Facing a proposed budget cut, an Interior Department agency told the National Academy of Sciences to stop work on a study into the health risks faced by Appalachian residents who live near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites, said the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail. The $1 million federal study was begun last year after research “found increased risks of birth defects, cancer, other illnesses, and premature death among residents living near mountaintop removal sites in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky,” said the newspaper.
The Academy of Sciences announced the directive hours before it was scheduled to hold a public hearing in the coalfields at Hazard, Kentucky. A spokesman said the academy “believes this is an important study, and we stand ready to resume it” if the Office of Surface Mining reverses its order.
A spokesman for the National Mining Association told the Gazette-Mail that the study “may be unnecessary” because mountaintop removal produces a small, and declining, portion of U.S. coal. A former West Virginia University researcher who has studied the issue of health and mountaintop removal said there was longstanding opposition to such work. “We know the current administration is anti-science and pro-coal, so you have to wonder if it is politically motivated,” he told the Charleston newspaper.