People are forced out of their homes or feel they have no alternative but to leave. James Weekley, whose family has lived in Logan County for generations, and whose home and family lands near Blair are being threatened by mountaintop removal operations, remembers when Blair, at the height of the coal boom, numbered about a thousand homes. As the coal played out, the town disintegrated to five hundred homes, then four hundred, then less. Reclamation will replace the mountain top with flat grassy knolls which will result in economic development. Well, none of the promised economic development has come about.
Reclamation consists of planting grass, locust and pine.
The truth is, even if the coal company wanted to plant such trees, it couldn t, because the fertile soil necessary for the growth of diverse plants and trees is buried at the bottom of the valley fill. Fred Holroyd must have been referring to the mountains after the coal company has finished with it when he referred to West Virginia hills as worthless pieces of dirt fit only for snakes and scrub pine. Right now the environmental consequences of valley fills are unknown. But the coal industry wants us to mortgage our future on the hope that there will be no long-term adverse environmental destruction. Maybe even more devastating is the cultural destruction.