Forum? ? Or Free for All ? !

Cindy Rank, who drove through a snowstorm, and Norm Steenstra, who was so sick he went to a doctor that day, deserve medals for sitting through "The Future of Coal Forum" on Jan. 25.

WSAZ Channel 3, the Charleston Daily Mail and the University of Charleston sponsored the event, intended to be a debate on the future of coal in our state. A Logan County contingent, refusing to listen and learn, jeered and shouted at anyone who disagreed with them, turning the event into an ugly "The Future IS Coal" rally. On January 31 WSAZ aired a highly edited, sanitized one-hour version of the two and one-half hour smear-fest.

Environmentalists were shouted down as miners, coal operators, coal lobbyists and regulators vented their anger that they should have to (gasp!) follow the law and think about the decline of coal. The pro-mountaintop removal group’s lack of vision and planning for the future created a brain-draining vacuum in the air. You could almost smell the denial, the fear of the change that is bound to come.

Panelists on the forum were Cindy Rank, mining chair of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy; Norm Steenstra, executive director of the West Virginia Citizens’ Action Group; Mike Castle, director of the state Division of Environmental Protection; Roger Calhoun, director of the Charleston field office of the Office of Surface Mining; Corky DeMarco, the governor’s assistant for operations; Ben Greene, president of the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association; and Terry Vance of the United Mine Workers.

Ken Ward, of the Charleston Gazette, wrote of the panelists,"Representatives of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and the state Division of Environmental Protection, however, sounded more like industry boosters than regulators."

The majority of the audience wouldn’t listen to Cindy, Norm or any of the speakers who disagreed with them. They spouted off the industry’s propaganda. They turned the event into a pissing contest of who had been in West Virginia the longest. Cindy explained that she had lived in West Virginia for 27 years.

"I heard you was from Ohio," an audience member told her, disbelieving her statement of fact. Laura Foreman explained that the "Ohio" in "Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition" refers to the Ohio River Valley. Ninety percent of OVEC’s membership is from West Virginia. That didn’t seem to matter.

Fear-filled folks will just go on believing whatever lies the coal industry feeds them. As someone said to me, "When you get that close to Coal’s jugular vein, they are going to do everything in their power to control the people that they can control to fight their battles for them. And that’s what they are doing."

Of course, everyone is sympathetic about miners losing their jobs. Still the United Mine Workers representative there didn’t acknowledge the deep miners losing their jobs due to market conditions, or the surface and deep miners losing their jobs to mechanization. Nope, it’s all the fault of those "out-of-state extremists" who want to tell us what to do with our land. (Never mind that Arch Coal is based in St. Louis. Never mind how extreme it is to flatten mountains and annihilate mountains communities and ecosystems.) Why, said Vance, those mountains aren’t good for nothing unless they are flattened.

Unable to come up with meaningful arguments, Greene pompously derided Cindy and Norm saying they, "give new meaning to the term dual airbags." That was typical of the evening -- the pro-coal forces had to berate and lie about the people who care about the future. Some audience members believed that West Virginia Highlands Conservancy is profiting financially from its lawsuit about mountaintop removal. They questioned Cindy as to her qualifications. "U.S. Citizen," Cindy replied, though most were too busy booing to hear her.

Greene said coal companies are focused on overturned Judge’s Haden’s ruling, rather than focusing on finding ways to operate within the law. Norm reminded Greene that Judge Haden was hardly an extremist, but a man of integrity, upholding the law. Greene said working within the law would be too costly for coal companies.

According to Brian Bowling of the Daily Mail, "Norm Steenstra said this assertion by the coal industry is the ‘Big Lie’ the industry pulls out whenever it wants to fight a regulation.

"Instead of buying into the industry’s position, the state should recognize that coal mining’s economic power is on the wane and take steps to ensure it has enough money set aside to offset the damage coal mining will leave behind, such as subsidence, acid mine drainage and lost jobs, he said."

Though the forum accomplished nothing in terms of educating the attendance about the future of coal, it did serve some purpose. Logan County people got to vent their spleens. The coal industry got to spread more hate and lies. And everybody else got to ponder the greed and ignorance the coal industry musters as it resists the changes it will have to make.