At the first meeting of the Governor’s Task Force on Mountaintop Removal Mining, a representative of the Division of Environmental Protection gave what the agenda described as "Overview of the Issue". Right off the bat the Division of Environmental Protection listed questions it would like to have answers to. This was first on the list:

"What are the long term environmental impacts of valley fills?"

It’s an interesting question. Although it is hard to imagine that a mining technique which results in the filling of hundreds of miles of streams with millions of tons of dirt would be anything other than environmentally devastating, it’s an interesting question.

As interesting as the question is, it leaves unanswered another question:

Is this the first time that anybody every thought of this? Hadn’t anybody ever thought that we should count the costs before doing something?

Counting the costs of any endeavor is a pretty fundamental concept. "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him," Luke 14:28--29.

Counting the costs is such a fundamental part of our everyday experience that we do it automatically. In Beckley we decide if going to Charleston is worth the gas and the turnpike tolls. Anyone starting a business would figure the costs. Anyone going to the movies would decide if the experience is worth two hours of time plus the price of admission. Parents have to decide if whatever else they might choose to do is worth spending less time with their children.

At the same time we are routinely toting up the costs of movies, trips to Charleston, and everything else we do, we are allowing mountaintop removal mining without the foggiest notion of the environmental costs. We are allowing mountaintop removal mining to eat away at the very thing that sustains all life without ever knowing how great those costs are.

It isn’t as if we don’t have any experience with the dangers of ignoring environmental costs. When nuclear power first came along, we were enthralled with the idea of a cheap source of electricity. We never considered the dangers. We certainly never considered the inevitable costs of safe disposal of nuclear waste. The result was that this country’s experiment with nuclear power left the country with a bunch of nuclear waste that we don’t know what to do with. It left those utilities who invested in it with a mountain of debt. It was the price we paid for ignoring the environmental consequences.

In spite of our experience in ignoring the environmental costs and the inherent absurdity of plunging ahead when we don’t know the costs, that is exactly what we are doing. The Division of Environmental Protection is doing just as it has always done. It is issuing permits that allow the dumping of millions of tons of waste into our streams without any understanding of the environmental costs.

As interesting as the Division of Environmental Protection’s question is, it leaves unanswered an even more basic question:

If we don’t know the long term environmental impacts of valley fills, why are we still issuing permits?