By Cindy Rank
Even as the first year of the new ‘administration of change’ in Washington DC comes to an end, we find ourselves welcoming 2010 with an all too familiar mixture of hopes and disappointments.
First and foremost I must say I find inspiration and strength in the numbers of people (locally, nationally and worldwide) who are actively working to move us beyond our decades old abusive relationship with coal – and all fossil fuels.
And yet, coal in particular remains an albatross around our societal neck. As is true with any abusive spouse, coal wields a (not so) mysterious power that blocks our transition away from that relationship.
Spurred on by reports of our use of fossil fuels huge contribution to global climate change, more and more people worldwide are mobilizing to overcome our dependence on this mineral. Cracks are beginning to appear in what has been a fundamental belief that coal has been and must continue to be our main source of energy.
Industry in turn is pulling out all stops to defend itself, to debunk what it holds to be unsubstantiated untruths about its beloved black gold. Desperate attempts are being made to paint coal ‘green’ and ‘clean’ – not to mention ‘carbon neutral’. Its devotees seek to develop old and new schemes such as coal-to-liquid and carbon sequestration and transmitting coal-by-wire electricity to far away locales in hopes of extending our dependency on the diminishing resource.
Here in Appalachia in 2009 lawsuits, protests and a growing number of dedicated citizens brought more public attention than ever before to one of the industry’s more monstrous activities – the huge strip mining operations that blow apart mountains, fill irreplaceable headwater stream valleys and impact generations old communities.
There is new resolve. …. On the ground and perched high in trees, brave residents who live at the base of the mountains most under attack and friends from near and far document the destruction and challenge the powers that be, the intruders into their homes and communities.
Industry has responded by ratcheting up the dissatisfaction and fear of miners and heavy equipment operators in danger of losing the jobs and incomes to which they’ve become accustomed.
The recent decision to allow mining to continue at the FOLA mines in Clay County (see article about FOLA coal elsewhere in this issue) serves as stark reminder of how powerful the threats of job loss and violence can be and how creative coal companies can be.
These are the same threats that ultimately caused Judge Haden to stay his 1999 court order that may well have put an end to all but the smallest of valley fills. You may also recall the incident involving the Magnum/Patriot coal North Rum mine permit a couple of years ago. When faced with a court decision that would delay mining at the North Rum mine the company miraculously produced pictures showing the entire streambed in question had magically been covered with rock and, therefore, was no longer technically within reach of the legal challenge before Judge Goodwin.
And so it goes. As the size of these strip mines increase so do a variety of impacts to the human communities and so do efforts to combat them.
- The battle by Paul Shaw to preserve his family cemetery here in Upshur County in the mid-1980’s is being repeated over and over again as the heavy equipment moves closer to family cemeteries wherever mining is being done. Thanks to people like Robin Blakeman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, more and more families are organizing to defend their ancestral burial grounds, to publicize the harm and to work for legislation to protect these sacred sites. [Talk about your familiar stories !]
- The practice of disposing coal sludge from coal preparation plants (as well as coal ash from power plants) in unlined impoundments or injecting it underground is being looked at more closely thanks to years of organizing and testing and speaking out by people in communities like Prenter where well water turned toxic after underground injection began at nearby mines.
- Despite overwhelming odds communities continue to organize even as others empty and disappear in the face of expanding mining operations. – Lindytown in Boone County is but the latest in long list of decimated communities.
- There may be some small bit of consolation in knowing we have fewer mine related deaths than the hundreds of mine workers who die in China and elsewhere on a regular basis. Though painful memories remain, we pray that disasters like Sago and Crandall Canyon and Jim Walker are behind us. But safety concerns at similar deep mines continue; efforts to improve safety laws are slow and stories from retired miners like Butch Sebok, Chuck Nelson and others tell us that many still have to fight for health benefits most of us thought were guaranteed by laws hard fought for and enacted decades ago.
- Pools of water in deep mine voids in northern West Virginia continue to threaten groundwater supplies and streams. Discharges like those from Consol mines mixed with gas well brine discharges killed some 40+ miles of Dunkard Creek and impacted the Mon River this past year. Subsidence caused by longwall mining continues to sink portions of interstate highways, permanently damage homes and wells, alter streams and springs causing some to become cesspools and others to dry up.
- As for mountaintop removal and other huge permits that decimate entire mountains and miles of streams, there is hope in EPA’s resolve to review permits with more scrutiny, but will it be enough to effectively rein in the practice? Even as that process evolves, more permits are being granted that expand the cancer upon the land….
One need only consider Coal River Mountain, the Mud River valley, the area from Stirrat and Cow Creek to Twilight and Edwight. Even as hopes soar and courageous protestors challenge blasting at the BeeTree permit precariously located on the edge of the giant Brushy Fork slurry impoundment and propose alternative uses for the ridge tops, if one looks at the WV DEP GIS mapping of pending permits it’s difficult to hold out any hope that needed ‘change’ is coming.
Take for example Blair/Blair Mountain area where the mountaintop removal controversy first exploded on the national scene first with Penny Loeb’s 1997 Sheer Madness article in U.S. News and World Report and with the Bragg litigation that challenged the 3,000 acre Spruce #1/Pigeonroost permit. While the infamous Spruce #1 mine has for the most part been held at bay except for the Seng Camp side of Pigeonroost hollow, just last week routine public notices from WVDEP included a new 1,225 acre permit for just southwest of Pigeonroost. This new Coyote Coal permit looks to be but the last piece in the puzzle that will totally engulf the area. —- From Rum Creek and Buffalo Creek to Sharples and Monclo all that will be left are the main county and state roads through Spruce Fork, Kelly and Rum Creek. It’s all too clear why Vicki Moore’s family was prohibited from resettling in any of this area when they were forced to move away from their home in Blair.
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I first witnessed mountaintop removal on a 1994 state sponsored tour of many of these same mine sites in southern West Virginia. Walking along the edge of a thousand foot deep grand canyon like cut at the Dal-Tex mine above Blair, standing beside the not yet assembled mammoth drag line at Catenary/Samples and flying in the state helicopter over other sites with Dave Callaghan (then director of the state regulatory program) the terror I felt that day was not from my fear of heights, but from the realization that the horror of what was taking place below had only just begun.
My personal faith and fundamental belief that law and science should and do provide a ballast that prevents our world from capsizing into some blind abyss is shaken as much now by this past year and decade as ever before. Even as scientific evidence of the harmful impacts of our reliance on coal and other fossil fuels is mounting and community organizing is strong, legal challenges are narrowing and political reality has once again moved into the spotlight.
I want to believe our communal wisdom will pull us through. But as emotions flare and tensions rise among neighbors in the coalfields, we also see WV state politicians seriously suggest holding hostage much needed national health care reform unless Congress bends once more to the whims of the coal industry with regard to climate change. Our own Governor touts the short sighted notion that WV is the “extraction state” as if we have nothing more to offer, nowhere else to turn.
Early this past December, Dave Callaghan wrote an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette. In it he offered suggestions for reducing the size and impacts of the huge strip mines known generally as ‘mountaintop removal’. Admirable as his suggestions are, many were discussed but not accepted in our negotiations during the Bragg litigation and may well have made significant difference were they enacted ten years ago. Now however, I fear these are too little too late.
I wonder, too, if EPA’s recent efforts will be enough to make a real difference. FOLA has been given the green light and according to Congressman Rahall’s office two days ago EPA is also allowing the newest 500 acre Berry Branch addition to the already selenium hell of Hobet 21 to go forward.
Could it be that Senator Byrd, long a staunch defender of the coal industry, will provide the strongest voice of reason even at this late date?
His harsh words from the floor of the Senate in 1999 decrying Judge Haden as being WRONG! still ring in my ears. But only weeks ago Senator Byrd called for calm, reprimanded industry saying “Scapegoating and stoking fear among workers over the permitting process is counter-productive”. He urged that industry recognize that market and demand for coal, not permitting, is the factor most affecting the current state of the industry and said “the time has come to have an open and honest dialogue about coal’s future in West Virginia.”
Most notable for me were his words that follow: “It is also a reality that the practice of mountaintop removal mining has a diminishing constituency in Washington. It is not a widespread method of mining, with its use confined to only three states. Most members of Congress, like most Americans, oppose the practice, and we may not yet fully understand the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the health of our citizens.”
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I don’t think I’ve lost all hope. But the past year – perhaps I should say the past decade – has yielded few answers and little comfort…and only a hint of hopeful days ahead.
With apologies to those who haven’t seen the movie, if there’s any parallel to be made with the AVATAR story about the quest for the precious mineral ‘unobtanium’ and a community’s fight to hold onto its history and ancestral lands, things will be getting much worse before they get better.
May 2010 bless us all with the wisdom to see our communal responsibilities more clearly, the strength to respond as best we can, and at least occasional moments of joy to sustain us.
West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, along with the Sierra Club, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and Coal River Mountain Watch, have filed a notice of intent to sue Massey Energy Company and twenty nine of its subsidiaries for failing to comply with the federal Clean Water Act and the terms of the permits issued for those mines.
Even though it turned into a pro-coal rally, a chance to bully anybody who disagreed with the pro-coal forces, etc., (see accompanying story) there was actually some serious business to be conducted at the October 13, 2009, public hearing. Instead of what it was about (intimidation, railing against the Environmental Protection Agency, braying about environmentalists, etc.) it was supposed to be about a proposal by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to Suspend Nationwide Permit 21.
This will be old news to those of you who read the Charleston [WV] Gazette or listen to WV Public Radio, but several miles of a healthy stream called Dunkard Creek died this past month.