Word: mountaintop
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Chances are, if you grew up in the mid-1950s, you either owned an official Davy Crockett coonskin cap or had the lyrics of the television show's theme song committed to memory: "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee/ Greenest state in the land of the free ... Davy, Davy Crockett/ King of the wild frontier." Under the iconic cap--just one of the show's many merchandising tie-ins--stood Fess Parker, who died on March 18 at 85. The 6-ft. 6-in. Texas-born actor fit the rugged American frontiersman mold so well in the five Crockett episodes...
...These are ghost towns, where Massey has come in and bought out the towns, forced out the residents and plowed them under," said environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to Don Blankenship, Massey's CEO, in a January debate at the University of Charleston on the hazards and benefits of mountaintop mining...
Public-health studies suggest that people who live in mountaintop mining areas have "higher rates of lung cancer, chronic lung, heart and kidney disease mortality [and] lower birth rates" than average, possibly caused by breathing in coal dust or absorbing harmful chemicals, says Dr. Michael Hendryx, a professor of community medicine at West Virginia University, who studies health effects from mining...
Overall, the environmental impact of mountaintop mining is so traumatic, says Palmer, that she and a team of engineers, ecologists and hydrologists recommended an end to the practice in a paper published in January in the journal Science. They dismiss federal and state laws, including the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which oblige companies to reclaim mined land, for example, by rehabilitating natural biodiversity or rebuilding the mountain to its approximate original contour. Massey has undertaken rehabilitation projects in the region, having already planted one million new trees in Central Appalachia - but critics say such efforts cannot...
Although other types of surface or underground mining are less environmentally destructive than mountaintop mining, they're also more expensive, so companies like Massey are reluctant to alter current practices. Going forward, however, Massey has pledged to monitor water quality; periodically it assembles a 30-member environmental review arm to do so. The EPA is also keeping tabs on mining's impact, while Obama has pledged to support the development of clean energy. Activists like Bonds say attention from the top levels of the current administration helps them continue fighting at this crucial time. But for the former residents...