"The Sufferings" by Silas House

Silas House is an author from Eastern Kentucky whom I had the pleasure of hearing at Mountain Justice Summer Camp. He recently wrote this blog post about mountaintop removal and BP's oil spill in the Gulf. It's excellent.


President Obama recently toured the Gulf to see firsthand the massive oil spill that has been plaguing us for more than a month now. He also convened a long press conference about the spill. We see coverage of the spill at the top of the news, often accompanied by a live shot of the oil pumping out into the ocean from a camera situated a mile below the surface.

I can’t imagine the president doing a flyover of a mountaintop removal site, or holding a press conference about it. And I’ve certainly never seen a mountain blown up on national television—not even once, much less every morning on the Today show.

Yet I would venture to say that mountaintop removal (MTR) is as devastating as the oil spill in the Gulf.

I don’t mean to compare suffering. What I’m saying is actually the opposite of comparison: they’re equally as bad, yet everyone is outraged about the spill while very few people even know about MTR.

Both the oil spill and MTR are environmental, cultural, economic, and health disasters. Both are devastating an entire way of life.

Every time someone says that more than 100 miles of shoreline has been affected by the oil spill, I want to shout that at least 1, 500 miles of waterways have been lost forever in Appalachia.

Every time I think about the spill I also think of the pollution pumping into our creeks and rivers by way of MTR. I think of all the people in the fishing industry whose jobs are threatened by the spill, and then of all the hard-working Appalachians who can’t find a good-paying job besides the mines because we live in a mono-economy created and fostered by the coal industry. I think of how the spill could affect the Gulf so badly that the region’s fishing industry could be wiped out. Immediately I think of how mountaintop removal is hurting all the industries in Appalachia, particularly timber and tourism. New economy doesn’t want to come into a place that has been turned into a war zone with pollution, constant blasting, and intimidation.

Recently a friend of mine pointed out that “we’re witnessing the death of the Gulf.” It’s a heartbreaking prospect, but one that seems true. As of this writing, we’ve been witnessing that for forty-four days. Our president recently said this about the spill: “Every day that this leak continues is an assault on the people…, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us.” Couldn’t he say the same about MTR, which assaults all that we have in common, namely the air and the water, as author and environmentalist Erik Reese has pointed out? We’ve been witnessing the death of the mountains for much, much longer. If you trace it back to when mountaintop removal started, about 30 years ago, that’d be 10, 950 days. A lot more than 44.

Most of the people who live on the Gulf are not wealthy. Those in the fishing industry are much like our underground miners: hard-working, determined, and very proud of their jobs. The big difference is that since the Gulf is not caught up in a mono-economy, we actually have fishermen on the news complaining about the oil companies. Here in Appalachia, miners fear they will lose their jobs and we’ve been taught by the industry that if we say anything at all against coal, we’re downright unpatriotic.

Sadly, the lack of outrage over MTR may boil down to images and quick definitions. It’s easy to turn the spill into a quick sound bite (Oil is pumping into the ocean) and not so easy to do the same with MTR, which is a much more complicated issue; for one thing, it’s hard to convince people that to be against MTR does not mean one is against miners. Most of the MTR opponents count miners as one of the reasons they’re in this fight to begin with.

And there is that dramatic, sickening image that is easily captured (the oil pumping into the ocean) and put on the morning news shows. A camera can’t quite capture the scope of MTR. Even seeing it in person can’t really do it justice. The only way one can truly take in the devastation is to do a fly-over, so the sheer magnitude of it can be realized. Which is another reason why Obama should do a fly-over of Appalachia, the same way he’s done in the Gulf.

The major difference between the spill and MTR is that the spill was a preventable accident, while MTR is not only intentional, but also sanctioned by our government. Those who are trying to stop it are being called things like “greeniacs,” “atheists,” and being compared to Osama Bin Laden by Massey CEO Don Blankenship. T-shirts sold at my local flea market encourage people to “Save a miner’s job: Shoot a tree-hugger.”

I appreciate the attention Obama is paying to the Oil Spill. I especially appreciate that he took time out of his press conference to talk about this being a wake-up call, a time to start thinking about renewable energy. It’s great to hear a president talk about that. I especially appreciate how much better this administration is on the issue than the last one was. We actually have an EPA that is doing something now, such as actually examining permits before rubber-stamping them.

That’s great, but it’s time to do more about it. Obama is doing a lot of great talk but it’s time to start walking the walk.

It’s time to start talking about sustainable jobs for miners who are losing theirs to machines on MTR sites. It’s time to try to salvage these devastated MTR sites into the only thing they’re really usable for now: wind farms. It’s time that legislators started talking to the president about the first renewable energy jobs going to miners.

Most of all, it’s time to see mountaintop removal as being as devastating an environmental disaster as the spill. Because it is.

Notes:

1. Even the coal industry’s own website shows that more than 30,000 miners jobs have been lost in Kentucky alone since the advent of MTR in the late 70s. http://www.coaleducation.org/ky_coal_facts/

2. Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McQuaid has written an excellent overview of how the new EPA has become more effective. http://politifi.com/news/Coal-Baron-Blankenship-Calls-Critics-And--402023.html

3. http://politifi.com/news/Coal-Baron-Blankenship-Calls-Critics-And--402023.html

4. For more on intimidation and the complexities of MTR, see this piece in the Washington Post: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041900941.html

5. For more on Erik Reese and the assault on the commons (air, water, mountains, etc.), go here: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4809/

Exhausting Administrative Remedies, Part 1

So much has happened in the days since my last post that I'm not sure where to begin.

Sometime soon, I hope, I will go back and retrace the wonderful people, places, learning, and growing that happened at Mountain Justice Summer Camp. I took extensive notes on all the talks and workshops I attended throughout camp, and I commit to revisiting those notes and writing about them again, both to share that information with whoever might be reading and to make sure it is tucked away snugly in my own head.

I'm now settled in Rock Creek with the other Coal River Mountain Watch volunteers. My predecessor in the site monitoring program here at CRMW had arranged an appointment for today with Eagle Mining LLC to view blasting logs of a mine site on Cook Mountain.
A blasting log is a form that coal companies must fill out for every blast or series of blasts executed on a mine site. I don't understand all the information on the blasting log, but some critical pieces of information, like the date, time, and location of the blast are important in holding coal companies accountable. Others at CRMW who have done some looking around in blasting logs have found violations of mining regulations (e.g. more blasting occurring in a given time frame than is legal, or using more explosives at a given time than is legal, etc), which is useful in building cases against new mine sites. Eventually, we hope to compare community members' accounts of blasting to company records, as many people here feel there will be a discrepancy between the two.

Blasting logs are supposed to be made accessible to the public. As I found out today, "accessible" is a relative term.

I called this morning to confirm the appointment only to find that the blasting logs were not located at the company headquarters as I had been told, but that they are located at an office on the mine site itself. To be allowed on the mine site, I was told I needed metatarsal protection boots and a hard hat, and that I needed to undergo a hazard training. Neither the friend who was accompanying me nor I could procure these supplies in time, and we didn't have clear directions on how to get to the mine site. (Side note: This friend, who now works for Coal River Mountain Watch, worked as a security guard at a Massey Energy MTR mine in high school and said that "hazard training" is just a release you have to sign to spare the company any liability should you get hurt on the mine site. Eagle Mining, the company I dealt with today, is not a Massey subsidiary, so I wonder whether the procedure will be any different).

Upon realizing all this, I called back our contact person at the company to reschedule. Suddenly they also needed to have the mine superintendent and blasting foreman on site for me to look at the logs. My contact said that once he knew both of their schedules, he could arrange for me to look at the logs. Throughout our phone conversations today he was very courteous and generally helpful, but he also explicitly reminded me that under no circumstances could I take a copy of the blasting log from the mine site.

Other CRMW volunteers tell me that the company is just getting nervous about letting someone see the logs. Yup, I can see how appointments are probably rare given that 1) you need your own set of safety gear to access the mine site 2) you can't bring home copies with you and 3) a local resident with a full-time job probably would have a really hard time finding a meeting time compatible with three other full-time employees.

My contact is supposed to call me back tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

In other news, dinner tonight was so delicious and so beautiful that I was compelled to take a photo:


No, that's not chicken in my fajita- it's Chicken of the Woods, a wonderful fungus that is readily collected in the woods around the volunteer house here in Rock Creek. It does taste and feel an awful lot like chicken, especially when sauteed with some olive oil, salt, and garlic. Yum.

Goodnight!

Mountain Justice Summer Training Camp

Since Saturday, I have been at Mountain Justice Summer Training Camp, a gathering of all the folks interested in stopping mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR).

Since I've been here, I've learned tons about Appalachian culture (a huge, important, and fascinating subject I will delve into another time), and attended workshops on a variety of MTR-related subjects that are preparing me well for the work I'll be doing for the next 6 weeks. I've learned how to read a mining permit, learned a bit about the native and rare plants of the Appalachian Mountains, started to get to know the host of different environmental, religious, and community organizations working to stop MTR, and heard many very heartbreaking but often inspiring stories of people affected by MTR. I've also been learning about the projects that the particular community organization I'm working with, Coal River Mountain Watch, is doing, including the Sludge Safety Project, a listening project to document the community's experiences with MTR, and the development of sustainable, appropriate economic alternatives to coal.

It hasn't been all business, though- I've been meeting and hanging out with great people from all over Appalachia and the country, learning to square dance (trust me- it's a lot cooler than it was when they made you do it in gym class), and getting to know mountain music (bluegrass, old time, different styles of banjo playing, etc.), and helping cook and eat fantastic meals.

I'm also living in a tent, which has been fun and challenging (we had a big thunderstorm here yesterday that soaked all my stuff, and I get to use composting toilets, since the whole camp of 100+ people is off the grid). I get to wake up to thousands of birds singing and mist over (what's left of) the mountains, and go to sleep with whippoorwills singing and countless stars in the sky.

I'm working on putting up some photos:

Here's the view outside my tent flap.




On the drive down, we (Dad and I) stopped at a scenic overlook- this photo hardly captures the breathtaking beauty that is these mountains.

It just started pouring again- the weather here is more temperamental than that in Michigan, if you can believe it- I hope my tent is holding up. Gotta go. I'll probably be back online next week.

Mountaintop Removal 101

As you probably know, I'm spending 6 weeks in Coal River Valley, West Virginia, to be part of the movement to end mountaintop removal coal mining. I'm currently living out of a tent on top of a mountain without phone or internet access, so there's only so much blogging I can do until I settle in Rock Creek, WV. I got a ride to a library in Whitesburg, KY and I don't know how much time I have left on the internet, so I apologize for the rushed nature of these posts. Before I get into anything else, I think I ought to give a primer on what mountaintop removal is, since I think most of us outside of Appalachia are for the most part blissfully unaware of what it is (even though our homes and businesses throughout the country are fueled by it, but that's another story).

So what is mountaintop removal, and why does it need to be stopped?

Mountaintop removal (MTR) is an enormous and complex subject, but if I had to pick one word to describe it, it is sacrilegious. MTR uses dynamite to blow 500-800 feet off the tops of 400 million year old mountains to reveal the coal seams (thin layers of coal) within. The six general steps of mountaintop removal are as follows (taken directly from ilovemountains.org for the sake of time):

	CLEARING — Before mining can begin, all topsoil and vegetation must be removed. Because coal companies frequently are responding to short-term fluctuations in the price of coal, these trees are often not even used comercially in the rush to get the coal, but instead are burned or sometimes illegally dumped into valley fills.
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	BLASTING — Many Appalachian coal seams lie deep below the surface of the mountains. Accessing these seams through surface mining can require the removal of 500-800 feet or more of elevation. Blowing up this much mountain is accomplished by using millions of pounds of explosives.
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	DIGGING — Coal and debris is removed by using this piece of machinery, called a dragline. A dragline stands 22 stories high and can hold 24 compact cars in its bucket. These machines can cost up to $100 million, but are favored by coal companies because they displace the need for hundreds of jobs. .
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	DUMPING WASTE — The waste from the mining operation, also known as overburden or spoil, is dumped into nearby valleys, burying streams. According to an EPA environmental impact statement, more than 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams were permitted to be buried as of 2001.
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	PROCESSING — The coal is washed and treated before it is loaded on trains. The excess water left over from this process is called coal slurry or sludge and is stored in open coal impoundments. Coal sludge is a mix of water, coal dust, clay and toxic chemicals such as arsenic mercury, lead, copper, and chromium. Impoundments are held in place by mining debris, making them very unstable. .
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	RECLAMATION — While reclamation efforts such as stabilization and revegetation are required for mountaintop removal sites, in practice, state agencies that regulate mining are generous with granting waivers to coal companies. Most sites receive little more than a spraying of exotic grass seed, but even the best reclamation provides no comfort to nearby families and communities whose drinking water supplies have been polluted and whose homes will be threatened by floods for the hundred or thousands of years it will require to re-grow a forest on the mined site.
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The steps outlined here alluded to some of the problems with MTR. When I have more regular internet access, I will go into greater depth about these cultural, social, environmental, and economic problems with MTR, and elaborate on what people are doing to stop it.