Inside Energy (https://insideenergy.org/tag/kentucky/)
The energy that lights up, turns on, cools and heats our lives leaves… a trail of waste. And the waste from the gas drilling known as “fracking” is often radioactive. Reporter Glynis Board and the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity found that inconsistent regulation of this “hot” waste creates ripe conditions for dangerous disposal.
Even though Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state since 1988 and its coal culture runs deep, the image of the Appalachian coal miner persists in American popular culture. Why? Perhaps because most coal miners still work in Appalachia, even though most coal comes from Wyoming. In 2012, for example, Wyoming produced about 40% of U.S. coal but employed only 8% of coal miners.
Coal is in a long decline in Central Appalachia. Even though coal mining jobs are disappearing there-the imprint of coal on the landscape is everywhere. More than a million acres of strip-mined land — an area the size of Rhode Island — are now deforested. As part of a reporting project from The Allegheny Front on the future of coal, Reid Frazier went to Eastern Kentucky to see what will happen to the land once coal is gone.
