Big NYT feature acknowledges how government and corporate forces left Kentucky vulnerable to flooding

"How Coal Mining and Years of Neglect Left Kentucky Towns at the Mercy of Flooding" is the headline for a big story out of eastern Kentucky, crediting past exploitation of the region for its current vulnerability.  Here's an excerpt:  

For much of the last century, the country was powered by the labor of coal miners underneath the hills and mountains of southeastern Kentucky. But the landscape that was built to serve this work was fragile, leaving the people here extraordinarily vulnerable, especially after the coal industry shuttered so many of the mines and moved on. What remained were modest, unprotected homes and decaying infrastructure, and a land that itself, in many places, had been shorn of its natural defenses.

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“When you have a century of billions of dollars and resources leaving, very little of it staying to create the infrastructure necessary for people to live lives, and it’s neglected as long as it has been,” said Wes Addington, a lawyer in nearby Whitesburg, whose law office is now a flooded wreck, “when that’s combined with a really insane flood, it’s a catastrophe.”