The Oil Drum

Sure...

But why should I care?

I'm being a bit smarmy here sure, but I really dont know why I should care about mountaintops being scarred in the middle of nowhere. Isn't this just an aesthetic issue?

It's clearly different out west here in Wyoming but as we produce so darn much of the stuff (480 million tons last year) it might be interesting to compare how the land is mined. Most of the Powder River Basin is gently rolling with the largest seam, from the Fort Union formation, dipping gently to the west toward the Bighorn Mountains. On the western edge of the basin it dips much more steeply to the east and very little is economically minable. Seams are to thick to mine underground. State regs require the mining companies to set the topsoil aside, seed it and keep it separated from subsoil and subsequent overburden layers. The topsoil is to be replaced at the end of reclamation and seeded to "similar" vegetative cover. It takes over a century to create one inch of topsoil so it's clearly a precious commodity. The overburden layers are replaced in the same stratigraphic order in which they were found. Digging 100 foot seams of coal does not produce 100 foot deep holes as the overburden expands greatly while sequestered and does not seem to compact nearly as much as pre-mining. Mined areas are made to blend in topographically with surrounding land. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but no open pits or highwalls left behind.
I have personally seen some decent reclamation done on pits opened in the early 80s. One big problem has been reestablishing native shrubs such as sagebrush ( Artemisia tridentata). A lot of experimenting was taking place in the mid-80s with direct planting of sage seedlings. At least reclamation today doesn't simply consist of seeding crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum)as was done along hundreds of miles of highways in Wyoming and some of the oldest mine pits in the region. It's a great vegetative cover but pure stands lack diversity of plant species and it has low value as wildlife forage. Plus, any monoculture is not desirable for long term ecosystem stability. I don't know if companies have gone that extra mile including shrubs as it was more expensive than just drilling seed with machines. Still, so much of that land is/was good pronghorn habitat it made sense to try. It has been a number of years since I worked directly with the federal coal program there but it's quite a different world out here in the dry west. Areas that are seeded are irrigated with water produced on site from pit de-watering. Acid mine leaching is not a problem in the Powder River Basin as there is so little sulfur in the coal and not nearly the precip to carry acids off site.
This is not meaning to imply mountain top mining back east is environmentally acceptable. The sulfur/acid leaching and poisoning of fresh water streams draining old mines is inexcusable. Many of my kin still live in those hollers and towns in the region. Don't want to see their homeland destroyed in the name of efficiency and economy.