Blowing Up An Issue

By Kleinheider Posted on April 30, 2008 at 4:09 pm

Jeff Woods investigates the unfortunate lapse in the legislature on the subject of mountaintop mining:

With a coal company essentially promising to mine by blowing off the tops of Tennessee mountains, lawmakers inexplicably refused to act and all but guaranteed great swaths of ecologically important woodlands will be laid to waste.

The National Coal Corp. threatened to shut down in Tennessee if mountaintop mining were banned. So to save 234 jobs, the sum total of the company’s workforce, lawmakers decided to sacrifice the natural beauty that underpins a gazillion-dollar tourism industry.

It’s all the more baffling because the legislature, at the urging of Gov. Phil Bredesen, has invested more than $100 million to acquire and protect the land that’s now in the coal company’s crosshairs. It’s mostly in the 74,000-acre Sundquist Wildlife Management Area in the northern Cumberland Plateau. The state bought surface and timber rights, but mineral rights belong to National Coal.

permalink

Comments