Mountaintop Removal, 2011. This is one cut into a hillside that we saw during the site visit.
These images are from a "Mountain Witness Tour" that I participated in back in 2011 as part of the Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference at the University of Kentucky. These tours are run by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), and they are meant to help "people who don’t live in the coalfields understand the impact of coal mining on people, their homes, and their communities." One of the big issues with this type of mining is that the sites are often out of view. KFTC and other groups work together to make this problem more visible. All around the country people consume energy, often without thinking about where that energy comes from, what it does to local ecologies, and who it affects. Photography can help address this visibility problem and bring about awareness, but it’s just the start.
Left: Leader of the KFTC tour. Right: Closeup of “reclaimed” landscape soil. Defenders of Mountaintop Removal argue that landscapes can be rehabilitated—reclaimed—after the mining process is completed. Skeptics, including the folks who run groups such as KFTC, argue otherwise.
This is one broader view of the denuded landscape after the Mountaintop Removal process. 2011.