Surface Coal Mines Failing to Keep Kentucky’s Waters Clean

Forty years after the passage of the Clean Water Act, it is still not being fully implemented and enforced by the states, a fact that is readily apparent here in Kentucky. Waterways continue to degrade in the areas of eastern Kentucky that have been or continue to be heavily surface mined, due in no small part to the common practice of dumping of waste into valleys and headwater streams, combined with the general release of extremely harmful pollutants into local streams.