Eastern Kentucky's Post-Coal Future

It's nothing that mountain activists haven't been saying for decades, but finally people with the power to make it happen may be ready to listen.

Bill Estep at the Herald:

Eastern Kentucky needs a strategic plan to diversify its job base and money to make the plan a reality as its coal industry withers, according to a regional economic development organization.

In a paper released Monday, the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development called on legislators to set up a body that could create a plan to boost Eastern Kentucky's economy and oversee its implementation.

Eastern Kentucky has lost more than 5,700 coal jobs in the last two years, creating a critical need for better planning to develop the region's economy, the report said.

"Literally ever single person we've talked to said we've got to do something else," said Justin Maxson, president of MACED, which is based in Berea and funds projects in Eastern Kentucky.

Big Coal and its buddies Big Oil and Big Gas will fight to the last dead stream and asthmatic child, but they're the poisoning dead and they know it.

The fight now is to get the state legislators Big Coal owns to dump its putrefying corpse and get with the program.