Mountain Top Removal

Note: This is not a sight that blames any government agency or any political party for mountain top removal. We are not that naive. We understand that mountain top removal is approved by all politicians on every level. So, if you read or hear anything from Bush bashers in any of the videos presented here, it does not reflect our opinion whatsoever. We are appalled and saddened by the destruction of natural caves, beautiful rock formations, streams, artifacts, unmarked graves of our ancestors, animals and plants of every species by the insane process of mountain top removal and we hold all our leaders responsible. (We also have a file on the website that gives the positive side of Mountain Top Removal. You can access this PDF file at the following link: Mountain Top Removal Facts -Thanks to Hazel Potter Thompson for submitting this file on 2 July 2009 by email. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this file.)

470 Mountain Tops have been removed as of 10 January, 2008. Not since the glaciers pushed toward these ridgelines a million years ago have the Appalachian Mountains been as threatened as they are today. But the coal-extraction process decimating this landscape, known as mountaintop removal, has generated little press beyond the region.

The problem, in many ways, is one of perspective. From interstates and lowlands, where most communities are clustered, one simply doesn't see what is happening up there. Only from the air can you fully grasp the magnitude of the devastation. If you were to board, say, a small prop plane at Zeb Mountain, Tenn., and follow the spine of the Appalachian Mountains up through Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, you would be struck not by the beauty of a densely forested range older than the Himalayas, but rather by inescapable images of ecological violence. Near Pine Mountain, Ky., you'd see an unfolding series of staggered green hills quickly give way to a wide expanse of gray plateaus pocked with dark craters and huge black ponds filled with a toxic byproduct called coal slurry. The desolation stretches like a long scar up the Kentucky-Virginia line, before eating its way across southern West Virginia.

Letter to the editor:

Below is a letter to the editor of an online news journal written by Ann Meador, daughter of Ransom "R T" Holbrook and Thelma Manies, about her concerns regarding mountain top removal that is taking place in the Kentucky mountains.

On Dec 27, 2007 12:13 AM, A M goul51@yahoo.com wrote:

Letter to the Editor,

I was born in Letcher County in the 1950's, but had to leave that area as a child because of circumstances beyond my control. Memories of my life in this place will always be one that I will love and cherish forever. I have been reading a lot of articles from the Letcher County area on this thing called mountain top mining, and tonight I seen photos of some of this so called mining and it put a terrible grip on my heart, it was an article in The Kentuckian News by Rachel Colby, published 9/04/07 called Black Mountain Massacre, I was appalled at the pictures that were taken there, I understand that people have to make a living for their families, matter of fact my dad was a coal miner by night and a farmer by day, but never do I recall the mountains being demolished as they are today.

There has been an interest of the Eastern Kentucky Mountains as to like no where else in America, the traditions and experiences of the people from this region have inspired from books, short stories, music and songs to award winning movies that have been made. I have not been back home for several years now, but after reading all the articles and seeing the photos, I begin to wonder will it be the way I have always described the mountains to my family for will it be a place that is just held in my childhood memory, In closing this letter I would like to share with you a piece I had written at my last visit.

"As I make my way back home for a visit to a place I had left many years ago, It seems to me the mountains take on a magical life all their own and I feel a lonesomeness that comes to me in no way I can explain in words, as it still takes my breath away to behold such awesome grandeur and beauty of such a marvelous place." If there is anyway you can save your beautiful mountains do it, they are your heritage, man can destroy but never replace what God has given you from the beginning of time.