West Virginia’s coal industry is being held up to scorn by a new attack book and resulting publicity from it.

Coal River, by Michael Shnayerson, brands mountaintop removal as a devastating force wrecking “the purple mountain majesty that is America” — leaving poverty and ruin in its wake. He says out-of-state corporations are reaping giant profits from colonylike West Virginia, while coal communities such as Whitesville are becoming deserted. “The coal industry is making a killing. The Coal River valley is just getting killed.”

Sunday’s New York Times book section gave it a major review titled “Mountains into Molehills.” Calling West Virginia “a state of mournful beauty,” the national newspaper commented:

“Over the last 20 years, entire mountaintops have been sliced away by King Coal, forcing out families that have lived in those weepy hollows for centuries. In less than a generation’s time, perhaps a half-million acres of rich Appalachian forest have been destroyed, according to the federal government, by a process in which mountains are cleaved and the fill is dumped into streams and valleys.

“If it is possible for one industry to destroy both land and culture, the coal companies clawing at West Virginia have found a way to do it. Used to be, coal mining was done deep underground, employing legions of miners. It was dangerous, but at least a little coal town could coexist down the road from the mine, and there was always a river nearby for fishing on Sunday afternoon. Now the industry employs far fewer people by simply blowing up entire hillsides: mountain-ectomies. Towns, farms, forests, schools, rivers — anything near the blast zone is a casualty.

“Is it legal? Perhaps not. But the coal industry is also adept at backing judges and legislators who turn federal laws like the Clean Water Act into spaghetti with Orwellian interpretations. They also play the jobs card, in which union miners are just as complicit as their employers.”

Shnayerson’s book says:

“This is a story of great forces in America destroying America itself: the need for cheap fuel, even if it pollutes more than any other kind and puts the planet at risk; the need of the companies that mine coal to make profits, whatever the environmental cost; the brute force of the coal industry that buys political influence with campaign contributions, gets its own lobbyists put in charge of the state and federal agencies assigned to regulate it, and pushes for loopholes in laws it hasn’t already broken.”

The author says West Virginia’s 229 strip mines are marring the “wild, wonderful” state with moonscapes of dead, barren plateaus.

“This would never happen in rural Connecticut, Maine, northern California, or other places where such devastation would stir outcry and people with money and power would stop it,” he writes. “But Appalachia is a land unto itself, cut off by its mountains from the East and Midwest. Its people are for the most part too poor and too cowed after a century of harsh treatment by King Coal to think they can stop their world from being blasted away.”

This accusatory book probably will become divisive in West Virginia. Coal executives and state leaders may rebut it. They’ll probably point out that it offers no realistic alternative to meet America’s ravenous need for energy.

Still, vigorous public debate is good for any society — and Coal River provides plenty of vigor.

West Virginia’s coal industry is being held up to scorn by a new attack book and resulting publicity from it.

Coal River, by Michael Shnayerson, brands mountaintop removal as a devastating force wrecking “the purple mountain majesty that is America” — leaving poverty and ruin in its wake. He says out-of-state corporations are reaping giant profits from colonylike West Virginia, while coal communities such as Whitesville are becoming deserted. “The coal industry is making a killing. The Coal River valley is just getting killed.”

Sunday’s New York Times book section gave it a major review titled “Mountains into Molehills.” Calling West Virginia “a state of mournful beauty,” the national newspaper commented:

“Over the last 20 years, entire mountaintops have been sliced away by King Coal, forcing out families that have lived in those weepy hollows for centuries. In less than a generation’s time, perhaps a half-million acres of rich Appalachian forest have been destroyed, according to the federal government, by a process in which mountains are cleaved and the fill is dumped into streams and valleys.

“If it is possible for one industry to destroy both land and culture, the coal companies clawing at West Virginia have found a way to do it. Used to be, coal mining was done deep underground, employing legions of miners. It was dangerous, but at least a little coal town could coexist down the road from the mine, and there was always a river nearby for fishing on Sunday afternoon. Now the industry employs far fewer people by simply blowing up entire hillsides: mountain-ectomies. Towns, farms, forests, schools, rivers — anything near the blast zone is a casualty.

“Is it legal? Perhaps not. But the coal industry is also adept at backing judges and legislators who turn federal laws like the Clean Water Act into spaghetti with Orwellian interpretations. They also play the jobs card, in which union miners are just as complicit as their employers.”

Shnayerson’s book says:

“This is a story of great forces in America destroying America itself: the need for cheap fuel, even if it pollutes more than any other kind and puts the planet at risk; the need of the companies that mine coal to make profits, whatever the environmental cost; the brute force of the coal industry that buys political influence with campaign contributions, gets its own lobbyists put in charge of the state and federal agencies assigned to regulate it, and pushes for loopholes in laws it hasn’t already broken.”

The author says West Virginia’s 229 strip mines are marring the “wild, wonderful” state with moonscapes of dead, barren plateaus.

“This would never happen in rural Connecticut, Maine, northern California, or other places where such devastation would stir outcry and people with money and power would stop it,” he writes. “But Appalachia is a land unto itself, cut off by its mountains from the East and Midwest. Its people are for the most part too poor and too cowed after a century of harsh treatment by King Coal to think they can stop their world from being blasted away.”

This accusatory book probably will become divisive in West Virginia. Coal executives and state leaders may rebut it. They’ll probably point out that it offers no realistic alternative to meet America’s ravenous need for energy.

Still, vigorous public debate is good for any society — and Coal River provides plenty of vigor.