"When They Leave, We're Stuck With This Problem."

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
---Upton Sinclair, US novelist & socialist politician (1878 - 1968)

There are few sights more heartbreaking than that of abused humans desperately defending their abusers.

PIKEVILLE — Coal miners who were given the day off work, caravans of environmentalists, businessmen and local politicians and pundits arrived Tuesday night for a public hearing on proposed changes to a 1982 federal regulation allowing valleys to be filled with dirt and rock left over from mountaintop mining.

Banners with the slogans "Coal Keeps the Lights On" and "Friends of Coal" stretched across City Park in Pikeville, where pro-coal groups were recruiting members and selling bumper stickers. The green T-shirts of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, who are against mountaintop-removal mining, dotted the multicolored sea of shirts declaring "Coal Mining: Our Future."

SNIP

"The people of Kentucky and Appalachian are paying the price in increased flooding and degraded water," said John Doerrfeld of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, above the boos and heckles of coal advocates at the hearing. Doerrfeld said the regulation changes "come too late" for 1,400 miles of streams that have been buried or significantly damaged by mining.

State Rep. Leslie Combs read a statement from House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who said that the region has seen less flooding since the start of surface coal mining. Stumbo touted the rights of property owners to determine the use of their own land and said that since mining reforms of the 1980s, he has never heard a landowner complain about land use.

"That offends me," said Beverly May, a Kentuckians for the Commonwealth member in Floyd County. She said before the hearing that her group has sent members to Stumbo's office in Frankfort and been told he won't listen to complaints about coal and mountaintop mining practices.

SNIP

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth member Ricky Handshoe has spent the past five years fighting valley fills by surface mine operations in and around Hueysville in Floyd County, where his ancestry goes back 200 years. He said he is thinking about leaving his home once his daughter finishes college. He said living next door to a surface mine is unbearable because of dust, blasting, speeding coal trucks and dirtied creeks.

Handshoe said he hopes the elimination of Nationwide Permit 21 would bring more environmental scrutiny and community awareness about how valley fills and surface mining affect Eastern Kentucky neighborhoods.

"When they leave, we're stuck with this problem," Handshoe said. "It's affecting my property from now on."

When Greg Stumbo launches his campaign for governor, remember that he's a Big Coal cocksucking liar.