MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL, AN EASY DOLLAR?

OK...so now I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a minute.

I come from a long line of coal miners. My mom's family toiled long dark days in the mines of Floyd and Pike counties of eastern Kentucky. Days of hard labor, dusty, cold, dangerous, and again..dark days. They were deep miners. They worked the coal inside the mountain. The only visible sign of a deep mine was the loading tipple and the 'gob pile' of carbonaceous slate that was discarded over the hillside near the mouth of the mine or trucked away and deposited nearby. The gob invariably would catch fire either spontaneously or with the help of a match. The ensuing product of burnt gob resulted in a commodity termed 'red dog' and it is still used today in Kentucky as a substitute for gravel to coat many a muddy holler road.

I sort of followed in the footsteps of my family, earning a degree in Mining Technology from Pikeville College. While I never worked actually extracting coal, I chose the path of quality control and analysis. Out of college I worked for Ashland Coal and then Arch Coal in the lab.

I know who buttered my bread, bought my groceries and gave me electricity when I flipped a switch.

I have spent many hours underground studying roof control, ventilation, machinery and blasting and explosives. I've witnessed first hand the hardships and dangers that miners face every day.

I've studied the strip mining activities and the reclamation requirements that at the time required the site to be returned to the original contour. That practice seemed devastating to the topography of the mountains 25 years ago, but today the strip mining activities and mainly those of mountaintop removal are destroying the beauty of mountains. The 'original contour' laws are thrown out the window, in favor of so-called economical development. The 'flat' featureless plains in the middle of nowhere are supporting landing strips, golf courses and trailer parks. These operations are often out of the view of the public eye and seem to be 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Silas House wrote in the Lexington Herald Leader:"The sites are usually in isolated areas where as few people as possible can see them. Since the coal industry's major defense is that it's providing much-needed flat land for development, I wonder how many people are going to drive the winding, crumbling roads into places like Lower Bad Creek to shop or build homes on subdivided land. Not many, I assume."

While the technology is ever-growing in the mining industry, with the development of robotic remote control continuous miners, longwall systems and the safest coal mines in the world. It seems that we could mine the coal underground with greater safety and efficiency and preserve the natural beauty of our beloved mountains. The stripping of the mountain top, filling the valleys and hollow heads with rock and choking the streams, literally laying waste to the land is not what we deserve. There has to be a better way, not just the cheap, easy way that rapes the land and recovers the smallest seams of coal. Lets save the smaller seams near the summits for our future generations to mine with the unforeseen technology that is certain to come in the future.

Want to see firsthand the atrocious scars? use Google Earth to zoom down on any light colored spot amidst the verdant sea of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The proof is there!

Get involved, join the fight!. Visit I Love Mountains!