How did we determine which companies are engaged in mountaintop removal?
Both mining companies that operate mountaintop removal mines, and electric utilities that buy coal from those companies, are marked in the data as “mountaintop removal companies.” In order to determine which mining companies operated mountaintop removal mines, we primarily made use of three data sets: • A database of all US coal mines and historic ownership of those mines supplied to Appalachian Voices by the Mine Safety and Health Administration in September, 2007. That database is searchable at MSHA’s Data Retrieval System. This allowed us to determine the ownership and geographic location of surface mines in the Central Appalachian region where mountaintop removal occurs. • A comprehensive map of Appalachian mountaintop removal mine sites based on satellite imagery from 1976, 1985, 1995 and 2005, produced by Skytruth for Appalachian Voices in October, 2007. Landsat satellite images were purchased from the US Geologic Survey (USGS), and 1:100,000 scale digital elevation models of pre
