TV News Fails to Cover Mountaintop Removal Well, Or At All

Aug. 22 letter to the editor in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch

Television news has no credibility when it comes to covering mountaintop removal. They only talk, incorrectly, about the job situation, never about the horrible consequences of mountaintop removal.

For one thing, laws are not being enforced. Because of this, people are dying from drinking well water they thought was safe, but had been poisoned. People in the community have to breathe rock and coal dust due to the blasting of the mountains, which causes people to get seriously ill. Peoples homes flood because of mountaintop removal bare rock, no soil, no trees make flooding a lot worse.

A lot of people in the coalfield communities are in their retirement age and have no choice but to fight coal companies. Thats the sad truth.

Television news has a lot of blood on its hands for not reporting the truth about mountaintop removal. To them, money from coal companies is more important than peoples lives. People should have a right to a healthy community.

What you do to land, you do to the people. It all comes down to who you are going to trust. The common persons word or the bought off?

Michae l Morrison,

Barboursville, WV