Former Mine Sites Prove Valuable

New ways of using mountaintop removal sites keep popping up.  The Charleston Gazette's Rick Steelhammer reports on a former mine site that is being used to test armored troop carriers that will be sent to Afghanistan.  Another use is to put roads in the areas the mines were located, as Kentucky is doing with Route 460 and West Virginia is doing with the King Coal Highway.  The roads will not only make good use of the disturbed land, it is hoped they will also entice people to build homes  out of the floodplain, where many people in southern West Virginia live.