Kentucky will be here after California is gone
by WAYNE H. DAVIS
.. .the bulldozers are destroying California at the rate of 375 acres a day and this trend is accelerating. In many regions all acreage on which houses can be built and much on which they cannot is being subdivided into creeping slurbs of tasteless ticky tacky.
California has too many people. Their numbers have increased by 50% in the past decade. She absorbs the surplus produced by much of the rest of the nation.   They flow in at the rate of 15 00 per day. Surplus population demands land, schools, roads, services, sewers and other facilities.   It absorbs resources, fouls the environment and multiplies. Each new family entering California costs the taxpayers already there an estimated $5, 000 to $17, 000.
People have destroyed the magnificent state of California. Yosemite National Park is a campground slum;  its traffic jams rival L. A.   Justice William O. Douglas' latest book is entitled "A Farewell to Texas".   He can write off California, too.
Kentucky has possibilities. We export our surplus population to Ohio.   Except for a few local situations such as Lexington, which is strangling to death on a growing people and traffic problem, we are stable and solid.   We will be able to feed ourselves when New York City is starving.   Kentucky is a pretty good place to be as the world approaches a crisis.   That's why I am here.
Kentucky is almost unique among the nations, territories and states of the world.   It is not facing destruction from over population. It is being destroyed by strip mining.
Strip mining must be stopped. It destroys the land, the timber, the wildlife, the streams, and the fish. It destroys farms and homes.   It ââ€"  destroys the spawning beds of the walleye pike of Lake Cumberland and inhibits the inflow of tourist dollars from Ohio.   It violates the water pollution control law of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Wayne Davis teaches zoology at UK. bloc-tail fly
Although strip mining has destroyed vast tracts of land and hundreds of streams, the rape of the land has just begun.   Only 2% of the strippable area has been worked.   Coal underlies about half of that region of the state east of Lexington, all the land beyond a line from Ashland to Lake Cumberland.   This entire area could become a ghastly moonscape.
Strip mining continues because it is extremely profitable to a few individuals, and part of the profits can be used to influence politicians and the state judicial system.   Coal companies pay almost no taxes.   The huge profits go mostly to stockholders in northern cities who care nothing for the welfare of Kentucky.   In the mining counties a few local politicians and other local captives of the industry do well.   Most of the people, the schools and the county governments are in abject poverty.   The rotten guts inside the entire system was laid open for all to see in Harry Caudill's book "Night Comes to the Cumber lands ".
King Coal is more powerful than the state.   Perhaps we have never had a governor who was not a captive of the industry.   But the people never give up hope. With each change of administration we look to the new governor for leadership.   Louie B. Nunn has taken significant action in behalf of conservation for the people of his state, for which we are grateful.   But with respect to coal his administration has been woefully inadequate.
When Governor Nunn saw that a tax rise was needed to carry out his program we hoped for a severance tax on coal.   A raise in the 3% sales tax was considered.   This the people did not want.   Perhaps we could have a compromise: the sales tax to 4% plus a small severance tax. But no, King Coal was too powerful, and went untaxed as the sales tax climbed to 5%.
Recently a public scandal has developed in the repeated failures of the administration to enforce the mining reclamation laws and water pollution control law where coal
corporations are involved. According to the Courier Journal, overloaded coal trucks without registration tags, burning untaxed galo-line, have become commonplace in eastern Kentucky during the past two years.   Loss in tax collections was estimated in the hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of dollars.   Apparently the Motor Transportation Department has not been very successful in-enforcing the law where the coal industry is concerned.   In fact the only state official I know of who seems to be interested in law enforcement is Minor Clark, Commissioner of the
Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
In spite of this sorry state of affairs much progress is being made. People are clamoring for law enforcement.   If enough people show their concern, our officials will act. I wrote to the Governor, to the Commissioner of Natural Resources and to the Attorney General and asked them to help enforce our laws. Others are writing too.
We are going to stop the strip mining.   Within a few years all coal removal in eastern Kentucky will be from deep mines.   The only question is how soon.   The reason I am so confident of the eventual outcome is because the opposition to strip mining is growing at a fantattic rate while their forces are static. Environmental awareness has become the thing.   And the wise politician should govern his actions not by what our strength is today but what it will be the next time he is running. We are growing so rapidly that this is a most important factor.
Unfortunately, time is important. Each day brings new destruction. We must try to get strip mining outlawed at the coming legislative session. A major effort along several lines is already underway.   If you want to help, there a several things you can do. Join the Sierra Club.   Attend environmental awareness seminars--start them if there are none on your campus.   Above all, write to the governor (use the clip-out form on page 16, if you like) and ask his help to stop this rampaging cancer which is destroying our state.
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