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OPINIONS
Dave Cooper: Mountaintop removal sites are poor building locations
In a recent column, Mike Mitchem, executive director of the King Coal Highway I-73/74 Authority, claimed that mountaintop removal sites "have proven to be ideal locations for industrial, commercial, residential and recreational development."
In Kentucky, we have the Big Sandy Federal Penitentiary built on a valley fill, yet cost overruns due to subsidence of the land increased the cost of this project by more than $60 million, causing it to be the most expensive federal prison ever built. Taxpayers picked up the extra costs, not the coal company. Local residents call the prison "Sink Sink."
And in Mingo County, W.Va., where a coal company donated strip-mined land for an auto-racing dirt track, the state had to pony up $1.4 million just to build a road to the site.
Mountaintop removal valley fills make poor building sites. Developers flee from the subsidence risk, and these projects simply cannot be built without massive taxpayer subsidies.
Who is paying for the King Coal Highway? Not the federal government. We are. And it will cost all of us billions of dollars. But will it bring true prosperity to the coalfields? Or just more gas stations and fast food joints?
The best economic development tool for West Virginia is using the beauty of its spectacular mountains to attract entrepreneurs such as Web designers and telecommuters who can work anywhere they have high-speed Internet connections. These highly educated folks can live anywhere they want -- why not in the mountains of Southern West Virginia?
Asheville, N.C., and east Tennessee are booming with "half-backers," northeastern retirees who have moved from Florida "half back" to the beautiful mountains of Appalachia.
Meanwhile, West Virginia is missing out on this white-hot real estate market. Instead of protecting our mountains -- our greatest asset -- and using them to lure people to the state, we are allowing them to be destroyed.
Although some people in the coal industry blithely claim that environmentalists are against jobs, the opposite is true. I want West Virginia to grow and prosper. I am tired of the social problems that poverty has created in the coalfields. I want development and new jobs and new houses built in Appalachia.
But this will never happen as long as we continue to cling to the failed past policies of coal and mountaintop removal.
Dave Cooper is a resident of Lexington, Ky., and a member of the Sierra Club, a national environmental organization.
