from Archives of the Charleston Gazette

Published on January 28, 2000

William’s words as follows:

As director of West Virginia’s Division of Forestry, it was 1996 before I fully realized the magnitude and permanent elimination of West Virginia's forestland in the southern and central coalfields by mountaintop removal of coal. A helicopter tour of these areas and the results of an updated forest inventory disclosed not only the size and rate of deforestation, but the loss of West Virginia's mountain culture.

Since the federal Surface Mining Act of 1977 was enacted, all of West Virginia's governors and legislators of both parties have been very supportive of the illegal variances in this law that allowed mountaintop removal of coal. I served at the pleasure of governors of both parties from 1993 to 1998. I wish to make it clear that while I was head of the Forestry Division I attempted to work within the system to encourage the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to prevent further devastation. The only concession was to make my professional proposals an option, as opposed to mandatory.

Mountaintop removal has already caused long-term problems and until Judge Charles Haden's II ruling, the rate was increasing. 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.

In West Virginia, from 1977 to 1997, 300,000 acres were made into a moonscape by the decapitation of our mountains. Vast areas of our Mountain State are made uninhabitable for our citizens.

The rate of decapitation of our mountains had 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. All native plant and animals are practically eliminated (not to mention the impact on threatened & endangered species). The headwaters of hundreds of miles of our streams are filled with millions of tons of mountaintops (overburden.) This irresponsible excavation of coal makes the landscape so unsightly that it ruins tourism. (I can't envision tourists coming to see these barren wastelands!) Isn’t tourism supposed to be our growth industry?

The timber and wood products industry employs some 30,000 in West Virginia. Prior to mountaintop removal, all of West Virginia’s 11 million acres of forests were producing substantial volumes of high-value timber. Trees are our only renewable natural resource.

There are about 17,000 jobs in coal mining. The mining industry projects the coal reserves to be depleted within 20 years. Mountaintop removal of coal employs just a few hundred of these workers. It is a sad irony that mountaintop removal actually destroys more coal mining jobs than it creates; union miners are expediently replaced by relatively few heavy-equipment operators. ª

Excerpts from the Nov 1, 1998 article by Associated Press reporter, Jennifer Bundy

Division of Forestry Director Bill Maxey says he is retiring because the Underwood administration tried to stifle his opposition to mountaintop removal strip mining, which he calls a blight akin to AIDS...

"I think mountaintop removal is analogous to serious disease, like AIDS," says Maxey, who has been an opponent of surface mining since before the Federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. He spoke against the act to a congressional subcommittee while he was a tenured associate professor of forest management at West Virginia University, where he taught for 11 years...

Although the law requires mined land to be reclaimed for an equal or greater use than its pre-mining use, most becomes grassland, not a timber-rich forest, Maxey says. And procedures that could make the land good for trees are not being widely used, he says...

Timber is the only renewable natural resource and the industry employs more than 30,000 people, Maxey says. By comparison, the coal industry employs about 18,000, including about 4,400 at surface mines, according to the West Virginia Coal Association...

Maxey also says he was pressured by the state DEP and the federal OSM to approve a phrase Maxey says would justify leveling mountains. The agencies wanted the phrase to be included in specifications written by the Division of Forestry for voluntary reclamation of mines into woodlands. The phrase, which is in 1997 state surface mining regulations, says flat or gently rolling land on a site reclaimed to woodland is "essential for the operation of mechanical harvesting equipment"...

Maxey says the idea that timber can be cut only on flat land is ridiculous because loggers have used automated equipment on West Virginia’s hills for decades...

Maxey says few mines are reclaimed to their "approximate original contour." Also, most mines strip topsoil and do not replace it, Maxey says. The soil that is returned is covered with lime and hydroseeded with grasses, which makes the ground too alkaline for trees. "In other words, our valuable hardwood forest is lost for the next 150 to 200 years," Maxey says...

Coal companies also compact the soil. "Then you are trying to plant a tree in concrete. It doesn’t work," Maxey says. If coal companies returned the topsoil, including several feet of weathered sandstone that was not compacted or leveled, the land would immediately be ready for seedlings, Maxey says.

"If we can’t get it stopped, this is the next best thing, a last resort. We need to stop mountaintop removal," Maxey says.