Under the Microscope

It used to be because of our isolation from the rest of the country we might as well have been part of the Amazon Jungle or deepest darkest Africa. News about this area traveled slowly and was most times incorrect. The stereotypical hillbilly was cast in northeastern newspapers mainly because of the sensationalism and yellow press reporting of the Hatfield & McCoy feud. The English, Scots-Irish and German descendants who come into East Kentucky from old Virginia were somewhat clannish because of their isolation and the culture they brought with them from the old country. However if you do an in depth study of the region you will find that for the most part people here were as civilized as they were in other parts of the country.
This stereotype is perpetuated in films and documentaries created by some liberal organizations that come in here and live off grant money and corporate donors. The money is most time given in a genuine desire to help the area and not intended for the specific purpose of embarrassing us or showing us in a bad light. One organization over in Whitesburg Ky. will make a film documentary after digging up the most severe situation to build their film around and present it as if the whole regions lives like this. They do us a genuine disservice and other than stroking their own liberal ego’s waste of lot of money that could be put to a greater good.
I know that TV and the Movie’s have always done as much to perpetuate this image as much as else and that people are conditioned now to believing what has been presented about this region as the way it actually is. However it is doing us great harm now as most of the country sees us as a backwater uneducated mountain region occupied by slovenly clad illiterate hillbilly’s who spend most their time drinking moonshine and feudin. That image now is being replaced by pill snorting methheads whose only goal in life is to draw a check and stay stoned. Again some liberal do good’ers think they are going to make a documentary that will get them some kind of award at the Sundance film festival.
I am hoping at some point the country will start taking us seriously and will actually admit that we are a part of this country’s history and legacy. The legacy I hope will not be the one of an environmental disaster that was allowed to happen to a region because nobody actually cared what went on down there. Robert Kennedy comes down here to highlight poverty in the region during his brother’s run for president. Lyndon Johnson actually did something about it with his great society program and his war on poverty. By in large the area has not had much positive media attention since that era.
I fear the next time the national media and consciousness turns to the East Kentucky and West Virginia coal fields we will be just a shadow of our former ecological self. The deciduous forest filled with abundant wildlife and clear mountain streams are under assault from large coal corporations who see only us in the light of the afore mentioned stereotype. Most of the mineral is owned by out of state interest, as are most of the large coal corporations. They have the large budgets dedicated to promoting Mountain Top Removal and Valley Filling as being beneficial to the economy locally and coal being the alternative to oil as the energy source of the future nationally. The local spots are simplistic in nature with little cartoon bugs saying they can come back to a Valley Fill after the valley is filled. Another one is how much we need the flat land they create for us in order to obtain some industrial complex or housing development site. We have had enough flat land created for us by them now to put every default mortgage property on that was created by the sub-prime housing melt down. We have enough flat land to fulfill the industrial needs of China if they wanted to build here, since we don’t actually build anything anymore and nothing industrial has ever been built on one yet we are becoming to be a little suspicious of the argument. They forget to tell the natives down in dogpatch that it takes millions of dollars to develop an industrial site even if someone needs one. A piece of hard packed flat land with a little weed mix sprayed on it is hardly a Christmas gift. Of course the national commercial productions are a little slicker and sophisticated but they fail to show the nation where the coal is coming from or how they are mining it.
It will only be through environmental organizations that counter this message can the land here can be saved. I am hoping the collective public relations assets of all the environmental groups can start doing something on the national level to highlight what is being done to this region. I applaud what certain organizations are doing legally and how all environmentalists are keeping abreast of the problem on blog sites between themselves. I feel however the national consciousness needs to be pinched much as it was done in the civil rights era in order for the country to get more emotional about it. The crowning jewel of public relations would be for someone to take up the cause in a national presidential election much as the Kennedy’s or Johnson did. Due to our sparse population and voting base I do not see the Mountain Top Removal cause being taken up in the near future.
If a presidential candidate would take it up even as a peripheral problem connected with coal Co2 emissions being the prime culprit I feel it would augment his/her argument for alternative clean fuel technology if that is part of their platform. It would also highlight this ecological disaster that is occurring in East Kentucky and West Virginia. I will reiterate, the nation needs to see the region for what it is and they need to see Mountain Top Removal for what it is. I believe the national consciousness will be so repulsed by it that a changed will forced at the federal level to stop it. Even on the legal front I believe it will make litigation against coal corporations more effective.

Miss Bug

It was not that our intelligence was insulted enough with the commercial by Walker/Cat telling us its ok to do a Mountain Top Removal and a Valley Fill now they have come up with another one with a lady bug telling us its ok to cover up a stream. I feel it is because some environmental groups that have not been successful in the past in court attacking them strictly on the MTR issue has found a chink in the coal corporations armor with the clean water act. I believe the states may have had some stream protection bills passed in recent years that allow the groups to go after coal corporations who destroy fresh water streams
The old timers had it right back when they all had private wells and you could drink right out of most streams around here. Most birds don’t crap their own nest and you don’t mess where you eat. Of course that is putting it delicately as for how they really said it. We have a few fresh water springs left in Pike County where you can still bottle the water right out of the stream and sell it. For the most part though we are spending millions of dollars running what we call “city water” into every community. The water we once had being ruined by strip mining for the most part. We have better health departments now but the frequent boil water advisories remind us of what is really in that lake and river water they are trying to clean up for us to drink. I don’t like the taste of the chlorine and it is a constant reminder of what kind of fecal matter bacteria it is trying to cover up. Fresh clean, clear water one of the basic elements of life, are you really going to let a cartoon bug tell you its ok to destroy fresh mountain streams. Tell me what do you get out of that multi-million dollar piece of equipment that Walker/Cat sells? Especially the ones that covers up that fresh water stream.

There's a poll about this online we should all vote in.

I just heard about it from Green Thumb.

http://www.winchestersun.com