![]() Having exhausted many of the more accessible veins to the dirty wealth, coal companies have resorted to mountaintop removal a process that literally tears open the earth with violent and irreparable blasts to expose the coal within. Even if they were to reemerge at day’s end, they were trapped in the mines, not by rockfall, but by an economic dependency on this polluting resource.Ĭoal mining has left a legacy of inescapable poverty entire regions are bereft of anything resembling a healthy economy. Workers and their families were universally aware of these hazards, but every morning men entered the mines. The more insidious dangers presented themselves only over time, as seasoned miners succumbed to a variety of respiratory ailments commonly known as black lung. Some dangers of the job presented themselves daily, as explosions and mine collapses took life and limb. Miners like him took collective action to secure improved living and working conditions through union strikes, but were nevertheless unable to eliminate the dangers of their profession. He earned only a meager daily wage to support his growing family. As a child, my mother-in-law would wave goodbye to her father each day as he went into the mines. Deeply connected to the dirty energy, Welch was the world’s largest producer of coal. ![]() Surrounded by the majestic mountains of Appalachia, the area of Welch, West Virginia, located in McDowell County, was once a bustling working-class town completely dependent on the extraction economy of coal. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |