On July 16th, the Charleston Daily Mail published a letter by a Mr. Zachary Totten, who is employed by the AT Massey Coal Company as an "environmental engineer." He states in his letter that there was no strip mining before the disastrous floods occurred in 1932 and before. He fails to take into account that the hills of West Virginia had been ravaged by clear cut logging, so that the forest canopy in most cases was gone and the ground was very torn up from the hauling of the logs out.
In rebuttal to this letter, Mr. Dave Saville demonstrated a far greater degree of knowledge of "local history" than Mr. Totten.
Dave Saville’s Rebuttal
He [Mr. Totten] states "All those people who want to blame surface mining for recent flooding should check their local history books before spouting off about something they are not qualified or educated enough to talk about."
So I did, even though I do consider myself both qualified and educated enough.
In 1911, AB Brooks (now in the West Virginia Forestry Hall of Fame) wrote, "Forests not only produce wood.....they hold the water of rains and melting snow and give it out gradually to the springs and regulate the flow of creeks and rivers..."
In 1933, Charles Henry Ambler, in A History of West Virginia wrote; "The rapid development of the timber industry and the resulting clearcutting of the state’s forests depended on a political climate which encouraged exploitation of the state’s resources... Because of the emphasis on development, there was no great emphasis on conservation in West Virginia until repeated natural disasters revealed the disastrous effects of the timbering practices used by the state’s timber companies.
In 1921 a handbook published by the Society of American Foresters, referring to the devastating flood of 1907, states; "By that time, it had become increasingly obvious to both professional foresters and many of the state’s citizens that the flooding was a direct result of the cutting of the timber... The 1907 flood resulted in more than 100 million dollars worth of damage along the basin of the Monongahela River. Over eight million dollars in damages occurred in the city of Pittsburgh and its vicinity alone."
The Wheeling Daily News printed on Saturday March 16, 1907.
Again the Ohio River, by its conduct, forcibly reminds us of the folly of timber destruction. No other cause than devastation of the forests could have given the Ohio Valley such a deluge following the fall of comparatively slight volume of water. The barren hillsides are responsible for it. There is nothing to hold the water back.. The river has become little more than a sewer. It is a story, however, that is familiar to Wheeling citizens. There is not much use dwelling on it because the answer is inevitable what are you going to do about it? The timber is gone; it cannot be replanted and re-grown within the life of the present generation - but for the sake of posterity some action should be taken.
In 1908 the West Virginia Conservation Commission reported:
Public opinion has long held that the floods are increasing in number, not only in West Virginia, but in other regions where rapid deforestation has been going on, but only recently were figures compiled showing just what is taking place in the state. A compilation of results shows a very disquieting state of affairs in West Virginia. Floods in the Ohio at Wheeling have increased 28 per cent in numbers in 26 years; Potomac floods at Harpers Ferry have increased 36 per cent in 18 years; The Monongahela floods at Greensboro, PA, show an increase of 73 per cent in 24 years.
The increase in total discharge of West Virginia rivers, in spite of diminishing rainfall....is due solely, so far as available data can be interpreted, to the deforestation of the mountains. There is no reason to doubt that a continuation of timber cutting will increase the fluctuation of the streams if, indeed, it does not permanently reduce the rainfall which is by no means improbable.
By keeping the mountains forested, a steady supply of water will be available; but if the woods are destroyed, the water will go down as destructive floods when rain has fallen, and it will quickly disappear when the rains cease.
A.B. Brooks in 1911 wrote further,
Generally speaking a woodland soil absorbs more water than naked ground. The decaying leaves, the roots and stems, and the more porous nature of the upper layers of the forest soil, take up the rain and melting snow, and hold it for a time, permitting it to filter away slowly and enter the streams gradually. Sudden rushes of water down steep slopes after a rain are thus hindered, and the streams rise more slowly, flow more regularly, and seldom reach excessively low stages. When the same has been laid bare and packed by its own weight and under the unobstructed beating of raindrops, [or mining machines] its surface hardens, its porosity is lessened, and it sheds water like a roof. The streams catch it quickly and floods follow. That is the difference between a forested and treeless region. The dangerous region is one with steep, bare slopes. The West Virginia mountains would, if denuded, be a constant menace to all the lower valleys. Floods surpassing everything known in this region heretofore would be sure to follow.
In 1905 Governor Albert B. White declared "The time has gone by when the man who deforests lands is a public benefactor."
In 1998 in an Associated Press article by Jennifer Bundy, Bill Maxey, then Director of the West Virginia Division of Forestry states, "I think mountaintop removal is analogous to a serious disease, like AIDS," and "Coal companies compact the soil. Then you are trying to plant a tree in concrete. It doesn’t work. We need to stop mountaintop removal," Maxey says.
In January 2000, Maxey wrote in a Charleston Gazette editorial:
I resigned as a matter of principle, for I did not want to share in the blame nor guilt for the loss of West Virginia's heritage through the loss of our forested mountains [from mountaintop removal of coal]. In West Virginia, from 1977 to 1997, 300,000 acres were made into a moonscape by the decapitation of our mountains. The rate of decapitation has increased to 30,000 acres annually. It will take 150 to 200 years before trees would become re-established following such a drastic mining practice.
Research at the USDA Forest Service’s Fernow Experimental Forest has demonstrated that in forested landscapes:
In the growing season, runoff was 23% of precipitation. This means that over 75% of the rain does not even reach the stream channels of forested landscapes. This is due mostly to evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration includes rain intercepted and evaporated plus that which enters the soil and is withdrawn by vegetation roots and drawn up (transpired) and out their leaves. Where the forest has been removed, as in a clearcut [or strip mine]. The storm flow is far greater than that from the control [undisturbed] runoff. It was nearly 9 times the discharge of the control. This shows the effect of forest canopy evapotranspiration in reducing flooding.
Ronald Lewis wrote.
Two-thirds of West Virginia was still covered by ancient growth hardwood forest on the eve of the transition in 1880, but by the 1920s virtually the entire state had been deforested. So, perhaps there was no strip mining, or mountaintop removal mines to blame for the deforestation which undoubtedly caused the floods of 1916 and 1932, but the results are the same. Mountaintop removal coal mining not only removes the forest canopy and all the associated forest vegetation, but also the organic forest soils and porous sub soils. The highly compacted rubble that replaces these productive soils, as A.B. Brooks says, sheds water like a roof.
So here we are now, 100 years later, and we are still living within a political climate that encourages natural resource exploitation. We still have politicians and regulators that have not yet learned what was so obvious to everyone 100 years ago, and to average citizens today, which Mr. Totten says are not qualified or educated enough. Our politicians are so committed to continually repeating the mistakes of the past that they condemn us to the continual devastation and loss of life caused by such senseless destruction. And today, as yesterday, we, the citizens and taxpayers bear the costs of cleaning up following the death and destruction of the selfishness and greed of the extractive industries protected by these corrupt politicians and regulators.