By Carol Warren
I live in a war zone. Mountaintop removal coal mining is blasting apart my extraordinarily beautiful home state of West Virginia. And I need your help.
When I stand at a mountaintop mining site, I cry. It is the only sane reaction to the horror, to the daily thunder of explosives that blasts 800 to 1,000 feet off the tops of mountains, turning green ridgelines to dust and rubble, to lifeless moonscape, for cheap energy. The same coal could be removed by cleaner, though more expensive means, but it isn’t done.
Entire communities are being forced to evacuate their ancestral homes, overcome by the incessant blasting, disease and depression. If America were doing this to another nation, we would scream foul. But here we are, doing this unspeakable harm to our own people.
One coal operator compared a mountaintop removal project favorably to the Grand Canyon. “Out West they think this is a tourist attraction!” he exalted. There’s a big difference — the Appalachian Mountains aren’t supposed to look this way. They are home to the most diverse hardwood forests in the nation, with beautiful clear running streams tumbling down into their hollows. The coal companies leave Mother Earth for dead. “Reclamation” is a farce. You can’t restore a poisoned hell-scape.