West Virginia Highlands Voice

Nothing new under the sun

Dear Mr. McFerrin:

Reading the lead-off piece in the June issue of The Voice written by President Hugh Rogers was like re-watching a bad movie I had seen many years previously. Same plot, same dialog, same setting; the only thing different is that there were new actors. It was as if Hollywood was running out of new ideas and was issuing a remake of an old horror film some 43 volumes later. “A miner should not have to choose”. Indeed, he should not have to. He should not have had to chose today at the May 18, 2010 EPA hearing just as he should not have had to make that choice back in the late 60’s when I first heard the plaint at a public hearing in which I was present. The present, poignant remark uttered by a Pike County KY miner, “This is our livelihood and our way of life. This is all we know” differs not from the comment I heard oh so many years ago when another miner in another locale at another public hearing said similarly, “I don’t want to bulldoze the mountainside, but show me something else to do to make a living here and show my boy something to do so he doesn’t have to move away.” You really can not argue with either man.

But whether it is a clear cut across the gorge from (then) Grandview State Park to Massey’s plans for eradicating the Blair Mountain battlefield, the real problem is the same. The present WVHC faces the exact same problem as that we faced decades ago. And THAT is the real problem.

After so many years, why hasn’t anything been done to solve the crux of this problem? No Byrds, Randolph’s, Rockefellers, Rahalls, Mollahans, Moores, Manchins, or any others we elect to public office have done much to wrestle with this dilemma and I do not expect anything from the new crop riding their white horses smeared with the mud slung around the recent primaries.

But then neither have we. I regard

this predicament, together with the increased demand for our resources brought about by the needs of more and more of our people, as the two most important problems facing conservationists in the 21st Century.

May you present activists acquire greater wisdom than your immediate predecessors.

Sincerely,
Bob Burrell
Founding Editor, The Highlands Voice
Morgantown, WV