Dear Editor,

West Virginia is leading the nation in Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance. Finally, we’ve found something to bring us out of 50th place.

This is a leadership position we can easily maintain since we continue to have unregulated clear-cut logging and over 400,000 acres of devastated moonscape as a result of mountaintop removal mining.

More than 1,000 miles of our mountain streams have been buried with the waste from what used to be our mountaintops. All native plants and animals have been eliminated. Downstream areas have been silted over, paving the way for more flooding problems. Ecosystems have been destroyed.

This irresponsible excavation of coal makes the landscape so unsightly that it permanently ruins tourism.

It is a sad irony that mountaintop removal has actually destroyed more coal mining jobs than it has created.

Union miners are replaced by relatively few heavy equipment operators. Yes, it is indeed all about the loss of jobs.

After the 2001 floods, I flew over southern West Virginia and viewed the mud trails coming off the mountaintop removal sites. Our governor flew over these sites at the same time and said he didn’t know what caused the flooding and let’s not have a witch hunt.

Well, I know what caused the flooding, and most other residents of our state are painfully aware of the consequences of clear-cut logging and mountaintop removal.

Contact your congressional representatives and tell them you’ve had enough. Contact your state and local representatives and let them know you are opposed to clear-cut logging and mountaintop removal. Join with the many organizations laboring to end this exploitation of our land and people.

Regina Hendrix, Charleston