Reforesting Appalachians Surface Mined Land

摘要

Until March the grass at the Colony Bay Complex in Wharton, "West Virginia grew as tall as your knees when it wasn't matted down with snow. It was breezy up there-absolutely quiet with broad views and just a few trees growing on the hillside, an unnatural sight in the dense wild forests of southern West Virginia.rn"It's awfully sparse on Colony, it is," said Dave Hettinger, an engineer with Patriot Coal. "There's a lot of coal come out of this mountain. Several seams have been mined lots of times," he said. Sparse because Colony is a reclaimed surface mining site, accessible by a private winding dirt road that takes you to the top of a cluster of mountains in Boone County.