China: Moving Mountains Screwing The Environment

Mountaintop removal is a practice  used the in mining of coal mainly in the Eastern United States.  It's an environmentally  unsound practice.  Due to altering the topography in ways that was unintended by nature.  Water tables are changed, soil erosion increases, large amounts of dust expelled into the air causing respiratory problems and these are just some of the problems caused by these practices. Once the mountain top is removed the land is leveled which in an earthquake prone area creates a whole set of problems one of which is liquefaction which causes soil in reclaimed land to become a water like substance leading to severe property damage.

China bulldozes mountains to create land for cities

For years, China has been moving mountains for its people - literally.

The country has been bulldozing hundreds of mountains to make way for new cities but scientists are not happy, saying the consequences of the policy ‘‘have not been thought through’’.

In the past decade, mountains stretching over hundreds of kilometres have been demolished and the soil shovelled into valleys to create flat land, in a practise that has become commonplace in China.

The city of Lanzhou, in Gansu province, is in the process of bulldozing more than 700 mountains in what’s been dubbed the largest ‘‘mountain-moving project’’ in Chinese history.

One of China’s biggest construction firms is behind the multibillion-dollar plan, which will create more than 250 square kilometres of flat land and allow developers to build a brand new city.

Another example can be found in the Western United States where decades of clear cutting led to numerous environmental problems simply because profit was given a higher priority than the preservation of the environment. As is now happening in China.