Excellent Letter to the Editor in The Scranton Times-Tribune today!

Learn from legacy

Editor: Thousands of people perished or were seriously injured in the NEPA mining industry.

After dying in mining accidents, their bodies were often tossed on their families’ porches. The miners’ wives and children were left destitute. Health insurance did not exist and miners were also required to use their meager earnings to buy tools and supplies from the company store. When the demand for anthracite coal disappeared, so did much business and industry.

Our area became economically depressed, as it continues to be today. Middle-age folks like me grew up with the realities of walking on hollow ground, playing on culm dumps and dealing with the many issues that accompany living and raising families in a dampened economy.

Now, the Department of Environmental Protection and several local businesspeople ask us to further sacrifice our air quality, our water quality and our overall health in exchange for what they call “economic benefits” to the area. Fool us once, shame on you — fool us twice, shame on us. When coal was king, only the few got rich, many were killed or injured, our land was devastated and our economy eventually tanked.

There are so many ways to provide for our communities and stimulate our economy without killing our people and further damaging our environment. It is critical that we begin to be more thoughtful about the amount and type of garbage we create, to challenge the waste industry to be smarter about how we dispose of that garbage and to learn to invest in business and industry that will allow us to build a better, safer and more sustainable future. It is imperative that we do something different this time around. Our lives depend on it.

ANNA JOYCE KILCULLEN

DUNMORE