I love the taste of pollution in the morning. The thick dust from the mine drifted up to where I stood perched over a 600-foot drop, coating my lips with a sour, metallic film.
Below me lay a barren wasteland of exposed rock, large machinery and a handful of workers. This is the new face of Appalachia. This is mountaintop removal mining.
In the last 30 years, mountaintop removal (MTR) mining has ravaged the Appalachian Mountains, particularly in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. It chokes the life out of the environment and surrounding communities, leaving a wake of poverty, ecological degradation and despair.
MTR ravages the Appalachians
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