University of Kentucky professor Ron Eller stirred up the proceedings of the Eastern kentucky Leadership Conference last week by calling for an end to surface mining.
Eller was the keynote speaker at this year’s Eastern Kentucky Leadership Conference awards ceremony in Hazard. He began his speech noting a need to build an “alternative future for our children,” and later called for an all-out end to the practice of surface coal mining, especially the controversial method of mountaintop removal mining, saying that perhaps there needs to be a “revolution in our thinking in the mountains.”
Eller, a West Virginia native and past Pulitzer nominee, said ending surface mining serves as a way to push the regional economy past an economy based on coal.
“We must look beyond an extractive based economy to one that values and enhances the landscape and resources that it holds,” said Eller. “One that connects our own sustainability and future to that of the mountains themselves. We must begin, I think, by abolishing surface mining, including the radically destructive practice of mountaintop removal.”
Eller said mountaintop removal is not a necessary component of the local or national economy. He called for employment in underground coal mines to be protected, while those jobs on surface mines in the coalfields could be replaced by jobs that “enhance the environment” such as forest management or localized energy production such as wind and solar.
“Jobs displaced by the loss of strip mining could be replaced by federally supported programs of reforestation and land reclamation for alternative energy production,” he continued, adding that reclaimed mine sites could also be added to the national forest and managed as national energy trusts.
Eller argued that restoring the lands and managing them would employ many more people than those jobs that would be lost by ending surface coal mining.
Reaction to Eller’s speech was quick, with many pointing out the development of shopping centers, hospitals, and other businesses on land once used as surface mining sites as indicators of how important surface coal mining is to the region.
In what was seen by some as a rebuttal to Eller’s keynote speech Thursday, Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo, in a speech made between conference sessions Friday afternoon in Hazard, announced support for new reclamation techniques and pointed to the progress being made on former surface mining sites, including the Stonecrest development in his hometown of Prestonsburg in Floyd County.
“I led a 10-year effort to reclaim this former mine site,” he said. “Now it is home to an industrial site, a public golf course, a beautiful residential area, a horse show facility, as well as baseball, football and soccer fields.”
Stumbo added that there has been a balance between responsible coal mining and the natural beauty of Eastern Kentucky, and that balance should continue.
“Kentucky is blessed with abundant coal reserves and beautiful land. We can enjoy the jobs and cheap energy provided by coal, while protecting our heritage of natural beauty,” he said.
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