Mountaintop removal
Appalachia
Invisibilization
With a land mass the size of Rhode Island denuded by mountaintop removal coal mining, the southern Appalachian coalfields have become a national sacrifice zone. Confined to less populated areas, beyond the view of travelers on major highways, this growing social and ecological disaster has been invisible for decades to nearly everyone, including environmental activists, in the U.S. A long history of viewing Appalachia as outside mainstream national concerns has contributed to this invisibility. Cyber-activism is changing this neglect by making images of mountaintop removal (MTR) and its impacts accessible to Internet users. But the astonishing invisibility of MTR continues, due in part to the institutionalized privileging of professional expertise over local, experientially-based knowledge regarding the consequences of MTR[1]