I did some hiking in the mountains of North Carolina this summer. One day I climbed an access road about a quarter of a mile from the main road.  It opened into an area of several hundred acres that had been clear cut. All that was left were small trees that had been cut or uprooted. There was no other vegetation.

Later in the summer I traveled to Evansville, Indiana. I had grown up in Evansville and was anxious to find some areas I was familiar with. In my wandering I came across a power plant in a very rural forested area far from the main roads.  Across the road from the power plant was an earthen wall several hundred yards long.  After returning home research found that it was a depository for the remains of the coal that had fired the plant.

These are blights on the landscape. The forest will grow back over decades but the coal remains pit will never regain its former beauty and will be a sanitation problem for centuries. The material in these repositories contains numerous toxins. If these desecrations are continued will we want to live in the world that is a result?     

Thomas J. Rea, MD

Edwardsburg