Mountain Top Removal Should Continue

            Mountaintop Mining is not as bad as people make it out to be. They claim it’s bad for the environment and for the economy, but they are wrong.

            Special precautions are taken to make sure an environment is safe during and after mining. Miners have to take steps to ensure that their jobs are done properly and safely. After mines are closed trees and other plants are planted in the area to help keep landslides and floods from happening and to allow what once was to be once again.

            As for the economy there are many job opportunities in the mining field, how is that not a help? Plus once mines are abandoned the land can be reused for many different things. Mines can used as tourist attractions. The roads used by the trucks can be made into trails. The flattened land can be used for many different buildings such as housing, complexes, schools, malls and sometimes even a jail if needed.

            A lot of people are against Mountaintop Mining but they only look at the supposed “bad side” of. They don’t look at how much growth it has allowed. 

Hatfield and McCoy Trails 

My Opinion on Coal

     I truly don't have an opinion on coal in particular. I think that coal is being used in such great quantities that we wont have it anymore and we wont know what to do. But I don't think coal is a big bad monster that we're digging out of the ground. I can see the valid points from both sides.
    I can see how some methods are harmful to the environment and destroys homes for many people. I can see how the treatment of miners is bad and how there are fewer and fewer jobs because machines are taking over the industry. I can see that West Virginia's government is in the Coal Companies pockets.
    But I can also see how West Virginia's economy is dependent on coal, I get to see it first hand. I can see how companies are trying to regrow forests (even if the trees aren't healthy or native to that particular area) and how mining sites can be used for many different things (cemeteries, jails, malls, trails, etc.).
    I think mining regulations need to be followed more closely and that the word of the people living around where a mining site is should have more say in what happens to their own land, and I think that we need to find alternatives to coal.