Foreshadowing the Bush Legacy on Coal
To assess what has been handed down from his [George W. Bush] eight years in office is doable. To write about what will last long- term is harder. One exception, though, comes to mind: here in Appalachian, we face a permanent hole in our vistas (and our lives) in the wake of so-called mountaintop removal mining (MTR). So-called because I prefer to call it Mountain Range Destruction. This type of mining pulverizes whole mountains for their underlying coal ... Full Story »
Posted by Barry Grossheim
I spent several years as a corporate lender with a special focus on coal and power in the early 1990's. We studied mountain top mining proposals and were intimately involved in financing coal mining operations and utilities. Mountain top mining was considered a non-starter given EPA concerns and fears that our lending institution could end up with the deepest pockets, and therefore end up owning any legal problems associated with these projects. The Bush Administration's actions would have been unfathomable at the time, and truly changed the face of Appalachia forever. That's a legacy if there ever was one.