By Julian Martin

Guest Columnist

The Plight of Coal Miners

A couple of years ago, at the Putnam County Fair, a mountain top removal miner gladly signed the Save Blackwater Canyon petition I offered and then told me about his job. "At the end of the day I look at the destruction and feel like I am taking blood money," he told me. Another miner told me of arguing with fellow workers on a mountain top removal site about the destruction that four wheelers were doing to the woods. He told the other miners, "Look all around you, it is devastation for as far as you can see, how can four wheelers compare with this?" Still another miner, doing volunteer work for the Wildlife Federation, told me there were many miners who don’t like destroying the mountains, but are trapped in a situation where the alternative is minimum wage jobs or unemployment or moving to dreaded North Carolina.

It is becoming obvious that people living near mountain top removal stripmines don't like them. At a hearing for a mountain top removal permit and then at a town meeting about coal sludge dams in the Whitesville and Marsh Fork area, on the border between Raleigh and Boone counties, there was a parade of testimony all opposed to the permit and all worried about the danger of the sludge ponds. One pond hovers right over a grade school there.

Not one person spoke in favor of the permit, none had kind words for the coal companies involved and all were worried about the sludge ponds failing like the one at Inez, Kentucky. Many of those testifying were former coal miners.

It is also becoming obvious that almost none of the miners live near the mountain top removal sites. Most of the miners are in the ironic position of being "outsiders." Some live two counties away from the mine sites. Some live in Kentucky. Most of the owners are clearly "outsiders," with headquarters in other states and other countries.

It would be interesting to witness a genuine dialogue between mountain top removal miners and people living near the mines. (There would be a worthwhile conference for someone to organize.)

These industrial atrocities against nature could be stopped if only the meaning of the phrase, "Must be done in an environmentally sound manner" had not been changed by industry, the so-called WV Division of Environmental Protection and the US Environmental Protection Agency. This change has made it possible to qualify as environmentally sound such hideous practices as taking the tops off beautiful mountains and dumping them in the hollows. This "environmentally sound manner" is Arch Coal’s plan for the mountains all around and the hollow across the creek from Jim Weakley’s home. It has made the ridges disappear all around Larry Gibson’s homeplace, and has brought a sludge dam high above the school of Judy Bond’s grandchildren.

More than one friend has asked me if I think we can win these environmental battles. They point out the incredible odds, the mountains of cash put into destroying our mountains, buying our politicians and the false twists and spins that industry executives and public relations companies put on the facts.

My answer to the question can we win in the struggle to save our environment is that I don’t know if we can win or not. I know that I am going to die but I don’t quit living. I also know that we could lose out on some of our efforts to preserve nature (ourselves included) but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. We have to speak the truth whether it prevails or not. It would be bad enough to lose but still worse to lose without speaking the truth.