Today is the penultimate day of our effort to gain a more accurate view of coal mining and its effect on WV’s economy and culture, both past and present. We visited a surface mine run by Coal-Mac, a subsidiary of Arch Coal. This mine site was an example of a coal company running a surface mine responsibly. While it had the appearance of destroying the landscape irretrievably, nothing could be further from the truth. This company used the latest technology to monitor every process in the removal of the coal and the reclamation the land afterwards. This company began the process of reclaiming the land immediately after all the minable coal had been removed. Reclamation of the land really began when the overburden was removed and relocated in the head of the adjoining valley in terraced layers to minimize soil erosion and stream damage. Using this method of reclamation allowed the disturbed land to recover far more quickly and to restore the former diversity of life that existed before the coal removal. At the Joe Knob reclaimed mining site, the diversity of species had not returned forty years after the coal removal and still had only a few species living there. At the Cow Creek site there was a wide diversity of species present only 2-3 years after mining the coal. After eight years the land had recovered to the point where you could not tell the land had been mined at all. This changed my view of surface mining and gave me hope that mining and tourism can exist side-by-side when both sides of the issue act responsibly, reasonably, and cooperatively. This would allow both sides to flourish and maximize the benefits to the people of West Virginia and minimize the effects to the environment.
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