Kentucky’s Leaders Are Siding With the Coal Industry, and Its Poorest Residents Are Paying a Price – by Rachel Leven and Zach Goldstein (Mother Jones – October 28, 2019)

https://www.motherjones.com/

Todd Bentley stepped onto his porch and saw the storm swelling the creek near his home. If this kept up all night, he feared, the creek could overflow its banks and wash out his neighborhood’s road. He headed out into the rain with his teenage son to secure his mother’s trailer across the street.

In minutes—before they could finish—they were up to their waists in floodwater. They had to clamber into the hills to escape. There they crouched for hours in their family cemetery, lightning striking around them, the water below them carrying cars, ripping up pavement and lifting homes off foundations.

“He started crying on me, it was happening so fast, and I, literally, I shook him,” Bentley recalled. “I said, ‘Son, listen. We’re fighting for our lives now—you’ve got to keep it together.’” Nine years after they survived the flood, storms fill Bentley with dread. He watches the creek. He paces. What if it happens again?

Flash floods have troubled Kentucky for decades. Now, extreme rainstorms are worsening with climate change, increasing the odds of more disasters like the one Bentley’s community endured. For Kentucky’s poorest residents, the people living in flood-prone hollows with surface mines nearby, that means an ever-present threat to both life and hard-won possessions.

But the state isn’t on the front lines of the fight against global warming. Its leaders, concerned about the impact on coal, have positioned themselves on the other side of that battle.

For the rest of this article: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/10/kentuckys-leaders-are-siding-with-the-coal-industry-and-its-poorest-residents-are-paying-a-price/