 forests and the fertile farmlands are not coming back. The report found: "Mined land cropped for bond release commonly becomes unmanaged grasslands. Scant mineland is returned to trees, with survival and growth poorer than on reclaimed minelands pre-regulation. Problems include high soil strength, poor water relations and excessive ground cover. Sustainable plant communities have not developed."
My little boys planted the first trees in the ruins of Eagle Creek.
An estimated 960,000 tons of coal were stripped from our ancestor's original farm and adjoining areas. Shipped to a medium sized coal-ﬁred power plant, it would have generated roughly 2.06 MWe of electricity, based on typical estimates of burning coal. That would have been enough electricity to supply American demands for approximately four and half hours.
That was the exchange rate of our dirty energy policy for my family, like tens of thousands of Americans besieged by stripmining in 24 states and several Native American reservations: 200 years of history, for four and half hours of coal-fired electricity.
This Earth Day, however, those four and a half hours marked the beginning of reclaiming our land, and heritage, from the coal industry.