Eulogy for the Fish

We were innocent, glistening brightly colored artworks in the flesh

We painted your streams, entwined with other life forms,

Signaling health

The trees that made the leaf litter that fed the mayflies – you killed

Those depending on our flesh – you poisoned by poisoning us

Your insatiable people gobbled from the earth for heat and light

So profiteers blew away the mountains, left the forest scalped - and

Buried us alive

No amount of light could lead you out of this darkness

No amount of heat can warm your chilling legacy

The dark, cold death, you unapologetically visited on us, will be your just reward

When you didn’t bury us alive --

You filled our gills with silt

And left a continuing source of slow death

By placing cataclysmic volumes of waste in our headwaters

Waste that reworked by water and gravity,

will bury our breeding grounds for eons

strangling the stonefly and caddisfly, our central source of food

That waste will episodically surge forth and devastate our homes – (and maybe yours)

Our homes were made in springs, streams, and rivers by the Creator Almighty

And wiped out in but a few years by you

though you deny it

When you didn’t suffocate us with silt, you rendered our water foul

Unspeakable contaminants infected our community,

Weakened our immune systems, wiped out our food

Still - you deny it

You sought praise for half-hearted attempts to clean the water,

But you ignored other sinister killers

That made our flesh like venom to our brothers the raptors, bears, otters, and mink

We struggled to adapt - only to be repeatedly attacked

You always broke your word, ignoring our plight, for your temporary riches

You lied to your children,

Confused your brothers and sisters with promises that you were not damaging us –

All while the sky cried, trying to flush away your sins

but even those tears burned us,

they too were tainted by your reckless brutality

Now we are dead –

You may wash our blood from your hands,

But – as the earth bleeds – it will reveal your fingerprints

The last residue of our flesh will remain, and that you will have to live with,

And the poisons all will be on your table some day, in your lungs,

and surely what has happened to us will happen to you

But we were the innocent – you are the greedy

Unwilling to curb your taking

And possibly to your last breath – living in denial for the carnage

That your gluttony produced

Blindly torturing those who could not defend themselves,

All for your grotesque comforts

So we imagine the Creator will have a worse fate for you

And in that, maybe we have not died in vain

Rick Eades

a.. Valley fills and slurry impoundments are first cousins. They both place colossal volumes of waste in headwater settings. Combined with the loss of nutrients (like leaf litter) from the deforested mountaintop mining sites, this spells long term doom for life in receiving streams.

b.. In some cases, we can expect a slow bleeding, like a gigantic coffee filter, that may produce low levels of problematic contaminants or silt. Also, after the bonds are released, liability will fall to the state and land owners as these fills and dumps are "abandoned."

c.. In other cases, we can expect episodic releases. Settlement or shifting within valley fills will create new, discrete pathways for water, and that groundwater flow may encounter pockets of foul material – transporting it to receiving streams.

d.. Some of this discharge may seem benign, like silt. But silt eliminates breeding areas for fish, buries the homes of food sources for fish (eliminating or reducing reproduction of invertebrates), and when re-deposited, raises flood stages in receiving streams.

e.. Some discharges are clearly not being effectively prevented – like sulfate-laden water. The USGS draft report on the New-Kanawha River basin cites sulfates as a very likely "coal contributor" to loss of invertebrate life on a very large scale.

f.. Other discharges (like the slurry/sludge release in Martin Co, KY) will acutely attack receiving streams, and may redistribute mercury, lead, arsenic, or carcinogenic byproducts of coal cleaning throughout our rivers and the communities they serve. Though we may throw millions of dollars at cleanup in such instances, only Mother Nature will be able to ultimately remedy such disasters.

g.. Pick your poison – slow agonizing death, or sudden devastation. Placing gargantuan quantities of wastes at the headwaters of streams is a recipe for large-scale catastrophe. The fact that slurry impoundment waste also contains concentrated amounts of heavy metals, and likely contains other environmentally damaging chemicals only amplifies this folly.

h.. We should ban head-of-hollow fills, and place waste in dry forms back in the deepest deep mines, where it has been demonstrated that groundwater quality is already adversely impacted. If this is "too expensive," we should raise coal-fired energy prices accordingly.

i.. After all, price increases may be the only thing can slow down our gluttony for cheap energy – or provide enough margin for cleaner, alternative energy development and use.