Mining or Damming...Which is Worse?

Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is pushing for support for introducing facilities into Kentucky to convert coal to gasoline or a similar product that can be used to power cars and other equipment. There's a huge coal reserve in the state, much, if not most, of what's being mined now shipped out of state primarily to power plants generating electricity. By installing conversion plants in the state, the coal would not only be mined but processed in Kentucky, creating jobs for many more people than just the miners.

Understandably, there are many people who see this matter as creating an even further threat to the mountains of eastern Kentucky and the flatter lands in the western part of the state due to strip-mining, although much of Kentucky coal is still mined underground. Strip-mining has changed the looks of many once-beautiful mountains, as well as created unwanted holding ponds in both the eastern and western areas of the state. Laxity in arranging for emptied deep mines has also caused problems, such as the "blowout" of sludge a few years ago eventuating in the pollution of waterways all the way to the Ohio River.

Fines are assessed and damages awarded in instances in which problems have arisen. These take care of material matters, but those who inveigh most heavily against mining do so for reasons of aesthetics – changing the landscape, sometimes to hideous departures from their once verdant, primitive state. This is regrettable, though it has been amply proven, especially when operators are constrained to obey the law and restore these areas, that, though different in appearance in the short term, these affected areas can be restored to beauty and usefulness in the long term, the latter important in establishing "flat" places for the building of facilities.

Writers and poets, as well as conservationists, have been especially critical of strip-mining, in particular. A strip-mined mountain is not a pretty sight as it's being mined or in the immediate aftermath of this procedure. The mountain is not removed in the process – or at least most of it – but undergoes a significant change. As restoration takes place, its beauty and "different" usage (and not just for golf courses), though different from those of its previous configuration, are advanced.

One wonders, in light of this subject, what the writers, poets, conservationists, and just plain citizens think of this matter as it might be compared to the lakes impounded by dams – lakes that displace beautiful, verdant valleys, not to mention the thousands of people – removing from sight forever once beautiful parts of nature. Actually, those folks don't seem to think anything about exchanging the beauty of the covered lands for huge puddles of water hardly aesthetically striking to the eye. A flat water-surface doesn't engender much attention, at least until it's whipped up a bit by a strong breeze.

Lake Cumberland, backed up behind Wolf Creek Dam, is the largest of Kentucky's lakes, impounding 63,350 acres, or just over 99 square miles at top flood-control level. With much, if not most, of its surface in Kentucky; Lake Barkley impounds 57,920 acres, or 91 square miles, and Kentucky Lake, the largest manmade lake in the eastern United States, with a huge area in Kentucky, covers 160,300 acres, or 250 square miles.

These three huge lakes cover an area of 440 Square miles, the size of Kentucky's Madison County, among the largest in the state. If Interstate 75 had to cross it, instead of just traversing it, the bridge would reach from just south of Lexington nearly to Mt. Vernon. Richmond and Berea would have long since gone beneath its waves, just as much of Burnside, including U.S.-highway 27, the railroad, two bridges, and the business section, did when Lake Cumberland was impounded, even though the town was some 40 miles away from the dam, as the crow flies.

This is not a brief for the coal industry, though the gasification plants would bring in many new jobs, meaning a significant employment and tax-base increase, not to mention the raising of the standard of living for many citizens who now live at the poverty level. It is, rather, a suggestion that folks whose primary interest is in the aesthetics connected to mining also compare them to those of river-control, a necessary enterprise, especially in affording water sources for communities and cities such as Lexington that depend upon dams for impounding water for private and commercial use.

The mountains and flatlands are changed by surface mining, but the changes can be, if not completely reversed, put to good use, even aesthetically. Once they go under water impounded by dams, however, those lands will not be seen again, no matter their beauty, and this is not even to mention that probably most of the former owners were stripped of their land through the "power of eminent domain," whether they liked it or not. Something to think about.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark