Cleaning America’s Dirtiest Coal Company

To reach the active section of the Long Pole mine in Pike County, Ky., you board a mantrip, a low-slung, rail-riding vehicle, and trundle down a gentle underground slope for a mile or so. You recline almost flat, because this is “low coal”; the mine roof is only 42 inches high. “Keep that hard hat on your head,” Kenny Hunt, Long Pole’s superintendent, instructs. “If it falls off, remember—do not raise up.”

When you disembark you scuttle around crab-like in damp muck, conscious of the emergency oxygen supply dangling from the belt of your borrowed blue coveralls. Around the corner, an elongated mechanical beast called a continuous miner noisily gnaws at a coal seam interlaced with sandstone. The continuous miner excretes the coal-and-rock mixture onto a shuttle car, which transports it to a wide conveyor belt running to the surface. Half a dozen beams from helmet-mounted lanterns slice the subterranean gloom. “Is this just the prettiest coal mine you ever seen?” Hunt asks.