The Eloi and the Morlocks, Kentucky style...

Of the many issues rampant today, a particularly volatile one involves the strip mining method known as mountain top removal, which is being practiced in the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky.

The ones who own an interest in the coal want it to be mined. These are not just cold-hearted coal company people who routinely go in, ravage an area, claim to re-claim it and then leave it an environmental mess. They are also honest, hard-working and at times elderly residents of the area who look at the coal as money they can pay their medical bills with and perhaps leave something for their children. It's two sides of the same coin, and I'm torn between two lovers on the issue.

I despise strip miners. I despise the way they manipulate and swindle the people, I despise what they do to the land, and I despise the way they go off and leave the slag fields for someone else to clean up.

Here is a case in point. Peabody Energy Company contacted me some time back wanting permission to lease some land that I was heir to back in Leslie County. Here was their spiel. They wanted the land so the could do exploratory drilling for gas and oil, and if they struck it, then besides the revenue from the leasing of the land, there would also be revenue from the proceeds of the drilling. I thought, well, drilling is not as bad as strip mining and the extra money would sure help my aunt and uncle. Come to find out what they are actually doing is leasing this land (thus preventing the owners from using it), drilling and finding wells, and then capping them off. No help for America, and certainly no revenue for the aforementioned aging relatives.

It's the brazen lying and manipulation of a population of people who have historically been manipulated beyond belief for generations. It is the manipulation of a part of our state that is rarely acknowledged as absolutely imperative to the survival of the state. It's the dirty little secret that we never talk about when we're advertising our great horse farms of the Bluegrass, of Central Kentucky, all of which are powered by the coal mines in Eastern Kentucky.

It's a question that has plagued me since childhood when I saw first hand the poverty that my people grew up in. It's the question that kept coming to me when I saw the affluence of the Bluegrass. What about the mountains? Where is their share? Why must my elderly aunt and uncle drive four or five counties away down two lane mountain roads to receive adequate health care? All of the coal that has been ripped out of those hills, and nothing's changed. There's a new Wal Mart in Hazard. Oh boy, that's some progress. But the health care workers at the regional hospital there had to strike for a decent wage.

Kind of reminds me of the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G. Wells "The Time Machine."

Governor Beshear, I challenge you to make things right with Eastern Kentucky. I challenge you to empower our universities with the ability to find other, better, renewable forms of fuel, to build better health centers and clinics in the areas that are supplying the rest of you (my house is solar-powered) with power and energy. They're not just our country cousins, they're our people.