This is the thirty-seventh issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
“God put the mountains and the trees here, to protect these valleys and the people who live in these valleys. Now, they’ve taken the tops off the mountains. They’ve taken the trees away. They’ve taken from God’s creation. There’s nothing to protect us anymore.” – Pauline Canterbury, Sylvester, West Virginia.
One of the hugest issues facing us this Earth Day is Mountain Top Removal. Did you know that over half of the electricity we use in the United States comes from coal, and that the tops of Appalachian mountains are being blasted off to get it? 2500 tons of explosives a day are used in West Virginia alone. 500 square miles of mountains have already been flattened and 1200 miles of streams have been destroyed. Two thousand square miles of mountains are at risk, including land in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. What does this mean for Appalachian families? Bad enough that they must listen to the constant noise of blasting, breathe the dust, lose their pure creeks and drinking water supplies, and watch the disfiguration of their mountains. Even worse, the coal slurry sludge ponds, holding billions of gallons behind earthen dams, sometimes release their toxic sludge in disastrous spills. Coal slurry is a mix of water, coal dust, mercury, lead, arsenic, copper and chromium. The Buffalo Creek Disaster, called “the worst environmental disaster in the southeastern US” by the EPA, killed 125 people and left thousands homeless. The absence of trees causes huge amounts of runoff into the streams, resulting in flash floods. Over five thousand homes were damaged or destroyed in 2001, and another 4,000 in 2002; yet the homeowners are not compensated at all by the coal companies, who claim that the floods are “an act of God.” Bo Webb of Coal River Valley, WV writes: “During a rainstorm, our children go to bed fully clothed, plotting escape routes in case we have to flee in the middle of the night. We constantly worry that our kids may be killed by a falling rock on their way to or from school, or buried in toxic sludge while they sit at their school desks.”
Although the Surface Mine Act requires the coal companies to restore the area to approximately its original contour unless a “higher use” is planned, less than 5% of these lands have been reclaimed even to minimum standards. The rubble which is dumped into the valleys has no topsoil and will not support tree growth; native plants and animals are eliminated. One of the most bio-diverse areas in the country is being reduced to a barren wasteland. It’s been estimated that it would take 150-200 years before trees would become reestablished.
Is this legal, you may be wondering? The Bush administration has made a rule change to the Clean Water Act of 1977, which allows mining companies to dump waste material into waterways, by redefining the waste and debris as “fill.” The mining companies have the audacity to say they are “improving” the land by making it more flat, for shopping centers and airports. It is highly questionable whether the fill would ever be stable enough to build upon, even if such developments were desirable.
Coal burning power plants contribute 40% of all airborne mercury in the U.S. This mercury gets into water supplies and causes lower IQ, blindness, and autism in babies. Remember “Minamata disease” in Japan, caused by ingestion of fish with high mercury levels? Mercury is a profound toxin to the nervous system. Forty-five states now have toxic mercury levels in some of their waters.
Says Judy Bonds, an activist whose father was a coal miner, “I’m positive that if Americans knew what’s happening in Appalachia for their so-called ‘cheap’ energy and ‘clean’ coal, they would understand it’s our duty to be stewards of the earth and preserve it for our children. The coal companies are asking too much. They’re asking for these mountains and for our culture and history, our children’s future, and God’s creation. But they’re not getting it; they’re not getting it.”
People are indeed organizing to put a stop to this destruction. This year, “Mountain Justice Summer” is being planned. It is an emergency call to action, based on Mississippi Freedom Summer and Redwood Summer, with the goal of stopping King Coal. Small, community based grassroots groups, coalitions of miners, environmentalists, people whose homes are threatened, and folks who love their mountains are asking people from all over the country to get involved as volunteers. Food, housing, and camping are being arranged; “safe houses” have been established in six major Appalachian cities to prepare volunteers to do non-violent civil disobedience in the coalfields. There will be educational outreach, teach-ins and tours, door-to-door canvassing, listening projects, and demonstrations. Some people will focus on identifying endangered species and pre-blast photography. There is a huge need for food, camping gear, and funding. If you would like to learn more, please visit www.mountainjusticesummer.org; or email mountainjusticesummer@hushmail.com.
On the legislative front, thanks in part to the efforts of the Sierra Club, Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ) are introducing a Clean Water Protection Act which would outlaw dumping mine waste into streams, effectively ending the practice of valley fills. This legislation needs to receive a lot of support!
Perhaps the most important single thing you can do is go right out and replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, if you haven’t already done so. CFs use one-fourth of the energy used by incandescents to give the same amount of light, and they last many times as long, so you will not only save money on your power bills but even on the replacement costs of the bulbs… and you will be helping to reduce the coal use to generate the electricity. Simply turning off lights and computers when not in use can lead to significant savings for you and for the mountains.
Here are a few other organizations to contact: Sierra Club, Anna Sale: anna.sale@sierraclub.org (WV)
Appalachian Voices: outreach@appvoices.org; Citizens Coal Council: www.citizenscoalcouncil.org, stopcoalcrimes@yahoo.com; Coal River Mountain Watch, Judy Bonds: crmw@charter.net, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy: www.wvhighlands.org; West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Jeremy Muller: www.wvrivers.org.
Cathy Holt
"Kindness is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations." - Paramahansa Yogananda
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