Nov. 19, 2007
Kayford Mountaintop Removal Continues Unabated
Massey and Magnum Coal Companies Continue Ripping Apart Famous Mountain
By Tony Seaton
Huntington News Network
The view from the "high wall" or Hell's Gate, as Larry Gibson, self-styled "Keeper of the Mountain," calls it, above the mining site, is not pretty. Thousands of aces of pristine hardwood forest are simply gone. Dumped into nearby hollows and streams as"valley fill." 750 feet of forest and soil and rock have been stripped away to get at one coal seam about five feet thick which had been that deep in the former underground. Coal companies tout mountaintop removal as a safer, cheaper and quicker way than deep mining to supply power companies burgeoning demand for Appalachia's top-shelf bituminous coal. Environmentalists, clean water advocates and folks whose homes happen to sit atop coveted seams that are often already owned by coal companies, disagree. They say that not only is the true cost of mountaintop removal not considered, but that the world's oldest mountain chain will never recover from the assault on its ecosystems. Meanwhile, "draglines" the size of buildings and trucks with 16 foot- tall tires continue tearing the mountains of West Virginia asunder.
Watch producer Tony Seaton's video with Larry Gibson and a group of James Madison University students who came over from Virginia to see first-hand what mountaintop removal looks like.
Massey and Magnum Coal Companies Continue Ripping Apart Famous Mountain
By Tony Seaton
Huntington News Network
Watch producer Tony Seaton's video with Larry Gibson and a group of James Madison University students who came over from Virginia to see first-hand what mountaintop removal looks like.
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