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Mining Method Assailed In Letcher By Alan Maimon Click here to see associated rebuttal. McROBERTS, Ky. -- Some of the people who met yesterday to pray on a strip-mined mountaintop in Letcher County were devout Christians. Others were ardent environmentalists. All were fed up with a mining practice they say is destroying communities. The coalition of citizens gathered to protest mountaintop-removal mining and related practices they say have caused flooding, cracked foundations of homes and dust problems. The Rev. Steve Peake, pastor of Corinth Baptist Church in Fleming, where yesterday's event started, told the gathering of about 50 people that strip mining has ruined the beauty of the area. ''When I was a boy, all the mountaintops were beautiful,'' Peake said. ''Now the mountains are scarred and marred.'' Mountaintop removal, which involves shearing off tops of mountains, separating the coal from the dirt and rock, and then filling in valleys with the waste, is an abuse of God's creation, said the Rev. John Rausch, a member of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington who helped lead the event. No one from the coal industry spoke at the service. In a telephone interview, Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, said he resented people bringing religion into the debate on mountaintop removal. ''I disagree when people try to justify their actions with quotes from the Bible,'' Caylor said. Caylor said he could justify mountaintop removal by quoting a Bible passage that reads, ''every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.'' At yesterday's prayer session, cosponsored by the environmental group Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, participants went to a flattened mountain on a TECO Energy strip mine overlooking McRoberts. Lois Thompson, a KFTC member, said uncontrolled runoff from the stripped mountain has caused her flooding problems, and vibrations from blasts at strip-mining sites have cracked the foundation of her home. ''We've tried everything to get help,'' Thompson said. ''It's like we're a joke around here.'' |