Day One--30 March, Hueysville (Floyd County)

As he stepped out of his home to greet us, Rick Handshoe tells us that the coal company will notice our car in the driveway. Us being there means that the coal trucks will slow down. He tells us to put our bags in the trailer across the road; he likes to house guests there so that they might have the chance to feel a blast from the explosives used to blow off parts of the mountain face above his small community of Hueysville.


Rick, an organizer and affected member of KFTC, lives on Kentucky’s Route 7, a windy mountain road that runs barely fifty yards in front of his house . His home sits on a hill and faces the state road that Miller Brothers Coal Company uses to transport the coal and other machinery from their nearby mountain-top removal mining sites.


Until recently, laws and other regulations designed to prevent dust and mud from leaving the mine site were neither followed nor enforced. The results have affected his ability to live a normal life. Rick believes his property value has depreciated due to the proximity of the mine as well as the debris and noise that result from this operation. In addition, he is unable to grow any food in the garden as he and his family have traditionally done due to thick covering of dirt and other unknown substances that coat everything outdoors.



The blasting that occurs multiple times a day has been so strong that it has cracked the foundations of his two trailers, forcing him to actually move from one to the other, which he now occupies. This blasting, aside from the frightening and sudden sound that has knocked objects off the walls, also has a directly negative impact on his belongings. The movement of the foundation has created cracks in the walls, separation of pipes, and the separation of his porch from the trailer. All of these things have resulted in Rick being disadvantaged economically in a way that he has no control over except through the organizing work he does through KFTC.



Rick was our guide during our time in Floyd County and took us on a hike around his property to show us the results of the mining first hand. The land surrounding his has been strip mined with little regard to the impact it has on the people. He told us more about the ways the mining companies took advantage of a people he described as being trusting. According to him, the mining companies would pay individuals and families (depending on how the ownership of the land was divided up) a few thousand dollars for the rights to the land for 5 years. After that point, if they had not found coal, they would get the land back. For people in the area, this seemed to be a good deal. However, they would only sign the last page of the agreement. Then, the company would take the last page, detach it, and attach it to a new lease, which stated that they had these rights for 15 years. Rick stated that he found out about this when he was fined for trespassing on his own land after the 5 years had ended. This sort of manipulation, according to Rick, has been the companies’ standard way of dealing with the people in the county.