RECLAMATION OF THE LANDSCAPE 341 



down which water could move quickly after each rain. The natural 

 ecology of the waterway was destroyed for many miles. 



The corporation that wrought this damage made a gesture at 

 reclamation. Pine seeds were scattered in some areas and in others 

 tiny seedlings were planted. In some of the mining flats fescue 

 seeds were scattered and some of them took root. 



But the blasted slopes lie yellow and dead. The loose dirt has 

 gone downstream to silt other areas and the hollows are filled with 

 the stone and the desolation. The spoilbanks are almost perpen- 

 dicular because the mountain on which they lie is extremely steep, 

 a fact that may rule out forever any effective effort at reclamation. 

 To reclaim the spoilbanks the slopes must be kept in situ until vege- 

 tation can be caused to grow, and in a region with nearly 50 inches 

 of rainfall annually such retention of the soil cannot occur. It is 

 as though loose dirt was placed on the sloping side of a tin roof and 

 expected somehow to remain there under the pelting rains until 

 vegetation could take root. 



Thousands of people have been horrified by the spectacle of this 

 blighted valley. The corporation which extracted the coal has 

 reaped a bumper harvest of public ill will. In my opinion, the 

 board of directors who authorized this act committed a major offense 

 against America. If a man loves America the Beautiful and sees 

 this wrecked and ravaged land, the gouged-out creekbed, this fishless 

 stream, he must feel revulsion for the recklessness, the greed, and the 

 barbarity of an industrial manager who would wreck a valley for 

 a bit of cheap fuel. 



I cannot believe these men to be wicked, but their folly, their 

 cupidity, their disregard for natural beauty is monumentalized by 

 the mountain they killed. Soon the Applachian development pro- 

 gram will reconstruct U.S. 1 19 as a major north-south highway and 

 countless tourists travelling between Florida and the Great Lakes 

 will pass their monument. Most of them will blame a great corpo- 

 ration for the despoliation of this lovely corner of America. 



The point here is that, whatever the situation may be in the flat 

 coalfields of America, strip mining on steep mountainous terrain is 

 wholly inconsistent with the preservation of natural beauty and the 

 natural balance of life. Restoration to anything approaching the 

 original situation is out of the question. The land is too steep, the 

 rainfall is too heavy, the spoil is too unstable for real reclamation 

 to occur. If the land is to be preserved, if the natural beauty is to 



