Developers are planning to flatten a mountain for a multi-billion dollar development.
Chinese urban developers are planning to flatten 700 mountains to make way for a new urban area near the city of Lanzhou, costing around 3.5 billion dollars.
The plan is drawing criticism from people who say that China’s real estate market is risky, and that the plans for a new urban area raise environmental concerns next to Lanzhou, the most air polluted city in China.
Angie Wong, a spokesperson from the development company China Pacific Construction Group said: “Lanzhou's environment is already really poor, it's all desolate mountains which are extremely short of water. Our protective style of development will divert water to the area, achieve reforestation and make things better than before."
Another form of mountain flattening is called mountain top removal, which is a method used for mining coal.
In the Appalachian region of the United States, over 500 mountaintops have been flattened since this type of mining started in the 1970s.
A study published in Environmental Research says that in places where mountaintop removal has been happening, health problems and birth defects are more common than in other parts of Appalachia
