Trading Dimes For Nickels, Jewels for Junk

West Virginia Governor Cecil Underwood continues to ignore environmental issues and refers to those who remind him about the environment as extreme.

Some important issues he refuses to address include:

(1) The governor’s much ballyhooed mountaintop removal mining task force held many meetings last year, and issued a thick report. One of its members even issued his own 17 page minority report to the governor. Yet the governor is virtually silent on this controversial issue. He has no apparent ideas of his own on how he would like to proceed toward resolution of the many related conflicts that have arisen since he signed into law last year a bill expanding this destructive mining method.

(2) Any degree of protection for Blackwater Canyon is being totally ignored by the governor. He suggests nothing to save the Canyon from further massive devastation by a company whose owner said he only wanted "to cut a few trees." Last year, in a strongly worded statement, the state Supreme Court suggested that state government should step in to protect that precious resource. Still, the governor is silent.

But the governor is not content to just ignore environmental issues. He criticizes the entire working concept of government responsibility for environmental standards. In his state of the state message a few weeks ago, he said, "Groups representing extreme positions have largely shaped environmental management and debate." What Governor Underwood really means is that if folks are really serious about regulating air, water and land pollution, then they are "extremists."

Apparently, the only people he doesn’t find to be extreme are the industry folks who tell us all is well while poisoning our environmental life support system, ripping away the mountains, fouling our streams and desecrating Blackwater Canyon.

In fact, in his legislative message last month, Underwood took every opportunity to blast the only entity that offers serious help to West Virginians suffering from industry’s environmental excesses -- the federal government, specifically the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He said that new federal environmental regulations benefit no one. He totally ignores persons with asthma and other diseases who have breathing problems at today’s air pollution levels.

In turning his back on mountaintop removal mining and valley fills, Underwood ignores folks like James and Sibby Weekley of Pigeon Roost and hundreds of others like them whose homes have been or will become a living (and perhaps dying) hell of blasts generated by a million pounds of explosives detonated at one time, of towering clouds of choking dust, of enormous shotgun blasts of uncontrolled fly rock, of pounding hundred ton coal and rock trucks, and of enormously large and steep valley fills above their homes having the potential to make Buffalo Creek seem only like an overflowing down spout by comparison.

By ignoring the Blackwater Canyon devastation, Underwood tells us that tourism there is no longer important. He is telling us that special places don’t deserve special public attention. And he his saying, once again, that it’s "extremists" who want to preserve the crown jewels of our mountain beauty and scenic wonders. By this name calling, Underwood and others masquerade as defenders of the public interest, while protecting the real extremists.

The real extremists are permitting Blackwater Canyon to become devoid of its natural beauty and endangered species and their habitat. The real extremists are the folks who rip off the tops and into the bowels of the mountains for a short term spurt of artificial prosperity. The real extremists are the government officials and regulating agencies who could lessen the destructive nature of this environmental plunder, but refuse to do so.

The only excuses given for just standing by while the extreme destruction continues are political mumblings about not obstructing economic activity. But just how viable is the dwindling economics behind massive mountaintop removal mining?

When the coal is gone, the mining companies will take their riches and head back to wherever, leaving even more legendary economic collapse in their wake. They will point back at the abandoned land and at the abandoned people and talk about how they have no leadership and about how corrupt their politicians were. Look at McDowell County, West Virginia, or Lynch, Kentucky, for the script.

The real extremists trade clean air and water for dirty air and water, and scenic mountain green scapes for barren wasteland in pursuit of an illusion of prosperity, overlooking benign industries and processes that have long term promise. These economic extremists trade treasures for troubles, jewels for junk.

Elected officials who tolerate this are like the little kids who were willing to trade the big boys dimes for nickels because the nickels appear bigger, and therefore must be worth more. By the time they (we) catch on, the big boys have taken off, leaving us with more weight to carry, but less of value, with which to carry on.

But we should not be surprised that our governor sees it this way. He has been an apologist and hack for the coal industry for much of his adult life. He would have no viable political life without its financial and political support. He would not be true to his own history to be other than what he is today.

Governor Underwood is an extremist.