Word: coal
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Although Martin Countains may not be crazy about some of the side effect of heavy mining--such as changed water patterns and flattened mountains--they are grateful for the jobs the coal companies provide. As one local minister puts it. "The coal companies are here to stay and we have to work with them to make things better...
...kick against the coal companies," says 59-year-old disabled miner Herbert Charles. His hands are covered with scars from bouts with the timbers he used to place to shore up the mines' roofs, and he has black lung. His father and four brothers died of the disease but as he says. "If it weren't for the coal companies I would have had a real hard time finding...
...coal companies are certainly not exploiting their employees. Most offer wages of over $35,000 a year with bonuses; added benefits bring the package will over $50,000. The lucrative wages are useful to the coal companies too, by keeping almost all the miners in the county nonunion. In an area where a small but sound house can sell for as little as $6000 and where there are few opportunities to spend money on recreation, miners are able to spend a lot on flashy cars and extravagant homes. Robert M. Duncan, chief executive officer of Martin County's only bank...
...mines are all owned by Mapco, a Tulsa. Okia energy firm, which traditionally names all its mining operations after the Polynesian good-luck "Tiki" dolls. Martiki is the second largest mountain-top strip mine in the United States and therefore probably the world, shipping almost 3 million tons of coal each year. Martiki officials are clearly proud of their operation and sincere in their excitement at the prospect of resulting the landscape. Martiki's 18,000 acres cover two mountains on opposite sides of a steep valley. In about 25 years when the coal is gone and the strip-mined...
...uninitiated, full-scale coal-mining is an incredible sight. Two hundred feet below where the hillside was a few years ago, dump trucks bigger than houses haul 175-ton loads of rock. The Martiki mining operation is centered around the "Mountain Mover," a power shovel about the size of a small airplane hanger. The shovel's huge bucket--which can easily hold a pickup truck--takes 76-cubic-foot bites out of the mountain 24 hours...