The 9th annual Elon University Fall Environmental Forum welcomed dozens of educators, builders, developers and citizens to campus on Friday as a national expert in fresh water ecology served as the keynote speaker on the various impacts and consequences of mountaintop mining.
Professor Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland opened the Oct. 8 day-long conference with an overview of mountaintop mining that examined the process of removing coal in such a fashion, the effects documented on streams in regions where mining takes place, and issues that have developed in the courtroom as coal companies and environmental groups go head-to-head on the topic.
“The loss of these streams is extremely significant,” Palmer said as she explained the way mining companies fill valleys with the soil, rock and debris they remove from surrounding mountains.
Palmer is director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. She is an expert on watershed science and restoration ecology having worked on streams, rivers, and estuaries for 27 years and leading scientific projects at national and international levels. She has more than 150 scientific publications, serves as an editor for the journal Restoration Ecology and co-authored the book The Foundations of Restoration Ecology.
“A River Runs Through Us: Stewardship of Our Water” served as the theme for the 2010 conference sponsored by the Center for Environmental Studies. The conference also brought in speakers on the politics and policies of water resource management, and on aquatic and terrestrial wildlife species management and conservation in North Carolina.
Conference partners included the Cape Fear River Authority, the Office of Sustainability at Elon, the City of Burlington, the Piedmont Conservation Council and the Piedmont Triad Council of Government.