To the Director and Students of the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College History Project - I believe it will be important to include in this historical preservation effort any oral and written histories your students can record concerning the destructive forms of coal mining in our county and larger region. In particular, this includes mountaintop removal or valley fill mining practices and unrecoverable high wall mining. Many mining projects are a combination of the several forms of surface disturbance mining and sobering evidence of its presence is visible west of town along the basin and more clearly if you drive further west into the county along roads removed from our direct view from Middlesboro. Along these roads, especially this time of year when the leaves have fallen, you will witness a vast removal of land and, like me, wonder how such damage is necessary or even allowed.

It would also be important to include details on abandoned mines in the area. While the region's past is rich in a history of underground mining âEUR" which many of us benefited from âEUR" history will look back on the blasting and stripping away of the mountains we hold dear as simply destructive rather than historically rich. For a practice making up such a small percentage of total mining, mountaintop removal is the most devastating. Though it is a controversial topic, and the well-funded opposition to the growing anti-MTR outcry would like to label any negative sentiment to an aspect of mining as all together anti-coal, it will be important to preserve an equal representation of sides. Just because the growing outcry demands a halt to MTR, does not mean we are all anti-coal. Oppositely, we would potentially see an increase in jobs in our region of southeast Kentucky were we to have more underground mining and less monster pieces of machinery and explosives doing the jobs of a hundred men in a single scoop. And yes, as some promote, coal keeps the lights on and there are many friends of coal. There are just as many friends of the mountains and friends of sustainable energy with opinions as well. We may not be as well funded, but we will not run out of voice.

Larry D. Thacker, Jr.

Middlesboro