A public relations flack for the coal industry hit new heights of shameless stupidity this week by coming up with a, umm, really unique reason to support mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachians. It turns out, according to Joe Lucas, VP of Communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, that the practice of blowing up mountaintops and shoving them into neighboring hollows isn’t the ecological disaster (as in “the rape of Appalachia”) you may have been misled to think. In fact, says Lucas, mountaintop removal mining is actually a real boon to mountain communities because … ready? … wait for it … it solves the “lack of flat space” problem in Appalachia. And he’s serious. “In many places,” says Lucas, “mountaintop mining, if done responsibly, allows for land to be developed for community space,” such as hospitals and factories. Never mind that those communities being “helped” are often destroyed economically, as well as environmentally savaged, by the destructive mining practice. As one reporter put it, “This gives new meaning to the idea of the Flat Earth Society.”
This article appears in Best of Charlotte 2009.
Sorry Frank, but there are several problems with MTR as a “practical idea.”
1. Any actual development is very rare, only a few percent of MTR sites have seen any. When it does occur it is often of questionable benefit to the community such as golf courses, Wal-Marts, and prisons. A lack of flat land is in large part a red herring obscuring the absentee ownership and political corruption that plagues the coalfields.
2. The effects of mines while they are active arguably outweigh later hypothetical benefits. These include displacement due to environmental harms and more labor intensive, less profitable underground mines. While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the negative health effects on nearby communities recent research by Michael Hendryx has also provided statistical support.
The reason most of this land is not used right away, is the infrastructure removal , If more local control of said land were given via a federal law change I’m certain more would be developed.