FRANKFORT — Coal is a complicated subject. And the people who live in Kentucky’s coal-producing regions have a “complicated history with coal,” as author and musician Silas House puts it.

I learned that again a few days ago. Kentucky’s Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, a physician and surgeon from Hazard, has a complicated history with coal. He’s an outspoken proponent of coal and what mining it can do for the region he clearly loves.

Mongiardo invited me to Hazard to see “the good side of mountaintop removal.” My first thought was, isn’t the “good side” the one they blast away in order to remove the mountaintop? Mongiardo concedes the ugliness of an active surface mine site but, making an analogy you’d expect from a surgeon, says properly reclaimed land is a small scar on a healthier patient.

He showed me majestic elk on a reclaimed site, an ATV training center, and an impressive sports complex. I met some really good people. He extolled the virtues of adventure tourism on flattened mountains. He introduced me to an impressive man, David Duff, who operates a mining site – by mining standards – in an exemplary fashion. We looked at 12-inch seams of coal in a high wall so I’d understand it can’t be efficiently mined any other way. At the bottom of what’s left of the mountain, Duff drank from a stream fed by runoff from the mining site. But I noticed Dr. Mongiardo didn’t – and he later said he wouldn’t.

At one reclaimed site Mongiardo said: “If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were in central Kentucky.” No. More importantly, I asked, if one wants to live in central Kentucky, why wouldn’t one move there instead of trying to turn a awesomely beautiful place into something other than what God created and which shapes the magnificent spirit and character of the equally wonderful people who live there?

At the end of the day, I thanked Mongiardo. I told him I recognized his genuine passion for eastern Kentucky and his understandable desire to pump economic life into the region. But, I concluded, neither the elk, the trails nor the faulty rationale could eradicate the scarred images from my mind nor the sense that we are in the process of destroying something which is sacred to the people of southeastern Kentucky in order to preserve it. You simply can’t preserve something by destroying it, I told him. For what does it profit eastern Kentucky if it sells its soul?

That’s why I was so surprised to learn Mongiardo told a meeting of the Kentucky Coal Association in Lexington a week later that he’d taken a reporter to show him the reality of mining and, “I think he’s got a different attitude now because he saw it first-hand.” He didn’t name me, but there were people in the room who knew Mongiardo spoke of me.

Coal is going to be with us for a long time. As I’ve heard others who live in the region say, I’m not against mining, I’m opposed to this kind of mining. But in the end, it’s not for me to tell the people of southeastern Kentucky what to do. I don’t live there – though when I visit I sure wish I did. It’s their land, and more importantly it’s their way of life. It’s a complicated history they have with coal. They must decide.

But keep the coal operators and the politicians out of the discussion. Let the people who live there and whose way of life is at stake decide. Because Mongiardo demonstrated once again before the coal association the sole determination of coal interests and politicians is to mine coal, no matter what the cost – and no matter what the facts.

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. He can be reached by e-mail at rellis@cnhi.com.