The "giants" of the coal industry only need to look at one its own - Blankenship of Massey Coal - to understand the miserable reputation the industry has.  All of the coal barons in the region share one trait in common - volumes and volumes of court records and government investigations show that the coal companies padded their profits by running some of the most dangerous workplaces in the country. The companies polluted the waterways in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and western Virginia. The companies rained coal dust on the schoolyards where children played, and subjected the men and women to unsafe working conditions.  Read the book The Price of Justice, published in 2013 - good resource.  Or, John Grisham's Grey Mountain - a fictional, but accurate depiction, account of what the region has to endure.