another 120,000 jobs depend on it, according to industry estimates.