WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The debate over mountaintop removal mining took center stage today before the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife.

Five people were asked to testify in front of the subcommittee Thursday including Boone County native Maria Gunnoe and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman.

Gunnoe told the subcommittee how mountaintop mining has devastated her family's longtime home in Bob White, caused massive flooding and impacted the health of her and her children.

Huffman testified that 40 percent of the state's coal comes from mountaintop mining and other forms of surface mining.

More than 90 percent of those mines have at least one of the disputed valley fills.

Earlier this year subcommittee chairman Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland and subcommittee member Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee cosponsored a bill to make valley fills at mountaintop removal sites a violation of the Clean Water Act.

That bill is currently in committee.

This will not be the last hearing on this issue.

Senator Alexander said several more hearings on the subject would be scheduled.