There is a need to separate Judd from the issue of Mountaintop Removal. I grew up in Clay County, Kentucky, have plenty of coal miners in the family, am a Republican, a hunter and a Baptist... definitely not the “treehugger” type. All that being said, mountaintop removal is only good for the coal companies. It fills our “hollers” with rock an debris, chokes our streams and creeks. Hunting becomes a useless exercise because there is no cover for rabbits, squirrel, grouse, deer, coon.
What our mountains are replaced with are hills of crushed rock with so little soil that the only thing that will grow is a little grass. Trees and bushes just don’t do well. I have hunted in an area for 14 years and watched one reclaimed hill, looking for signs of anything other than grass. Nothing.... just grass to this day.
The process removes more rock and mountain to get to small seams of coal than you can imagine. Go see one. Come to Appalachia and let someone who loves the mountains take you on a tour.
In the Appalachian mountains it isn’t just “treehuggers” who oppose mountaintop removal. Last of all, my guess it wasn’t “coal miners” but coal companies who paid for the Judd ad. Way different point of view, I suspect.
On the other hand, the city of Hazard and others could not exist in the present form. The strip mined sites have provided flat ground for siting schools, shopping centers and growth.
Hazard was hemmed in by ridges into a rather narrow system of hollows. The stripped sites are now connected by very good roads and the town is no longer a place where a newcomer was beset by beggers on the streets.
It is true that some of the landscape, a geological jumble of crumpled earth surface is changed, but before the change, the land was unusable. As a mountain person, I spend lots of time roaming the hills and woodlands and appreciate your point. But having traveled extensively all over South east Kentucky know that there is a plenty of untouched ridges and hollows left for looking.
Wasn't a Shakamak State Park like they have in Indiana where reclamation, and public use, have been underway since the 1930s, but it'll get there.
If you don't like folks disagreeing with her on this issue...
..you should hear her opinion of abortion...(it ain't pretty--she's for it!)....
..Ashley hasn't met a photo-op she doesn't like, especially if it puts her front & center.
bttt
It’s a time honored tradition on FR to knee jerk a reaction than to actually spend some effort researching it.