guest editorial

By Carter Zerbe

Supporters of mountaintop removal defend it in terms of jobs and economic benefits. No rational person would question the importance of these factors. What is life without meaningful work? My mother told me work was not man’s punishment, but his reward.

For many years, the coal industry furnished well-paying jobs to thousands of West Virginians. It was the economic backbone of southern West Virginia. Now, however, much of the coal below the mountains has played out and the industry has adopted different mining techniques to get the coal inside the mountains. Indeed, mountaintop removal is the culmination of the coal industry’s successful attempt to get coal no matter what the cost in jobs or to the environment.

Dr. Giley, Chairman of the Governor’s Task Force on mountaintop removal has stated that he was deeply impressed with the "heartfelt" testimony of miners who fear losing their jobs. Of course! But, why are there so few job opportunities in southern West Virginia? Because much of the coal is gone, the coal industry maximizes profits by replacing workers with machines, and the environmental and cultural destruction left by coal mining discourages other types of industries and businesses from locating in the coal fields. Healthy, diverse, long-term economic development has been sacrificed to one industry’s temporary, short-term economic bursts. The area is left ravaged by scarred hills, broken roads, polluted streams, gob piles, abandoned houses and towns. Economic stagnation results in whole scale migration from the area.

A former State Policeman told me that when he was a trainee at the police academy everyone wanted to be assigned to southern West Virginia because that is where the "action was." He drove south with his family to inspect the area. After passing polluted streams, scarred mountains, strip mines and gob piles, he turned around somewhere south of Madison and went home. He got assigned to Elkins.

Last summer, at a hearing of the Governor’s Task Force on mountaintop removal, nearly all the coal operators who spoke in favor of the practice lived outside of the southern coal fields. For instance, K.O. Damron, a coal industry lobbyist and former legislator who is from Mingo County, now lives in Putnam County, where there is no coal mining. Can you blame him? West Virginia has been referred to as a vacation paradise. Do you know anybody who vacations or recreates in the southern coalfields?

In truth, the coal industry has never shown much interest in the economic development, or the cultural and environmental protection of the coal fields. Major owners of the industry live out-of-state. They have no ties to the area where they do business. If the owners live in the community in which they do business, they will be concerned about the environmental and cultural climate of the area. They will help improve the area, build parks, art centers, help improve schools and be concerned about the environmental consequences of their actions. However, for the most part, coal companies have acted wantonly because they have no ties to the area where they do business. So, when a coal industry spokesperson speaks of economic development, he means the development of the coal industry at the expense of the land, people, and economic development of the area where the industry does business.

Every time I hear a coal company representative talk about economic development, I think of the Wendy’s commercial: "Where’s the beef?" If coal mining has been so good for southern West Virginia, where is the beef; where is the prosperity? In fact, what we are witnessing is not the economic development of southern West Virginia, but its economic decline.

According to the statistics compiled by the Office of Miners Health, Safety, and Training, in 1948 there were 125,669 miners in West Virginia; by 1960 this number had dropped to 48,696. In 1987 there were 28,885 miners; and in 1996, only 21,296. In 1997 the number was reduced to 18,165. Coal production, on the other hand, is the highest it has ever been.

Coal may still be the economic backbone of part of southern West Virginia as Cecil Roberts says. If so, it is a backbone that is narrowed, withered and bent. It is a backbone that can’t carry its intended load. It is a backbone that will soon fracture and collapse. It is a diseased backbone which prevents the growth of a healthy, diverse economy.

Mountaintop removal is not a cure, but simply a more efficient, widespread method of environmental and long-term economic destruction. It drastically alters the landscape and ecology. Mountaintops with their stands of maple, oaks, beeches and their diversity of plant, animal and insect life are decimated and great gobs of earth are sheared off and thrown aside exposing the underburden like an enormous, cancerous, raw, sore. The magnitude of the destruction is overwhelming. This spoil is piled up in gigantic "valley fills." Blasting causes tremendous noise and dust pollution. Rock dust settles on everything. Wells go dry. The foundations of people’s homes are cracked. People are forced out of their homes or feel they have no alternative but to leave.

James Weekley, whose family has lived in Logan County for generations, and whose home and family lands near Blair are being threatened by mountaintop removal operations, remembers when Blair, at the height of the coal boom, numbered about a thousand homes. As the coal played out, the town disintegrated to five hundred homes, then four hundred, then less. According to Weekly, the "economic development" of mountaintop removal has reduced the number of houses to seventy.

The coal industry says this "unpleasantness" is only a temporary situation. Reclamation will replace the mountain top with flat grassy knolls which will result in economic development. Well, none of the promised economic development has come about. And what about the biological diversity that once existed? Reclamation consists of planting grass, locust and pine. One woman touring a reclamation site said, "Well, all this is very nice, but where are the oaks, hickories, and apple trees?" The truth is, even if the coal company wanted to plant such trees, it couldn’t, because the fertile soil necessary for the growth of diverse plants and trees is buried at the bottom of the valley fill.

Fred Holroyd must have been referring to the mountains after the coal company has finished with it when he referred to West Virginia hills as worthless pieces of dirt fit only for snakes and scrub pine.

Right now the environmental consequences of valley fills are unknown. But the coal industry wants us to mortgage our future on the hope that there will be no long-term adverse environmental destruction.

Maybe even more devastating is the cultural destruction. One of the things that makes West Virginia so special is its sense of community. This deep affection develops from generation after generation living and growing up in the same area. Succeeding generations grow up exploring and fishing the same streams and creeks, hunting the same hollows, mountains and woods, living in the same house, and sharing the same stories that evolve from an intimate relationship to a common environment.. The result: A deep attachment to home, family, community, and place.

A man spoke at the Task Force hearing trying to explain the deep loss he felt from having been forced from his home place and being relocated by the coal company to Danville. He wasn’t complaining about the quality of his new house. Nevertheless, a palatial mansion could not have made up for the loss he felt from being forced from his home. He didn’t just lose a house, but a heritage. For most West Virginians, having one’s environment drastically altered, or community or home destroyed is devastating. In trying to explain his fears posed by the mountaintop removal operations at Blair, Weekley said that "money can’t replace your memories, dreams, happiness, or the footsteps we have left in this hollow."

In 1994, "Who’ll Watch The Home Place?", by West Virginia songwriter, Kate Long, won the bluegrass song of the year. It resonates with many people, especially Appalachian people. The song is about a person who is forced to leave the homeplace. Here are the concluding lyrics: 

Many people in the southern coal fields are asking themselves the same question. When the coal is gone, the jobs disappear, and the environment ruined, who will I be?

Coal industry propaganda refers to mountaintop removal as a field of dreams. Given the legacy of coal mining in West Virginia, and the effect mountaintop removal has on communities, environment and heritage, mountaintop removal can be more aptly described as a field of shattered dreams and broken promises. A graveyard of ecological health, lasting economic development, and a sense of place.

Will the last coal miner leaving southern West Virginia please turn out the lights?