King of the Hill?

Barry Bingham, Jr. has an op-ed in The Courier-Journal about the coal industry's practice of mountain top removal. As Mr. Bingham points out, the practice not only produces severe environmental concerns, but human and sociological ones as well.

Mountaintop removal mining is turning Eastern Kentucky into a despicable latrine, cluttered with the offal of the industry. Rotting vegetation, mud and rocks clog the streams and rivers. Wells and streams that once ran pure are too polluted for human use and are dead to aquatic life.

And the devastation of the land is not the only scar left by this industry. The destruction of tranquility that accompanies their enterprise destroys communities and the people who live near the areas that are being mined and have been mined. People's homes are wrecked by "fly rock" from the blasting at the mines and can also be destroyed by mudslides resulting from the "valley fill" technique of pushing earth and rock from mountaintops into surrounding coves and ravines.