Anne Velasco just wrote a great LTE to the Duluth News Tribune

The mountaintop removal method provides quick access to coal deposits, employs few miners and leaves innumerable tons of degradation in its wake. Strategic prominences are taken off and pushed to the lower valleys, creating a hazard. No longer do residents have the benefit of trees, plants and topsoil holding back heavy rains. Quickly rushing rainwater has the potential for flooding and pulling piled-high coal mining waste with it, spreading pollution.

For the time being, the Clean Water Protection Act in the House of Representatives (HR 2719) would halt this type of mining.

Read about the Clean Water Protection Act