Chapter 40 Chapter Forty

Twenty minutes later, Cole stopped the car and pointed forward.The moonlight was so bright tonight that Pooler could see exactly what she wanted him to see. "Can you tell me how this came about?" She asked, pointing to a pile about 100 meters high that stood out between the two peaks and was extremely inconsistent with the surrounding environment. "Tell me about it." "It's caused by 'filling'. Mining companies fill in what's called 'topsoil' here. 'Topsoil' is everything they strip off the mountain: trees, soil, rocks, etc. that they blast away to get to the coal seam ...they have to move that stuff somewhere else. But West Virginia has strip mining restoration statutes, which means mining companies have to pile as much stripped topsoil as possible next to the mining site. They dump the topsoil into the valley , and planted saplings on it, watered and fertilized, and covered with mulch, and then let the plants grow naturally. The problem is, they dumped the topsoil like this, completely turned the geological formation bottom up, and the top soil was covered It was pressed at the bottom, and the rocks that were originally buried below were turned to the top. The local herbs and trees could not grow under this condition. So they brought in many plants from other places, and the result completely destroyed our place. Ecosystem. They seem to follow the law in doing so, but only on the letter, in fact, it is completely against the essence of the law. And the top soil is dumped and piled up so that the surface terrain here has also changed. The river has to be diverted , There were also sudden flash floods. Mountains collapsed, and sometimes houses were destroyed.”

"I didn't see many residents living here." "That's because Trent Mining later bought the whole area." "Why? Would people be willing to sell to Trent?" "They don't want to sell, but they also don't want to live next to the open-pit mine where the coal is fired every day. The water here is undrinkable. The clothes can't be dried outside after washing. Your lungs and liver may appear at any time. ailment. Randy wasn't kidding when he mentioned his lungs failed when he enlisted in the military. He was diagnosed with COPD when he was a teenager. Unlike me, he never smoked in his life Smoke. But he played football near the mines, he played track sports. There are other athletes here besides him who have the same disease. The quality of life is getting worse and worse. There used to be small towns and communities here, and now you can see All I got was a sporadic trailer mobile home, or one or two small wooden houses in the forest. That’s all that was left. Drake County used to have a population of more than 20,000, but now there is not even a third left. In ten years, the coal mines will be gone, and we will probably disappear completely from here."

She then drove the car to an area fenced off with barbed wire and a warning sign.The courtyard is a multi-storey, tall and huge metal facility, with long transmission slots leading to multiple directions at different heights. "This is the coal transfer station. Here the coal is crushed and loaded into trucks or railcars. There is a dedicated railway line here." "It's so late, and they're still working," Puller said, looking at the flashing lights in the transfer station and the flickering lights of coal trucks passing by. "You're right. They work 24 hours a day. They stop working when it gets dark, and then they work in continuous shifts. Time is money. And the only product they can sell is coal. Let Coal is no good lying around sleeping. This thing needs to be turned into electricity to go into the grid, to keep the lights and computers running, and that's what they say around here, at least in the coal mine marketing brochures."

"I can see that you hate it all." "Not all of them, no. Coal mining does provide jobs. And it supports the whole country because we need energy. But some people think there should be a better way to get energy than ripping up the whole ground, and now this In a certain sense, the gain outweighs the gain. Some people point out that we have already passed the critical point of tolerance, and there will be endless troubles if we continue to do so. However, if your home is not here, if the water that flows out after you turn on the tap is not black, Would you care if crumbling rocks didn't hit your roof and record air pollution didn't give your kids cancer? People call us the United States of America, but we're not A truly united country. The Appalachians feed the country with coal. Who cares when the coal runs out and West Virginia looks like Pluto What about us? People go about their lives as usual, that’s the reality.”

"How did your dad feel about all of this? Sounds like he's a really good guy." "He's spent his entire life looking for coal. I think he's stopped thinking about what else is going on on this planet, if he's ever been thinking about it." "Where's Randy?" "What happened to him?" Cole asked. "He has also searched for coal mines, and he is still an expert, but he has obviously quit now." Pleigh paused, "The last time Roger Trent received a death warning, did Randy do it? ?” Cole puts the car in gear. "There's one more place I want you to see."