You are confusing mountain top mining and strip mining.
For those unfamiliar with Luminant, it is part of Energy Future Holdings which is the company formed as the result of the leveraged buyout of TXU a few years ago. This was the largest LBO in US history and it took two private equity firms to pull it off.
EFH is one of many, including Sarah Palin and T. Boone Pickens, who didn't get it right on the price of natural gas
This story gives a double entrende to the term vulture capitalism. First: LBOs, corporate raiders, vulture capitalism. Second: Luminant being the vulture waiting for these old people to die.
Luminant is having severe emissions problems from burning the soft brown lignite, but they are so far in debt they don't have the money to burn the bituminous coal imported from the Powder River.
No. I am a supplier to the coal industry. I am in coal pits almost daily. IN Alabama and Eastern KY, and West Virginia, the coal pits are in hilly areas, but not so much in the mountains.