Customer Reviews

Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reece never falters as, chapter by chapter, he pulls together the staggering case against the coal industry's highly destructive mountaintop removal mining practices.

He takes us to Lost Mountain in Perry County, Ky., and spends a year watching as the mountain is steadily leveled. He captures the voices of all parties involved and makes clear what is at stake. He shows us what is wrong in the system and even offers sound ideas for fixes.

Reece pulls no punches along the way, using government records to expose a pattern of lies and false promises. He also knows his way around the decidious forest, sharing with his readers the shy ways of creatures like cerulean warblers and flying squirrels. (One note, though, Erik: On page 83, you erroneously link the blooming of the redbud and the dogwood in March. What you were seeing with the redbud actually was the serviceberry, or sarvis tree. It's a common mistake.)

The deaths of Harry Caudill and Edward Abbey left voids that have not been filled -- until now.

Reece bursts onto the scene with the power to move mountains -- or maybe save them.

This is a must read.

The Appalachians have long been abused by the rest of America as a veritable internal colony, as coal and other resources are extracted ruthlessly and the money ends up elsewhere, leaving the resource-rich people mired in every other possible type of poverty. In a business that has been brutal for generations, the extractive industries have now introduced their most insidious practice yet – mountaintop removal mining. Instead of utilizing mineshafts, or even terribly destructive strip mining, the companies are now forcibly removing entire mountaintops to get at relatively scant quantities of coal. Forested peaks become flat rocky mesas, while rivers and valleys are buried under the resulting slagheaps. In addition to the obvious environmental devastation, this cataclysmic new process continues to inflict terrible human costs on local residents. In this book, Erik Reece reports on his multi-year observations at the tragically named Lost Mountain in Eastern Kentucky, which suffered the ugly fate of mountaintop removal mining.

Reece made monthly visits to Lost Mountain, and offers a melancholy journal of the death of this once vibrant forested hill, as coal operators transformed a lush environment into a literal rubble heap. Reece also investigated the travails of the region's people. Coal companies are still harassing citizens who complain about their operations, while pocketed politicians turn a blind eye and give perennial false arguments about job creation and economic development. Meanwhile, the companies cut and run after their destruction is complete, taking their profits elsewhere while the locals suffer from toxic illnesses, flooding, mudslides, contaminated water, and the deepest poverty in America. The human hardship uncovered by Reece is both heartbreaking and maddening, and this book is a powerhouse look into issues of social justice, environmental protection, economics, and the exploitation of all of the above by unscrupulous operators for quick profits. The only problem with this book is the disappointingly weak conclusion, in which Reece attempts a general environmentalist philosophy that not only has been done a billion times, but is also far too diffuse to apply to the very specific Appalachian issues he covers in the rest of the book. But otherwise, this is one of the most important conservationist books of the year. [~doomsdayer520~]

It was sad to see this "crime" is still going on in Kentucky and that little or nothing has been done about it over the course of my lifetime and that it has only gotten worse. I have lived in California for the last 20 years, having felt the need to leave Kentucky upon college graduation. I was active as a student at U of KY in 1971 and spent quite a number of weekends in Pike County trying to help the poor people while learning all I could about strip mining as it existed then. It was sad to read nothing has really changed and and the land, its resources, the wildlife, the Appalachia Mountain area is being systematically destroyed, the creeks, streams, roadways, bridges, and homes and communities also being destroyed while out of state Coal Company owners get minimal fines, slaps on the wrist and the State and the People of Kentucky get little or nothing. This would be bad if jobs were at least being created, but they aren't. This would be bad if the State of Kentucky was at least getting a fair price for the coal but it isn't even getting that. The damage caused to the roads, bridges, river, creeks, streams, land, wildlife, scenic beauty, communities of mountain people, the heritage is all being systematically destroyed without even a fair and/or just compensation. The Coal Company owners and the Politicians who fix things nice for them in DC are getting rich but Kentucky is being raped forever by this ecological travisty. Young people need to read this if only to learn how State Leaders act once they get to D.C. and legislate against the interests of the States they represent and the people who voted them in office. Anyone who has read Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature will want to read this one.

Point Google Earth® to the area around Harlan, KY and you will see a landscape of verdant slopes dotted with scab-like wounds that were mountains once stood. Strip mining is alive and well and is savagely destroying the mountains of eastern Kentucky. In Lost Mountain, Fist-time author Erik Reece has penned an account of this ecological savagery that goes on under reported and therefore unnoticed by most people who don't live in the immediate area. This fact is brought home by Reece's report of a toxic spill 30 times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This spill occurred near Coldwater Creek, KY only six years ago. While Exxon Valdez has become household word, few have heard of Coldwater Creek
Eric Reece Chronicles the demise of one peak, Lost Mountain, so-called because of the lush vegetation that clung to its slopes, causing visitors to become disoriented, often losing their way. Those slopes are gone now, replaced with a tableland of gravel and dust, as the mountaintop was blown apart and shoved into the adjacent hollow for the sake of the coal that lay below. He uses this episode as a jumping-off point to explore the larger question of how much ecological and economic destruction are we willing to endure for the sake of cheap energy.
Cataloging the endangered wildlife; the human suffering; and the damage to the mountain ecosystem by aggressive strip mining, he paints a grim picture of the "extraction economy" of the Appalachian coal fields. The mining companies, in what must be the most Orwellian statement of the young century, claim that by destroying the mountain, they are actually improving the terrain, prompting one resident to contemplate putting a sign in his yard saying, "God was wrong. Support mountaintop removal."
This is yet another installment a chicken-little anthology of environmental activism. It's not light reading, and is often quite depressing, especially when most of the solutions Reece comes up with, such as building a bunch of furniture factories where the coal used to be, fall way short of anything feasible. It seems the biggest obstacle to change is the local populace, most of whom, dependent on coal jobs, are reluctant to take action against, or even criticize the activity.
Yet the story needs to be told. For those of us who thought that strip mining was a thing of the past, to find out that this most aggressive form of the activity is running roughshod over the once verdant peaks of some of the oldest mountains on earth, is shocking to say the least.

If you read this book and don't feel compelled to make a difference than Reece's point has been lost on you. I am a student at Western Kentucky University and recently traveled to Eastern Kentucky and fell in love with the people, the culture and the mountains of Appalachia. The more I learn about mountain top removal the more it angers me that nothing is being done. Reece really puts the corruption of the coal industry into perspective. The people he spoke to and the research he did makes you think about the actual cost of cheap coal.

I read this book for a college class, and loved it. Beware, though...you will probably be very angry at the whole situation by the time you are through reading. Reece does a great job of creating a riveting, edge of your seat story about a very touchy subject. The only question that remains is "What next?" What can we do to remedy this situation?

Erik Reece has written a heart gripping story of our beloved mountains that are being destroyed by the major powerful coal companies. It's heart breaking to read of Ollie Combs being hauled off her land by her arms and legs.

Erik chronicles the year he spent witnessing and observing the decimation of Lost Mountain in Perry County, Kentucky.

It takes no more than ten men and some heavy machinery to blast off a top of the mountain, dump it in the valleys, scoop out the coal and the environmental results are devastating on a unprecedented scale.

Erik Reece's Lost Mountain is a classic of beautifully written, heartfelt reporting that calls on all American citizens to confront the outrage of mountaintop removal. His book demonstrates, once again, how corporate power will destroy people, nature, culture and the hope of the future for the sake of short term profits. Reece equally indicts the complacency and complicity of a larger culture (all of us) which accepts a lifestyle built on such insane, literally, destruction. Mountaintop removal is the ultimate price that people pay when they believe that the reality of their their lives and their values are found in economy rather than in nature. This great book should be required reading for every American, and then every American should demand an end to mountaintop removal and demand an economy based in conservation and renewable energy.

... and I still give this book five stars. I am so tired of the lame argument that we must still see "coal as our future," until another method can be found. Other methods HAVE been found, but there is so much criminal money tied up in the coal industry, and so many misled goops still rallying behind the coal bosses, that no one with the wherewithal to do so is doing ANYTHING to promote other energy sources.

It was enough, for me, that most of the men on the in-laws side of my family died of black lung. But after reading the chapter about the Huntley-Brinkley road, I do not know how coal bosses, truck drivers, former governors, or any of the other crooks responsible for this can sleep at night, nor how they live with themselves, nor what they plan to say when they face God some day.

I thank you, Erik Reece, for this masterful book. I envy your students. I pray this book moves someone, changes something, anything, for the better.

Erik Reece's "Lost Mountain" is a metaphor as well as the actual name of a mountain. This is his story for a year in eastern Kentucky as the mountain "is removed."

This is not just another tale of woe about Big Coal, about coal mining or about mining in general. Reece knows that mining is here to stay, whether it is coal, copper, iron, nickel or bauxite.

The focus here is on a special type of mining: mountaintop removal and valley fills. This type of mining came into being in the early 1990's when massive, powerful equipment and the technology to support it made this type of mining possible.

This type of mining has the capability to destroy the topography of planet Earth. Our descendants, hundreds and thousands of years from now will still be living with the effects of mountain top removal and valley fills.

The fact that the central and southern Appalachian Mountains are for now, the mountain range most affected by this type of mining holds a special irony. The Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth. The mix of flora and fauna has evolved over a long period of time. A rich mix of species includes more species of salamander, more species of bats, birds, butterflies, fish than any other place in the United States.

Mountain top removal and valley fills destroy the land. Trees and vegetation get stripped and removed. The rich,layered soil gets dumped, along with broken-up rock into ravines and valleys where it blocks springs, intermittent streams, vernal pools and bogs. Watersheds and drainage patterns are destroyed. The complex ecological structure that took so long to evolve and which provides different ecological niches that support many different species can be destroyed after a day of mountain top removal.

It will take centuries and millenia for land so damaged to emerge. Until then, only the very roughest species of flora and fauna can tolerate such poor conditions, a much-narrowed spectrum of life-forms.

Read Erik Reece's book and get mad. And then do something about it. This type of mining needs to be stopped.