We are selling our birthright for porridge. The coal company is getting the cream, and we're getting skim milk. God spent millions of years creating the land, Taylor said. Underwood, a former coal executive, supports the mining method. In the face of a recent debate on the issue, he assigned a task force to study the effects of mountaintop removal and the blasting that goes along with it.
Critics say mountaintop removal irreversibly robs the landscape and pollutes streams.
However, the coal industry maintains its reclamation projects restore nature's balance to the mountains, though reducing their size. When told about a resolution before the United Methodist Church's West Virginia Conference, the governor noted that the denomination has been losing members for years. Underwood said the United Methodists should focus their efforts on causes such as Mission West Virginia, a statewide interfaith network that the governor created in 1997 to work against illiteracy and other problems that perpetuate poverty. The governor said he doesn't believe the resolution, which was later approved by the conference, would affect new legislation expanding mountaintop removal opportunities. The Rev. Ed Tutwiler, chairman of the conference's Board of Church and Society, said a flight over a mountaintop removal site convinced him that the practice should be halted until the long-term effects can be determined.