Environmental catastrophe caused by coal mining in China

People living near coal mines in China are suffering from severe land subsidence, which requires overcoming tens of billions of USD.

According to the International Business Times, after three decades of China's coal mining industry, the mine beneath the northern villages and towns of Shanxi province has been evacuating hundreds of thousands of people due to collapsing houses. subsidence.In the picture is Ms. Li Yonghua, 65, standing in front of the damaged house in the sinking area next to a coal mine in Helin village, suburb of Xiaoyi city, Shanxi province.

Villin villages in Helin village are precarious on the slopes of 100 mines. But Helin is not the worst case. Local authorities are beginning to evacuate residents in some other areas at higher risk. "When the government requests, we will be happy to move away. It is not safe here so people with a bit of money have found a better place to live. It's scary but we do not know what to do , " Wang said. Junqi, people living in an apartment complex with family, said.Ms. Li Yonghua used the trunk to fight a slanted wall of the house.

Large-scale state-owned mining companies often move all villages before the mining work begins.However, some smaller private companies want to make quick profits, so they only dig under and around the residential area, making the villages' foundation unstable.In the photo are the abandoned houses in the land subsidence of Koukan town, Dai Dong, Shanxi province.

19 "disaster areas", extending throughout 23 villages with 55 landslides, 950 cracks in the ground and 808 mine collapse incidents. It all happened in an area of ​​13.25 km ² .In the photo is the housing area of ​​abandoned workers next to the coal mine in Yongdingzhuang village, Daxing, Shanxi province.

Damaged walls inside a house in Yongdingzhuang village. By the end of 2014, coal mining in China caused 26,000 geological fluctuations, causing 10,000 km ² of affected land.

Son Tay provincial government estimates that coal mining costs 11.63 billion USD to overcome environmental damage.Trucks are waiting to transport coal outside the mine on the outskirts of Xiaoyi City, Shanxi Province.

China is encouraging investors to turn abandoned mining sites into projects to exploit wind and solar power.The amount of electricity generated from solar energy currently accounts for only 0.6% of China's total electricity, while wind power is 3.6%.

Ms. Gao Xiuzhen, 81, sat in a damaged house next to a coal mine in Yongdingzhuang village.China plans to relocate 655,000 residents of Shanxi province out of unsafe mining areas by the end of 2017. The cost of relocation is estimated at $ 2.37 billion.