Tourists watch as mining companies level mountains

[billr]

Tourists watch as mining companies level mountains in Appalachia
By Roger Alford, Associated Press Writer | December 18, 2005

HAZARD, Ky. --For Lyle Snider, the view from Kentucky 80 is breathtaking, but not in a good way.

Parked on the side of the four-lane highway, the New Hampshire native watches a mountain disappear bit by bit at the hands of miners using explosives and giant earth-moving machines.

"It really does look like a moonscape," Snider says, gazing across a barren expanse of dirt and rock.

Mountaintop removal coal mining, which had largely been relegated to the Appalachian back country, has been edging closer to major highways because of a mining boom sparked by higher coal prices.


http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/12/18/tourists_watch_as_mining_companies_level_mountains_in_appalachia/?p1=email_to_a_friend

[achtung_circus]

1. Mountaintop removal coal mining?

Is that what it's called now? Was strip mining too unfriendly a term?

[Karmageddon]

2. This is worse than strip mining.

In strip mining, they dig a bigass hole in the ground, in mountaintop removal, they tear down the whole frikking mountain. The whole thing. Guess where most of it lands (aside from the small percentage that is actually coal)? In the valleys at the foot of the mountains, which, as you can imagine, does wonderful things for the water supply.
They're trying to turn Appalachia into Kansas, except without the fertile soil.

[underpants]

4. In WV most of it goes between the mountains

thus creating a new park area or what have you.

Yes it does completely choke off streams and the ones that don't get choked off get horribly polluted.

[phantom power]

3. "edging closer to highways."

Out of sight, out of mind. Just like the logging practice of leaving visual barriers along the highways. Wouldn't want the citizens to actually see the consequences of resource extraction.

[achtung_circus]

5. This bit is pure Doublespeak

In a rugged region with little level ground, Caylor says mountaintop removal also creates much-needed flat land for factories, airports, subdivisions, golf courses and baseball fields.

"To imply that we're flattening Appalachia is so untrue," Caylor says. "We're creating level land for Appalachia."

Jordan Fisher Smith, a California author, says his visit to eastern Kentucky in October was a wake-up call for him when he saw "deserts of fractured rocks" left behind after the mining companies pulled out.

"The coal companies say they're creating flat places for people, but I went on some of these so-called reclaimed areas," Smith says. "The only things that can grow in these places are the sorts of plants that county agriculture agents have been trying to spray and eliminate elsewhere."

Off to check Google earth