In the late 1900s, and especially after the 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood, people grew more concerned about how industry was harming the land. One of their main targets was surface mining, or strip mining, which involves removing trees, dirt, and rock to reach coal near the surface. This damaged the environment and led to new laws in the 1960s and 1970s to better regulate the practice.

In the 1990s, a more extreme method called mountaintop removal (pictured) became common. Entire mountain tops were blasted off to reach coal, and the leftover earth was dumped into nearby valleys. This caused major changes to the land, especially in southern West Virginia, and some suspect it led to increased flooding.

The environmental movement also has been increasingly concerned with air and water contamination from the chemical industry and activities such as fracking in the natural gas industry.