Hechler’s poster is part of EarthJustice’s MTR awareness ad campaign, now with billboards in West Virginia.

Really, People ... Haven’t We Been There, Done That?

In a column on the "hearing" (see story page 1)

Jeff Biggers wrote:

Forty years ago, the venerable West Virginia Congressman Ken Hechler foretold the economic ruin of strip-mining and mountaintop removal, which had already "left a trail of utter despair for many honest and hard-working people," in a similar congressional hearing:

"What about the jobs that will be lost if the strippers continue to ruin the tourist industry, wash away priceless topsoil, fill people’s yards with the black muck, which runs off from a strip mine, rip open the bellies of the hills and spill their guts in spoil-banks? This brutal and hideous contempt for valuable land is a far more serious threat to the economy than a few thousand jobs which are easily transferable into the construction industry, or to fill the sharp demand for workers in underground mines."

At the age of 97, Hechler is still trying to get the President and Congress to recognize the 40-year rap sheet of mountaintop removal operations.

In truth, thanks to the heavy mechanization of strip-mining and shift to Powder River Basin operations in the West, Appalachian coalfield states like West Virginia and Kentucky have lost more than 65 percent of their jobs since Hechler took over nearly a half century ago.