Mountain Top Removal (My Take)

I am not big on jumping on bandwagons, but the more I have read about mountain top removal, the more I feel inclined to back the little people in stopping this practice.
The truth is that I do not know much about mountain top removal and the mining involved. I know we need coal and I think that if someone makes the investment on their land to mine it, they should have that right. But where do you draw the line between the effect on your land and the effect on a whole area or region.
I do know that thanks to Congress, the Appalachia District starts way up in Dennys’ area, winds down through Tennessee, and ends in my little area of Yalobusha County, MS. This is the ARC District. (Appalachia Regional Commission) So when I want to confuse people I tell them I am an Appalachian.
Driving along the bluffs in my hunting area in Mississippi, I have noticed that the bluffs all had gravel in them at one time, and just like the mountains of West Virginia, they have been strip mined. They dug out the gravel over the years and no one made any effort to restore the landscape. Now the areas are dug out, covered with Kudzu or barren and are gouged out horrors to look at that you can not cross. This is mining just for gravel and will take hundreds of years to erase the scars if ever. I hate to think of what happens to a mountain that has coal in it.
What is the answer? I don’t know but I would hate to look out my window at a beautiful mountain and then realize that it was slowly disappearing before my very eyes.
There has to be a middle ground or another way to mine this coal. Is the cost too prohibitive to mine differently or is strip mining just easier? Read up on this at the Backwoods Drifter and the Outdoor Bloggers Summit. If you feel strongly enough about strip mining and its hazardous effects on the people there, please contact your local Congressman by email or letter in a calm way pointing out other ways to extricate the coal and the residual effect on the land if things do not change. Good luck Denny, I hope this post will prompt at least one person to get involved. Make sure to visit Denny at Backwoods Drifter for more links and the Outdoor Bloggers Summit for more information.