Kentucky Is Planning To Imprison 1,100 People On Top Of A Toxic Coal Waste Site

Mitch Whitaker remembers well when Letcher County, Kentucky was booming with mining jobs. In fact, coal mines like the one near the land that Whitaker’s family has owned for generations made the town so busy that miners had three shifts running through the day.

“Everything was booming,” the 55-year-old environmentalist told ThinkProgress.

But that was years ago, before the energy market shifted its attention to natural gas as coal was increasingly regulated and considered too dirty of a resource in a warming planet. Currently, there are less than 100 coal mine jobs after the recent closing of a small contract mine.

Now, local lawmakers are promising everything is about to get better — thanks to a large federal prison planned for the area....
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/06/16/3786118/toxic-prisons/