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Not another “Sink-Sink” ” Prisons shouldn’t be used to reclaim strip mines

Wednesday, April 27th, 2016

Remember “Sink-Sink,” the federal prison in Martin County, Ky., that’s slowly sinking into the earth because it was built on a former strip mine? Another Appalachian community might soon be facing this same form of “reclamation,” and they need your help fighting it.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has proposed to build a $444 million maximum security prison on an old surface mine near Roxana, in Letcher County, Ky.

Tell the Bureau of Prisons that prisons are not good reclamation, and that the government should invest in communities, not incarceration.

After the government regulated strip mining in the early 1980s, this surface mine near Roxana was chosen by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife as a prime location for its deer restocking program.

Now, the Bureau of Prisons is proposing to build a maximum security prison on it. The Kentucky River will be impacted by sedimentation and excavated mine spoil, and up to 93 acres of endangered bat habitat will be cleared.

Tell the Bureau of Prisons: surface mines in Appalachia should not be used for building prisons.

In some communities, up to 25 percent of the land has been damaged by mountaintop removal coal mining. We need real reclamation, not boondoggle prisons that are unsafe for the community and unsafe for the people who would be incarcerated there.

As Letcher County resident Mitch Whitaker wrote in a recent op-ed, “This piece of property has already been imprisoned, and it’s just now getting back to the point of literal and figurative liberation. Why do it again?”

One Response to “Not another “Sink-Sink” ” Prisons shouldn’t be used to reclaim strip mines”

  1. Sue Says:

    Who would of thought to put in a prison in a strip mine
    Its time to reclaim this land not make it even more toxic

    Do you think people who are incarcerated deserve to be slowly poisoned in a strip mine

    Odd thought process you people have

    There ought to be enough prisons. Here in NY we are closing prisons since the crime rate is down — I would think the same stats are for national prisons as well.

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