Don't apologise:ORGANISE!

This isnt in the defender--but I like it.

a note from the editor

Hey below are the articles about to be printed in the Pan Appalachian Defender. They are in order but are completely without pics right now, and no page numbers--or footnotes.

But this is the text in order. If you spot any typos/edits/etc please enter them in the comment field beneath every article. I will check daily for comments till we goto print. I may try to upload some pics--but all the PAD pics are so hi res blogger spits them out.

ftm

Chris.

Coal silo permit next to school DENIED!

Charleston, W.Va.—The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has denied Massey Energy subsidiary Goals Coal Company’s application to build a second coal silo adjacent to Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, WV.
In a letter that was sent to Goals Coal on August 11th, the DEP stated that only those operations which existed on August 3, 1977, are exempt from the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) rule prohibiting mine operations within 300 feet of a school.
The DEP determined that as of 1977, no loading or coal silo operations existed at that site. The proposed silo would have been 260 feet from Marsh Fork Elementary School.
Randy Huffman, Director of the DEP’s Division of Mining and Reclamation, wrote, “The exception allows Goals to continue the type of operations that were conducted within three hundred feet of the school in 1977, but does not allow it to either make substantial changes in the type of operations being conducted in this protected zone or undertake substantial expansion of such operations. The existing operation exception does not allow Goals to construct the silo it proposes.”
An identical silo, 168 feet tall, was built in 2003 over residents’ objections. That silo sits just 225 from the school building. “By the DEP’s own reasoning, the first silo was approved in violation of SMCRA,” said Bo Webb, resident of the Coal River Valley. “The first silo is illegal and should be shut down.”
Citizens have been protesting the second silo since it was first proposed in the spring of 2005.
On May 24, 2005, two residents were arrested for trespassing during a protest at the Goals site.
On May 26, 50 people, many of them Mountain Justice Summer participants, spoke in opposition to the silo at a DEP hearing.
On May 29, 16 people were arrested at a second protest at the site. Those arrested included an 82 year-old grandmother of a Marsh Fork student, another student’s grandmother, several local residents, and Mountain Justice Summer participants.
The DEP initially granted the permit but rescinded it after learning that the permit application maps were inconsistent with previous permits. Permit boundaries on the new maps had been enlarged beyond previously approved permits. Goals appealed the decision, but the WV Surface Mine Board (SMB) upheld the DEP’s decision in March of this year. The SMB ruled then that Goals must submit accurate maps and could then reapply for the second silo.
When Goals again applied for the silo, the DEP held another public hearing on July 24, 2006. Again, local residents and Mountain Justice Summer volunteers spoke out against the silo. In addition, Dawn Seeburger, a toxicologist, reported on independent tests that confirmed the presence of coal dust in the school and on the hazards of coal dust to children’s lungs. Allan Tweddle, an engineer with over 40 years experience in air filtration and ventilation systems, testified that the existing filters at the school would keep out “birds and butterflies” but would not filter out coal dust.
The DEP’s denial letter from August 11th addressed the map issue as well, stating that the corrected maps and boundary markers accurately depict the western boundary near the school. “However, the maps fail to accurately depict the permit boundary in the area of the bridge over Marsh Fork,” Huffman’s letter stated. The DEP is ordering Goals to once again submit maps that accurately depict all locations in the original permit.
“I am glad that the DEP stepped up to the plate and finally acknowledged and enforced the law that was intended to protect children,” said Sarah Haltom of the watchdog group Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW). “But the silos are not the only problem, and if Massey’s engineers cannot even get a map right, how can we expect them to maintain a 2.8 billion-gallon sludge dam above the school? These children still deserve a new school in their own community away from all of the threats that hover over them from the Massey sites here.”
“This is a solid victory, but only a new school will ensure the safety of the children,” said Janice Nease, Executive Director of CRMW and retired teacher.
“Had it not been for hundreds of people protesting the silo, including local folks working with Mountain Justice volunteers, the second silo would most likely be operating today.” said Nease.
People have to get off their seats and into the streets to hold government agencies and coal companies accountable.”

Healing Mountains

During Memorial Day Weekend, over 300 mountaintop removal opponents converged for the Healing Mountains conference at the Cedar Lakes Conference Center in Ripley W.Va. The event combined Heartwood’s 16th annual Forest Council with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalitions (OVEC) 6th annual Summit for the Mountains.
“The destruction of our natural heritage and the obliteration of our mountain communities would be considered an ‘Act of War’ were the damage perpetrated by a foreign power,” said Heartwood event organizer Andy Mahler. “The Forest Council/Summit opened the door wide on this dirty little secret.”
Conference keynote speaker Doris Haddock, better known as the 90-something Granny D who walked across America to raise awareness of the need for real campaign finance reform, described mountaintop removal: “Great electrical shovels, like invading space monsters, take apart our mountains...The question for environmental activists is this: can the planet be saved even if many of the people do not understand the problem or, despite the ready facts, are insistent upon staying the course of self-destruction because it profits them in the short term?”
Granny D, introduced by former Congressman Ken Hechler, urged young people to set goals for their communities, states and nation. Conference attendees – from 19 states and the District of Colombia – spanned four generations, including a large contingent of students and young adults. Many heeded Granny D’s advice as they participated in Mountain Justice Summer 2006. (Read Granny D’s entire speech at www.truthout.org/docs_2006/053006S.shtml.)
Throughout the weekend, participants could choose from a variety of trainings and workshops and panel discussions. Filmmakers and authors presented their documentaries or spoke about their books—and filmed and wrote for unfinished documentaries and books. TruthOut.org carried video from the conference on its popular website.
Other activities included an auction on Saturday evening to help raise funds for Heartwood, followed by a dance featuring live music from the Charleston-based Voodoo Katz, and a hilarious Sunday evening talent show.
Mary Hufford of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Folklore and Ethnography presented “Holding Up the Mountains, The Narrative Ecology of Southern West Virginia’s Community Forest ” to thunderous applause.
She noted, “In this region that one cannot talk about places in the mountains without talking about people, or about people without talking about the land…
…The names on the land are touchstones to the historic depth of a seasonal round of hunting, gathering, and gardening, which we schematized and placed online at the Tending the Commons website. (A participant in her work noted), ‘People on Coal River — just about every one of them does the same thing. They dig the ramps, pick the greens, they get the molly moochers, they pick the blackberries, they fish, they hunt, they dig ginseng. It’s the traditions of the people. They do it, their kids is gonna do it, their grandkids is gonna do it, and that’s the way it is on Coal River ’.”
That’s the way it is—until mountaintop removal destroys the forests, the streams and the culture of the people that rely on them.
Healing Mountains attendees will work to ensure that the mad destruction of our future stops!
Healing Mountains was organized and co-hosted by Heartwood and OVEC. Co-sponsors included Coal River Mountain Watch, United Mountain Defense, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Sierra Club Central Appalachian Environmental Justice Program, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Model Forest , and SouthWings. Dozens of groups, businesses and individuals sponsored the event. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Mingo Organizing Project OVEC’s contribution to Mountain Justice Summer 2006

By Jen Jackson

Many of us dream of playing an active role in social change to create a more livable world. In Mingo County W. Va. a few of us have taken on the role of community organizers.
“An organizer must always be trying to work herself out of a job,” I’ve reminded myself a few times when figuring out the next step I should be taking. Our goal has been to meet people who feel their quality of living is suffering because of the coal industry. The effects of coal mining and processing seem invisible to most, but are poisoning folks’ water, rocking their houses off the foundations and quickly diminishing the hope of a livable future for creatures of any sort here. Once we meet potential leaders, we introduce those who have common complaints and interests.
As I drive down windy Route 52, gazing into the rocky and usually forested roadside, I remember the stories I’ve heard: of fish being cut open—appearing normal from the outside, but black as coal on the inside; of a hunted deer found rotting away from the inside out. Animals rotting on the inside, walking around with a normal appearance.
“Imagine what our insides look like after drinking this water for so long,” Debbie Murphy said, as I looked at the 13 bottles of pills sitting on her coffee table. “This is my life right here; I can’t live without these pills.” I am constantly surprised and inspired by the strength of Mingo County residents like Debbie.
Another new friend I’ve made here decided that, tomorrow, when she
sees her doctor, she’ll ask him to write a letter stating he believes her health problems are a result of drinking the bad water.
This summer, most of our organizing has been focused around well water apparently poisoned from slurry injections, a waste product of coal processing. With the injections occurring since 1977, this is a struggle folks here have been fighting since I was a wee one growing up in Virginia.
At first I felt wary of being seen as just another outsider environmentalist, but instead I’ve been energized by the contacts and friends I have made. Unity can be established because of the clear difference between what’s happening here, the conditions people are being forced to live with, and what people really deserve.
I see people daily who feel powerless--yet when asked what can be done, what do you think is the next step, what would you like to see in your community, they come up with impressive and achievable visions.
There is the Sludge Safety Project (SSP), organizing between Coal River Mountain Watch, Mingo residents, and OVEC. SSP is calling for alternatives to be used in place of dangerous coal sludge dams and underground coal slurry injections.
In late July, a Mingo County judge ruled that Massey must pay for bottled water to be delivered weekly to certain households, until pipelines bring city water into each house. The lawsuit and the city water are major victories the people, united and organized, created for themselves. The victory will build stronger community organizing.
There is still work to be done. What about other hollers that are about to be in similar circumstances? Slurry injections and impoundments continue to contaminate the area. What happens when enough of the tributaries feeding the Tug Fork, where Williamson draws its water, are poisoned? Will the city water coming through the pipelines also be too poisonous to drink?
What about the people who are being blasted off of their foundations because of mountaintop removal mining? And those being flooded out? Who should be paying the monthly water bill once the lines are hooked up to the houses in Merrimac, Lick Creek, Sprigg, and Rawl? What about the unwanted school consolidation?
I don’t see easy solutions, but I do see empowered people multiplying and uniting.

Memorial Service in Forested Cemetery Amidst Mountain Devastation

To end the Healing Mountains conference on a somber, yet inspirational and action-oriented note, about 100 conference participants carpooled to Kayford Mountain on Memorial Day. For many, it was their first time seeing the extreme-mining devastation that is mountaintop removal.
Kayford Mountain is the ancestral home of OVEC board member Larry Gibson. The Stanley Cemetery atop Kayford provides a vantage point for viewing “reclaimed” and active mountaintop removal sites. Journalists, students and concerned citizens from throughout the United States and beyond have visited the cemetery to witness the destruction first hand—Larry hosted over 700 people on the mountain in 2005.
Another lesser known cemetery on Kayford is the Stover Cemetery. The old mountaintop cemetery, covered with daylilies shaded by maples, sassafras, basswood and many other hardwood-tree species, is an oasis surrounded by a scene of desecration -- over 12,000 acres of active and “reclaimed” mountaintop removal mines operated by subsidiaries of Arch Coal and Massey Energy. The cemetery is trapped inside an Arch Coal mountaintop removal operation, and Arch previously has been reluctant to grant Stover kin access. But, it was hard to refuse the crowd that Gibson led to the mine gates on Memorial Day.
Laws require mountaintop removal operations to relocate cemeteries from mining, or to not mine within 100 feet of cemeteries and to give people access to cemeteries remaining on otherwise mined land. Coalfield residents frequently report that they are denied admission to cemeteries; when they are allowed in, they are almost always accompanied by guards.
Allen Johnson, co-founder of Christians for the Mountains, led the prayers on the mountaintop. Emotional memorial service participants joined hands and reflected in silence, then vowed to abolish mountaintop removal coal mining.
“At the cemetery we paid tribute to those before us who have loved these mountains and to the indomitable power of the human spirit,” Heartwood organizer Andy Mahler said. “We made a vow that together we would forever end the practice known as mountaintop removal coal mining.”

March For Marsh Fork Elementary

Ed Wiley walks to D.C. and puts polluted school in spotlight

by Mike Roselle

WASHINGTON D.C. -- Tonight something very strange and wonderful is happening here on this warm fall evening. The sidewalk in the front of the Harry’s Bar at the aging and slightly dilapidated Hotel Harrington is alive with the sounds of mountain music. It is so loud the sound is drowning out even the noise of the downtown traffic. The banjo player is wailing and the guitar player is picking, strumming and belting out ancient hillbilly ballads. A small crowd is gathering around the musicians, their curiosity getting the better of them. These are not your normal buskers or your normal Washington street musicians. Rather than facing the audience, the musicians are ignoring them, facing each other, staring at each other’s fingers in order to detect the next chord change. They are reaching for that high and lonesome harmony that is as much a part of the Appalachians as the rivers and mountains themselves. You can hear them hollerin’ over two blocks away.
As we listen, a slew of young activists circulate through the audience and pass out literature and campaign buttons to the passers-by explaining to them the dangers of strip mining in the Appalachians and why we they had come here to Warshington, as the denizens of Appalachia pronounce the name of our Nation’s Capitol. We are all here for Mountaintop Removal Week with over 60 citizen lobbyists from 13 states who have traveled here to work for passage of H.R. 2719, the Clean Water Protection Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone that would prevent the dumping of mine waste into streams and curtail mountaintop removal. Most of these folks came to town on their own dime and by this evening had held over 50 meetings with members of congress.
This morning, my friend Floyd and I, along with Ed Wiley West, a West Virginia grandfather and former coal miner, and over one hundred supporters marched the final mile of Ed’s epic 455-mile walk from Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia to the steps of the Senate Office Building. Ed left Charleston on Aug. 2 to raise awareness about the school’s location next door to a coal refuse pond and preparation plant; and to build public support for the construction of a new school in a different location.
Marsh Fork Elementary School is on the front lines of the controversial practice known as mountaintop removal coal mining. It’s students are becoming the casualties.
An active 1,849-acre mountaintop removal coal mine surrounds the school area. Marsh Fork Elementary sits just 225 feet from a Massey Energy coal-loading silo that releases high levels of coal dust and saturates the air in the school. Independent tests have shown that coal dust is hazardous to the health of school children. And a leaking earthen dam holding back 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal-sludge is also located above the school site. What’s more, Massey Energy wants to build another silo. Much to the chagrin of people like Ed Wiley.
One of the more exciting developments in the fight for Marsh Fork School came last month, when the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection denied a permit from Massey Energy to build the second coal silo beside the school. For the residents of the West Virginia coalfields, this was a big victory for the community, the kids, and the larger fight against mountaintop removal. The West Virginia DEP has twice denied the application to build another coal silo next to the elementary school. The existing silo has been found to be even closer to the school than company maps had indicated. Suddenly Massy no longer seems invincible.
To help pay for a new school, Ed Wiley began a local fundraising campaign called Pennies of Promise in an attempt to raise $5 million. He now has a vanload of pennies in jars and plastic jugs. Ed will find the five million even if he has to ask five-hundred million people one at a time. Because of Ed’s campaign, and the support he got from folks in West Virginia and along the way, he has become something of a symbol, even a hero of the struggle. No one is more qualified than Ed Wiley to talk about the effects of mountaintop removal or to represent the people of Appalachia.
At the press conference, which was well attended by members of the Washington media, Wiley was joined by U.S. Rep. Pallone (D-NJ); Teri Blanton of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth; and Mary Anne Hitt of Appalachian Voices. The press conference was featured on news broadcasts across the state of West Virginia, where over two-thirds of the residents are opposed to Mountain Top Removal.
Eariler this morning Ed had hoped to meet with West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd. One of the purposes of the walk was to seek help from the powerful Senator. Outside his office Ed announced to the media, “Senator Byrd is an honorable man and a true Appalachian who cares about the people of West Virginia,” Wiley said. “I hope he will stand with us to help the children at Marsh Fork Elementary School, because our children have been sacrificed long enough.”
Ed had an appointment to meet with Byrd’s staff, but not with the Senator himself. But after a few minutes meeting with the staffers, he was summoned into the inner sanctum of Byrd’s spacious office. The two spent nearly forty-five minutes talking about the school, mountaintop removal and other issues. Before the meeting was over, both of the West Virginia natives were on their knees in prayer. Senator Byrd promised to do what he could to help move the school. He also issued a press release in which he stated, “I admire the determination and dedication that Ed and Debbie Wiley have shown, the Bible teaches that if we have faith of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. I believe that the Wileys have that faith.”
Ed Wiley didn’t talk to any consultants. He didn’t even hold a meeting. He just got up one morning and told his wife Debbie that he was going to walk to Warshington even if he had to eat grass and drink out of a ditch.
Along the way, he rallied thousands of supporters, garnered media attention in each town, and received the support he needed to continue his journey. Now Ed and Debbie are sitting in downtown Warshington and tapping their feet to some rauckus mountain music and having a well-deserved beer. I think I’ll have one with him.
To learn more about how you can help out, check out the best web site and activist tool ever created for the Internet; www.iLoveMountains.org. The site features the National Memorial for the Mountains, an interactive, online memorial that uses Google Earth technology to show the locations and tell the stories of the over 450 mountains that have been destroyed to date. The Memorial is the first comprehensive source for penetrating the secrecy of these city-sized operations, according to Mary Anne Hitt, executive director of Appalachian Voices, the nonprofit organization that developed the site. It features overlays that bring home the enormous scope of these mining operations: just one, for example, is comparable to the size of the entire Washington metro area.
Visitors can watch a video of entire mountains being blown to pieces. It also has an interview with actor Woody Harrelson and a download of a new acoustic version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin in the Wind,” performed by music legend Willie Nelson. Harrelson and fellow actor Edward Norton are among the many supporters of Wiley’s walk to Washington.
Lenny Kolm, my good friend and someone who has organized over thirty lobby weeks on issues ranging from the Arctic Refuge to logging Old Growth forests confided in me that of all the events that he has organized or attended, Mountain Top Removal weekend topped them all when it came to the dedication and enthusiasm of this group of people. I had to agree.
It seems to me, with just a few thousand dollars, Ed and his friends have accomplished allot in a few months. Ed is also working to build the kind of movement necessary to address not only mountaintop removal, but the damage that mining and burning coal does to our planet.
Log on to iLoveMountains.org and see how you can get involved.
Mike Roselle is on the road. Email him at roselle@lowbagger.org.
Thanks to Coal River Mountain Watch and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition for all of their hard work helping with the march!

TENNESSEE MJS 2006 WATER TESTING

Tennessee Mountain Justice Summer (MJS) this year was hosted by United Mountain Defense (UMD). Our MJS volunteers engaged in listening projects, water testing, demonstrations, distribution of our newspaper, benefits, silk screening, field scouting—and a dozen activities.
In all their activities our volunteers excelled, but it was in their field work that they really shone this summer.
Our volunteers this summer tripled the content of our field testing page and gathered so many water samples that we used up 3 Lamotte testing kits. Our volunteers took the results of the water testing and utilizing map software at the University of Tennessee cartography laboratory generated maps listing the exact coordinates of each stream.
The value of this data to our campaign is that it builds credibility. Periodically folks in different states have called and asked how we use our data. Having field data and a grasp of what is going on in the field by putting boots in the dirt creates credibility that no amount of letter writing or petitions can equal.
Before we (UMD) began our water testing program occasionally state officials and members of the strip mine industry would be condescending. They would tell us we didn’t know what was going on in the field, that our comments during hearings on strip mines were not specific enough, that we didn’t even know where the strip mines were. In short that we lacked credibility. This stopped when the field data began rolling in.
Our first step was going into the mining agencies offices and requested access to their mining data. With the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) we initially utilized a Freedom Of Information Request (FOIA).
The staff of OSM explained that they would give us access to the documents that we wanted—but the FOIA request was costing the secretaries and office workers allot of time fulfilling the various FOIA requirements.
We dropped our FOIA request and gathered GPS coordinates (Global Positioning System: A worldwide radio-navigation system that was developed by the US. Department of Defense. In addition to military purposes it is widely used in marine, terrestrial navigation and location based services) coordinates. With these coordinates we found where the strip mines where located.
At the same time we requested access to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) mining files. After a few requests they gave us complete access.
We spent weeks in each office copying and locating mines. One day we used a pickup truck and brought our own full sized copy machine that we made copies of the documents with.
With the initial GPS coordinates we collected from our office research we began flying over the mines shooting high resolution pictures with the help of the non profit Southwings who provides volunteer pilots. Our coordinates enabled the pilots to fly two planes directly over the mines. During these fly overs our volunteers collected GPS coordinates for unidentified mines and landslides.
Then our volunteers went into the field and did on-site sediment testing and collected GPS coordinates of what they saw in the field—including clear cuts, landslides—and stream characteristics. They also collected samples of water from each stream which were tested when they got back to our office.
Then when our volunteers began going into the various agencies they had high resolution air and ground pictures with coordinates to show the officials and ask questions about. This led to further research and more field work.
Additionally we began recruiting scientists from around East Tennessee to go into the field with us and teach our volunteers. These scientists collected additional data and assisted us in numerous ways—including testing for iron contamination and providing test kits.
All of our data we posted to blogs which we linked to our web page. These blogs (unitedmountaindefense.org tap “field work”) contained our high resolution fly-overs, water testing results, field photos, data sheets and GPS coordinates. We sent these links to all the agencies involved in mining and offered complete transparency in our data collection. We even went out with OSM officials and showed them our testing techniques.
A common question is how can the agencies trust our water testing data as we are dedicated to the abolishment of strip mining in Tennessee?
The answer is simple—they don’t have to. Early on we had conversations with the various agencies about our data collection. Lamotte is the standard when it comes to water and field testing kits. Many of the agencies have their own water testing regimes. They can test before and after us when we provide stream data.
Additionally if we hit any spike in any substance we were testing that exceeded an agency’s previous samples, or projections—they could come test right behind us. Plus we offered to provide our water samples at any time for independent testing.
The agencies recognized the value of having citizen volunteers provide data from the field without costing tax payers a dime.


Many of the agencies who monitor strip mining in Tennessee are hopelessly under funded and understaffed. UMD began to supplement their work by providing high resolution pictures from the air and ground, and it worked.
At the start of the summer we spent 3 days hiking a 10 mile long strip mine that was being logged by Ataya Hardwoods in advance of the stripping. We identified several violations and as a result Ataya was fined and forced to re mediate their slob logging.
Additionally, now when we ask people to make comments on a pending permit we steer them to our field page. Rather than making comments based on generalities UMD volunteers can make comments based on specific GPS coordinates, high resolution photographs, and scientific data.
“Chevron deference” is the standard by which courts will review an agency’s interpretation of their mandates from the legislature. This is an extreme deference standard. When however an agency’s actions are “arbitrary and capricious” a court will overturn an agencies decisions. When comments are based on speculation an agency usually doesn’t worry much about court review of their actions. However when the comments are “you have the wrong GPS coordinates for all the streams in the area”, or “you mischaracterized the stream types in the permit” then ignoring those comments begins to look arbitrary and capricious. Even the most slob development must provide correct boundaries and maps of the proposed project; this is true of mines as well.
Our water testing program was on
going before MJS 2006, but our 2006 Mountain Justice Summer Volunteers tripled the field data we had at our disposal in 1 summer! In fact they were so efficient in their data collection that we began to document and list the massive clear cuts they were finding in addition to mining activity. Additionally the coordinates they provided were used during the Southwings flights for high resolution aerial photography of the sites they scouted on the ground.
Credibility. When we go into hearings now the agencies know that UMD knows what is happening on the ground. Our willingness to provide all of our photos and data is appreciated by overworked employees of the agency as it makes their job easier. This summer we had more staff at our disposal than all the employees in TDEC involved in mining.
As a result we have seen significant progress in our battle against strip mining here in Tennessee. Recently National Coal got fined over $170,000 for illegally mining through tributaries to the Lick Fork Watershed coming off of the mountain top removal project on Zeb Mountain. Our volunteers were in Lick Fork collecting samples several times in advance of this agency action—with scientists from the local university, collecting water and fish samples in this watershed.
“Science is where the rubber hits the road” is what one agency official told me when we began our water testing program. Our water monitoring program hit the road before this summer’s MJS volunteers came to Tennessee—but they carried it much further along.
Agency officials know that we are out in the field and monitoring the mining. UMD now has a better understanding of strip mining in Tennessee than any other group in our state. We also have credibility.
Thanks to all of our Mountain Justice

Cradle to the grave

by Chris Irwin

Everything in the forest is interconnected. This is true of all life. The processes that attack life are interconnected as well.
Climate change, strip mining and asthma are all interwoven. Coal ripped from the mountains of Appalachia is burned by utility companies like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and two side effects are drastic climate change on our planet, and our children and old people gasping for air.
This is an article covering the effects of strip mining from the cradle to the grave. The cradle is strip-mining, then I will address the effects of the air pollution from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and from there will follow to global warming (the grave).
Cradle (infancy)
I. Clear cutting and strip mining.
Strip mining
If you are reading the PAD then you understand some of the effects of strip mining. A few greedy energy corporations are blowing up highland watersheds to make money. Streams are running bright orange, entire mountainsides of forest are being clear-cut wholesale in advance of the blasting, and entire watersheds are being destroyed forever. One form of strip mining is called Mountain Top Removal, but have no illusions-- Mountain-side and Mountain-bottom strip mining are occurring in Tennessee as well. In Tennessee tourists are commenting in horror as they fly over sections of the Cumberland Plateau. In Tennessee the number one employer is tourism—mining isn’t even in the top 10. In Tennessee our mountains and forests are being destroyed forever. Over 14,133.4 acres of land is currently being strip-mined in Tennessee. The strip mining is undermining the number one employer in Tennessee, tourism. Tourists do not come to Tennessee to see bright orange streams, clear cuts and strip mines.
The coal that is being mined is used mainly in fossil (coal) steam plants. The coal is used to provide power for industry and people. We are all part of this cycle of destruction, and share in responsibility for what it is doing to our land and people. TVA is the largest purchaser of coal in the country. As such I am using TVA as an example but much of what is wrong with TVA can be applied to other coal utilities.
“Childhood”
II. Air Pollution
Coal fired plants/TVA
Burning coal pollutes the air, and we breathe that air. There are many health effects and consequences of coal steam plants and the resulting pollution. Acid rain, mercury contamination and direct water and soil pollution are also significant products of fossil fuel plants.
TVA is the nation’s largest utility. Knoxville Tennessee is the headquarters for TVA. I was born in Knoxville and it is my hometown. Let’s take a quick look at my hometown.
In 2004, the Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America developed a list of top “asthma capitals” based on prevalence, mortality rates, air quality, smoking laws, and asthma medical care. Knoxville, Tennessee, was number one, followed by LittleRock, AR and St. Louis, MO.

CONT ON PAGE 8
(CONT)
My hometown, the head quarters of the largest purchaser of coal in North America, is number 1# in children’s Asthma. Knoxville is downwind of many TVA coal plants--one of which is the Kingston fossil plant. Is there a link between coal plants and the respiratory ailments in East Tennessee?
There are three common substances that are emitted from burning coal: Sulfur dioxide (SO2), and Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2).
Three that aren’t so commonly known are uranium, mercury and thorium. Using a Geiger counter. you can get above normal background radiation readings on some railroad tracks that are commonly used to haul coal. Burning coal emits toxins to our air. Some of these toxins are radioactive.
The following is a quick list of other by-products of burning coal from the TVA Kingston steam plant. These toxins are common to all coal fired steam plants--but I am going to list the amounts of these wastes that come from just one TVA coal plant.
This data is from the Toxics Release Inventory, is in pounds, and is just air emissions. Coal fired power plants also emit substantial wasted into our air and land. Coal fired plants are required by law to inform the public of their yearly emissions so you can research the specific amounts of any coal plant. Often the plants will provide a list on their websites. This list came directly from the Kingston fossil plant website.
Kingston Fossil Plant 2005 releases into the air-in pounds.
Arsenic-182 , Barium-1,504 ,Chromium-372, Cobalt-92, Copper-343, Lead-221, Manganese-550, Nickel-393, Selenium-8,933, Vanadium-335, Hydrochloric Acid-3,250,006, Zinc-1,262, Hydrogen Fluoride-451,906, Sulfuric Acid (aerosol)-781,830, and Ammonia-28,462.
For 2005 this one coal plant released over 4,526,916 pounds of pollution into the air upwind of Knoxville. TVA has 13 coal fired power plants.
If you are reading this downwind of a coal plant, these substances are dumped into the air that you and your children breathe.
Mercury is believed to cause mental retardation in children whose mothers are exposed to the toxin, primarily through consumption of fish. Mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants are deposited in lakes and rivers, where they enter the food chain.
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX) pollution particulate pollution is a mixture of soot, smoke, and tiny particles formed in the atmosphere. Sooty particles are most dangerous when very small as they can penetrate deep into the lungs (and the lungs are not effectively able to expel them), where they cause serious health impacts.
Children are especially vulnerable because their lungs are still developing. Breathing in air heavy with tiny particles can be dangerous even over a short time; because these particles are so minuscule, they can enter the circulatory system and damage blood vessels.
Coal-fired power plants are a big contributor to the problem. “Power plant smokestacks are public health enemy number one for their contribution to deadly particulate pollution across the eastern United States,” said Dr. John Balbus. “Particulate pollution contributes to tens of thousands of premature deaths annually, heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks.”
Amongst utilities, TVA is the second largest emitter of nitrogen oxides and the third largest emitter of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. This pollution causes acid rain, reduced visibility, ozone smog, and polluted waters, all of which have major impacts on public health and well-being and on the Tennessee Valley’s environment.
The American Lung Association (ALA) estimates that 570,000 children, 350,000 seniors, 153,000 people with asthma, and 170,000 people with emphysema or chronic bronchitis live in Tennessee counties where the air puts their health at risk.
Here are the numbers of Americans nationwide affected by coal fired plant emissions:
Mortality 23,600, Hospital Admissions 21,850, Emergency Room Visits for Asthma 26,000, Heart Attacks 38,200, Chronic Bronchitis 16,200, Asthma Attacks 554,000, Lost Work Days 3,186,000.
Over 23,6000 people a year are killed due to coal fired plant emissions. That is over 7 times how many were killed by the 9/11 attacks. Coal fired plants kill more Americans a year that all terrorist attacks on Americans combined.
The grave
III. Global climate change
CHINA (Reuters) - About 17 million people in southwest China don’t have access to clean drinking water due to sustained drought, state media reported on Sunday.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring “dead zone” of low-oxygen water that appears to be triggered by global warming, scientists say.
SYDNEY (AFP) - Residents of a drought-stricken Australian town will vote this week on whether they’re prepared to drink water recycled from sewage -- the first such scheme in the country and one of only a handful in the world.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Temperatures will average above normal in most of the United States in August, extending what has been the warmest year on record so far, the U.S.
PARIS (AFP) - Europe has sizzled amid a fresh onslaught of oven-hot temperatures as governments and charity groups mobilized to prevent further deaths from a heat wave that has already killed about 40 people across the continent.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - July 2006 is on track to be the hottest month in the Netherlands since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Tuesday.
SAN FRANCISCO - Power companies worked to restore electricity to thousands of customers throughout California early Monday as a scorching heat wave threatened to push the state into a power emergency with the potential for more blackouts.
WASHINGTON -- The increase in the number of large western wildfires in recent years may be a result of global warming, researchers say.
BOSTON (Reuters) - Images of swamped homes in the U.S. Northeast deepened suspicions over global warming, giving ammunition to scientists and others who say greenhouse gas-spewing cars and factories are fueling extreme weather.
CHINA Crops on large tracts of farmland in Sichuan province and the nearby Chongqing municipality have withered due to the month-long drought, causing economic losses of 9.23 billion yuan ($1.15 billion), the Beijing News and the Xinhua news agency said
GREENLAND Scientists studying Greenland’s glaciers say seasonal melting has increased, and was greater last year than at any time in almost three decades.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that had killed at least 12 people across the Northeast..
Reports are readily available from scientists across many fields— geologists, botanists, entomologists, geneticists, herpetologists, ichthyologists, lepidopterists, microbiologists, ornithologists, virologists, zoologists, and climatologist to name a few. What they are reporting is that the climate is changing rapidly.
The average temperatures of the first half of 2006 were the highest ever recorded for the continental United States.
Coal power plants produce roughly 30% of the CO2 emissions in the US. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and a primary culprit in global climate change aka global warming.
The basic idea of global warming is that greenhouse gases, or gases that trap heat are covering our planet and slowly raising the temperature of our planet. Some gases like methane are better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Global warming is more than that though. Like strip mining, air pollution and global warming are all interconnected -- so are a whole host of results as a result of global climate change.
Hurricanes increase in intensity due to a few degrees increase is the surface temperature of ocean water. The global warming gas methane is released from both the ocean floors and the tundra in Siberia as the earth heats, this in turn speeds the cycle up.
At the base of all this change is massive amount of CO2 humans are pumping into the atmosphere with the burning of fossil fuels--coal being responsible for at least 30% of that CO2.
Additionally we are building coal plants as if we are not pumping enough CO2 and poisons into our atmosphere. There are currently more than 130 new coal plants proposed across the U.S., and Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects a 66 percent increase in coal-based power production and a 43 percent increase in CO2 emissions by 2030.
At a time when the evidence of global climate change is becoming overwhelming and the worlds credible scientists are in agreement as to mans impact on this change we are preparing to burn MORE coal, not less..
Worldwide the reports of climate change are remarkable. In a way global warming is a fascinating experiment in which we and the entire planet are unwilling participants.
Out of the entire US electric industry, coal-fired power plants contribute 96% of sulfur dioxide emissions (SO2), 93% of nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx), 88% of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) and 99% of mercury emissions.
Strip mining, air pollution, climate change, clear cutting, watershed destruction, asthma, emphysema--all are interconnected with the fossil fuel coal. Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us here at home, and overseas. Our addiction to coal is clear cutting our land, blowing up our watersheds, polluting our air--and wrecking our climate.
These are just a few of the problems we face as a result of the burning of coal for a fuel. Our planet is rapidly changing in a way never seen before in its geologic history. We need to get beyond seeing coal through blinders. Too often we see just the clear cuts, or just the strip mines, or just the climate change, or just the massive sediment dams.
Everything in the forest is interconnected. Its true of the use of coal as well. The destruction starts when the hillsides of Appalachia are shaved clean of trees and vegetation in preparation of mining. Massive amounts of sediment are washed into streams and forest which utilize CO2 are destroyed.
Then the mountains are blown up for strip mines. Entire watersheds which would produce clean drinking water for another 10,000 years are destroyed forever in a few days.
Appalachian communities are rocked by blast while the people of Appalachia are driven off the roads by overweight coal trucks.
Then the coal plants where a witches brew (apologies to witches) of toxic poisons are spewed into our air to choke our old people and children and to rain acid onto our land and water.
Following this the CO2 is pumped into our atmosphere in what is truly the “grave” for our planet: sea levels rise, hurricanes increase in intensity, tropical fish are found in northern latitudes where they have never been seen before, droughts plague entire regions while other areas are choked in smoke from massive forest fires on a scale never seen before.
There is no such thing as “clean” coal. The idea of clean coal is a myth perpetuated by coal companies who hope you won’t struggle as they put blinders on your head. “Clean coal” is an oxymoron and a contradiction by its very nature.
A man named George Orwell (actually his name was Eric Blair) once coined a term called “newspeak” in his novel 1984.
The most important aim of newspeak was to provide a means of speaking that required no thought what-so-ever. It uses abbreviations or clipped conjunctions in order to mask or alter a word’s true meaning. For example, words such as Miniluv and joycamp, allow the speaker to speak without actually being force to think about what they were talking about.
Saying “clean coal” is talking about coal without being forced to think about it’s whole cycle of destruction. “Clean coal” is the coal industries newspeak premised that you won’t take the blinders off and see coals dark little secret--that it cannot ever be “clean”.
The only route out of strip-mining, air pollution, acid rain and climate change is to break our addiction to fossil fools--I mean fuels.
To treat a societies addiction you must address part of the addicts cycle--the pusher. Right now the coal pushers are saying they can give us a clean drug with a clean needle, and if we just don’t look at the other effects of addiction everything will be fine.
Coal is not clean, nor can it ever be. The coal companies hope you don’t see the bodies, see the clear cuts, see the strip mines, see the buried streams and draw the links between your childs asthma and their “product”.
This destruction is not worth the short term profits of a greedy few. They are breaking the cradle and sending to many to the grave for their riches. They prey you look at coal with tunnel vision so you can’t see the truth. Its not worth it.

spewing cars and factories are fueling extreme weather.
CHINA Crops on large tracts of farmland in Sichuan province and the nearby Chongqing municipality have withered due to the month-long drought, causing economic losses of 9.23 billion yuan ($1.15 billion), the Beijing News and the Xinhua news agency said
GREENLAND Scientists studying Greenland’s glaciers say seasonal melting has increased, and was greater last year than at any time in almost three decades.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that had killed at least 12 people across the Northeast..
Reports are readily available from scientists across many fields— geologists, botanists, entomologists, geneticists, herpetologists, ichthyologists, lepidopterists, microbiologists, ornithologists, virologists, zoologists, and climatologist to name a few. What they are reporting is that the climate is changing rapidly.
The average temperatures of the first half of 2006 were the highest ever recorded for the continental United States.
Coal power plants produce roughly 30% of the CO2 emissions in the US. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and a primary culprit in global climate change aka global warming.
The basic idea of global warming is that greenhouse gases, or gases that trap heat are covering our planet and slowly raising the temperature of our planet. Some gases like methane are better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Global warming is more than that though. Like strip mining, air pollution and global warming are all interconnected -- so are a whole host of results as a result of global climate change.
Hurricanes increase in intensity due to a few degrees increase is the surface temperature of ocean water. The global warming gas methane is released from both the ocean floors and the tundra in Siberia as the earth heats, this in turn speeds the cycle up.
At the base of all this change is massive amount of CO2 humans are pumping into the atmosphere with the burning of fossil fuels--coal being responsible for at least 30% of that CO2.
Additionally we are building coal plants as if we are not pumping enough CO2 and poisons into our atmosphere. There are currently more than 130 new coal plants proposed across the U.S., and Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects a 66 percent increase in coal-based power production and a 43 percent increase in CO2 emissions by 2030.
At a time when the evidence of global climate change is becoming overwhelming and the worlds credible scientists are in agreement as to mans impact on this change we are preparing to burn MORE coal, not less..
Worldwide the reports of climate change are remarkable. In a way global warming is a fascinating experiment in which we and the entire planet are unwilling participants.
Out of the entire US electric industry, coal-fired power plants contribute 96% of sulfur dioxide emissions (SO2), 93% of nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx), 88% of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) and 99% of mercury emissions.
Strip mining, air pollution, climate change, clear cutting, watershed destruction, asthma, emphysema--all are interconnected with the fossil fuel coal. Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us here at home, and overseas. Our addiction to coal is clear cutting our land, blowing up our watersheds, polluting our air--and wrecking our climate.
These are just a few of the problems we face as a result of the burning of coal for a fuel. Our planet is rapidly changing in a way never seen before in its geologic history. We need to get beyond seeing coal through blinders. Too often we see just the clear cuts, or just the strip mines, or just the climate change, or just the massive sediment dams.
Everything in the forest is interconnected. Its true of the use of coal as well. The destruction starts when the hillsides of Appalachia are shaved clean of trees and vegetation in preparation of mining. Massive amounts of sediment are washed into streams and forest which utilize CO2 are destroyed.
Then the mountains are blown up for strip mines. Entire watersheds which would produce clean drinking water for another 10,000 years are destroyed forever in a few days.
Appalachian communities are rocked by blast while the people of Appalachia are driven off the roads by overweight coal trucks.
Then the coal plants where a witches brew (apologies to witches) of toxic poisons are spewed into our air to choke our old people and children and to rain acid onto our land and water.
Following this the CO2 is pumped into our atmosphere in what is truly the “grave” for our planet: sea levels rise, hurricanes increase in intensity, tropical fish are found in northern latitudes where they have never been seen before, droughts plague entire regions while other areas are choked in smoke from massive forest fires on a scale never seen before.
There is no such thing as “clean” coal. The idea of clean coal is a myth perpetuated by coal companies who hope you won’t struggle as they put blinders on your head. “Clean coal” is an oxymoron and a contradiction by its very nature.
A man named George Orwell (actually his name was Eric Blair) once coined a term called “newspeak” in his novel 1984.
The most important aim of newspeak was to provide a means of speaking that required no thought what-so-ever. It uses abbreviations or clipped conjunctions in order to mask or alter a word’s true meaning. For example, words such as Miniluv and joycamp, allow the speaker to speak without actually being force to think about what they were talking about.
Saying “clean coal” is talking about coal without being forced to think about it’s whole cycle of destruction. “Clean coal” is the coal industries newspeak premised that you won’t take the blinders off and see coals dark little secret--that it cannot ever be “clean”.
The only route out of strip-mining, air pollution, acid rain and climate change is to break our addiction to fossil fools--I mean fuels.
To treat a societies addiction you must address part of the addicts cycle--the pusher. Right now the coal pushers are saying they can give us a clean drug with a clean needle, and if we just don’t look at the other effects of addiction everything will be fine.
Coal is not clean, nor can it ever be. The coal companies hope you don’t see the bodies, see the clear cuts, see the strip mines, see the buried streams and draw the links between your childs asthma and their “product”.
This destruction is not worth the short term profits of a greedy few. They are breaking the cradle and sending to many to the grave for their riches. They prey you look at coal with tunnel vision so you can’t see the truth. Its not worth it.

70% of Kentucky Mine Permit Applications For 2005 Receive Stream Buffer Zone Waivers

Kentucky officials processed more than 450 mining permits in 2005 involving the disturbance of more than 142,300 acres of land, a KFTC review of the permits showed.
These permits - which included various types of surface mines, the surface disturbance of underground mine, haul roads, tipples, processing plants and other coal facilities - collectively received 321 waivers of the stream buffer zone law. These waivers involved 543 different streams.
Twenty-five of the permits, involving 22,147 acres, were for “mountaintop” mining. However, hundreds more permits were for area, contour, steep slope, surface, surface-contour and several other classifications of mining that also involve massive disturbance of the earth.
KFTC member John Wilborn of Louisville researched and compiled the data, because the state does not.
“I wrote an open records request [to the Department of Surface Mining] asking for how many mountaintop removal permits had been granted, and how many stream waivers of the 100-foot buffer zone have been granted,” Wilborn said. “I got a response promptly. The department told me they did not maintain those records but that the files were available.”
Wilborn spent several days reviewing all the mining permits that had been processed and granted in 2005. Some of these were amendments to existing permits, so some of the acreage figures cited include land permitted in a previous year.
KFTC is analyzing the data and following up with additional research to help clarify some of the information found. KFTC’s Land Reform Committee will consider how best to use the data. A public report will be issued in the near future.
However, the data does suggest a routine disregard for laws meant to protect coalfield communities and the environment.
Wilborn took particular note of the stream buffer zone waivers granted.
What shocks me is that we have these flowing streams that are being buried and no one seems to be concerned about it except those locally who rely on it for a water supply, he said.
Of the 25 mountaintop removal permits, 22 received a waiver from a requirement that the land be returned to its approximate original contour. Such a waiver is supposed to be granted only if the land is going to be reclaimed for a higher and better use.
Eleven of the waivers were for a fish and wildlife post-mining land use. Under federal law a waiver is not allowed for fish and wildlife.
It appears that some of them have been granted against existing regulations, Wilborn observed.
As we¹ve seen in recent stories [about enforcement of mining laws and the non-collection of fines], when we talk about enforcement, it is sorely lacking, he added. This data is a real strong indication of a failure to enforce.
Wilborn said he was surprised at first the state did not compile data on mining operations and their impacts.
But once I got in and saw the operation I thought, no, no surprise. Basically they are in the business of evaluating the permit request, so they act and that¹s the end of the story for them.
KFTC plans to continue to monitor permit applications. To assist with this effort, contact padraus@hotmail.com
(reprinted with permission from KFTC/Balancing the Scales)

MTR FOR WHAT?!?!?

by Dave Cooper

In the city of Pikeville, Kentucky city leaders are planning to expand the city limits by flattening two nearby mountains for housing and economic development.
According to a December 28, 2005 article by Roger Alford of the Associated Press, “Appalachian Town Looks to Flatten Mountain,” city leaders have contracted with a coal company, Central Appalachia Mining, to flatten 800 acres of land after extracting coal.
“This will be a tremendous benefit,” said Pikeville City Manager Donovan Blackburn, according to the article.
Before they start earth-moving, Pikeville’s planners and city leaders should first take a good long look at the Kinetic Park economic development site along Interstate 64 in Huntington, West Virginia.
This West Virginia mountain was blasted and flattened starting in 2001 to provide space to build interstate motels, restaurants and a Amazon.com warehouse, yet the site sits empty five years later, due to the instability of the land.
There have been several landslides on the Kinetic Park slopes, including a major slide last summer. A Huntington city council member said the land “wouldn’t support a sidewalk” due to subsidence. The entire project is an now a high-visibility eyesore and an embarrassment for the city of Huntington.
The difficulties of stabilizing large amounts of fill from mountaintop removal mining have also been seen at the Lowe’s in Hazard, Kentucky and the Big Sandy Federal Penitentiary (“Sink Sink”) near Inez, Kentucky where cost over-runs due to subsidence issues raised construction costs of the prison by over $40 million.
Pikeville leaders should also visit Asheville, North Carolina, where there is no coal mining, only beautiful, unscarred mountains. There they will look upon all the multi-million dollar retirement homes built on the tops of beautiful forested mountains.
Why aren’t these retirees building their new vaulted-ceiling mansions overlooking Pikeville? They are called “half-backers” in the real estate trade - wealthy people who retired to Florida, then decided they missed the changing of the seasons, and moved “half-back” to eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Kentucky is missing out on a big construction boom in mountainside second homes, which can also be seen around Gatlinburg and Maggie Valley. That means jobs in the mountains.
In today’s new economy, trying to attract business by building industrial parks for factories is an outdated, tired strategy. There are empty industrial parks all over eastern Kentucky and every other state. The new factories are all being built in Mexico and China.
Today’s successful entrepreneurs, like web designers and the “creative class” who can earn their salary by sitting in front of a computer, can live anywhere they want. And they are choosing to live in beautiful, mountainous cities like Asheville that offer unspoiled views, clean streams and plenty of outdoor recreation like skiing, hiking and mountain-biking.
Pikeville city leaders feel they need more flat land for the city to grow and prosper. But Asheville doesn’t have any flat land either, and yet it is now bursting at the seams. So are Gatlinburg and Maggie Valley - all because the city leaders there have learned to “market the mountains,” instead of destroying them.
Pikeville has a lot going for it now - interesting downtown, a college, and a brand new Exposition Center. But flattening mountains doesn’t appeal to tourists or the creative class, and it could also increase the frequency and severity of flooding, as shown by Bob Gate’s powerful documentary film “Mucked: Man Made Disasters - Flash Flooding in the Coalfields.”
Quality of life is one of the most important attributes that people demand when choosing their hometown. It starts by protecting the natural beauty of the region. That’s a strategy worth considering for Pikeville and eastern Kentucky, too.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor,

Under the lingering smokescreen excuse of a war on terror, the US government has overextended the military in foreign occupation for oil warlords. Meanwhile at home, American citizens fend for ourselves while true terrorism rampages unchecked here in coal country.
Here in Appalachia is a war-torn landscape spanning several states. Here the Earth shakes under a steady barrage of explosions; more explosives are detonated here every week than were used in the Desert Storm War and the Invasion of Afghanistan combined. This is the face of modern coal extraction. Massive craters pepper the mountain chain, a pox of open wounds across the heartland of America’s natural resources. In all directions entire mountains have been bombed into dead-zones. Their peaks and ridges are blown apart, raining rubble and boulders into the forest valleys, the water systems, and the dependant communities below.
And yet our elected representatives express no outrage. In fact they only grease the wheels for this devastating take-all mockery of coal mining, ignoring the pleas of their terrorized constituency. The cowed, bought-and-paid-for news media takes pains to airbrush this unnatural disaster out of the picture they present as reality.
To witness this homespun terror we’d have to look beyond the green corridor of trees that remains alongside the highways of the Appalachian Mountains. This green corridor is the thin veil that separates what is observed through car windows from the harsh reality of Appalachia.
Here is the domestic terrorism that came with colonialism. Its kind has tormented this continent ever since outsiders first heard tell of wealth for the plundering (yellow gold at first), and started to clear the locals out of their way. To this day, bomber coal companies continue the destruction of local lives without hesitation or any sign of remorse. America is bombed and poisoned without relent, its people chased from their homes or killed in their beds by this swath of wanton, I say wanton, destruction.
Well-financed terrorist cells claim responsibility for these attacks in the name of their extremist profiteer agenda. They are greed-crazed fundamentalist terrorism incorporated, posing initially as the economic benefactors of the regions they invade. They call themselves Massey Coal, National Coal, Apollo Fuels, Peabody Coal, Mountainside Coal. They get their foot in the door by promising an economic boost to the areas surrounding the black gold they crave.
But when it’s all said and done, the community is abandoned to starve out under the discarded hair and bones of an ecosystem that’s been slaughtered, butchered, and sold to our electric utility companies. We buy it back as electricity and then it’s gone. All that’s left behind is the handful of silver coins for a few locals that got suckered into selling their people out cheap… that, and ruined land, noxious sludge, surging disease.
It is futile to negotiate with these fanatics. They can only understand dollar signs, and they are eager to commit a kind of regional suicide bombing that leaves the bomber rich and physically alive, striking again and again.
Day after day, explosions rip the horizon, chiseling down billions of years of mineral development in weeks. The forest wealth, the economic opportunities that would have helped to sustain us in the future - permanently wasted. The future of the surrounding areas is stolen in daylight. In its place we are paid generously in lake-sized open pits of toxic waste, soaring cancer rates due to ruined water and air, and an impoverished populace stranded in a landscape stripped, decapitated, and gutted of economic possibilities.
In a world that predicts its next wars will be fought over drinkable water, the Appalachian Mountains must become a national priority for the preservation of some of the oldest, purest and best producing natural watersheds on Earth.
The remaining springs of these mountains are an enduring and sustainable wealth, infinitely more valuable than the thin seams of brief fuel that lie beneath them.
The extremist profiteer invaders care nothing for the fact that springs and coal occur together, except for the convenience of water-seeps pointing out hiding coal. The springs are blasted apart with the mountain, their sources permanently fouled by exposing the quick-buck plunder underneath. The waterways that bring life into the valleys below are plugged and buried under each blast’s downpour of stone and silt.
This massive grave also entombs our cornucopia of medicinal herbs, wildcrafted plants that occur nowhere else in the world, the incredible diversity of wildlife, fish and game, and all else that brought tourism money into the local economy.
Nothing is done to bring these mad bombers to justice. They are given a blind eye by local, state, and federal governments. They are allowed to act with impunity despite the residents clawing for survival below. When toxic waste impoundments inevitably fail, sending floods of sludge and blackwater through the population clusters of the valleys, the resultant disasters are called “Acts of God” and those responsible are slapped on the wrist at best.
Coalfield residents live in fear of the instant threats to their safety: flying boulders and rock, flash floods and sludge spills. Children sleep in their shoes, fully dressed for fear of having to evacuate their homes during the night. Meanwhile, these communities contend daily with the diseases caused by a poisoned environment, and the despair that comes from scraping for survival in a violated homeland.
The mining industry destroys the potential for alternative economic land uses simply by going about its usual activities. This is why some agree to work for the companies that bring this destruction upon them. This is not your father’s coal mine where thousands were once employed to shaft-mine underground for coal.
Now only a few are needed for the job of bombing a mountaintop off of a seam. The work is quickly done and Big Terror moves on, taking the riches and the handful of dangerous jobs with it.
Mountaintop removal, cross-ridge mining, cross-contour mining, tip mining, and strip mining are names used to make bomb-mining for coal sound more reasonable on paper. The bounty of this one-time harvest, the black golden egg torn from each magic goose, is then presented to an energy-ravening nation as “cheap” electricity. The true costs: human, natural, and economic… go unmentioned. In a moment the treasures are burnt and spent, spewed into the sky’s thickening haze of greenhouse pollutants.
Buying electricity produced by Bomber Coal supports the terrorism that is being carried out on our own people in this country right now. Please begin to withdraw your support by demanding that your utility companies and government provide power through methods that do not sacrifice our American communities, our sustainable resources, our hopes and our lives.
Wayne Helms
Bath County,
Eastern Kentucky

PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION FAILS TO SUPPORT ENERGY EFFICIENCY

by Geoff Young

The Public Service Commission (PSC) is a little-known state agency that regulates utility companies in Kentucky, including electricity and natural gas. The utilities are guaranteed a certain rate of profit, in exchange for operating our energy system in the public interest.
The law that governs the PSC includes the following mandates:
(1)Every utility may demand, collect, and receive fair, just, and reasonable rates for the services rendered or to be rendered by it to any person.
(2)Every utility shall furnish adequate, efficient and reasonable service, and may establish reasonable rules governing the conduct of it’s business and the conditions under which it shall be required to render service.
Over the past 70 years of it’s existence, the PSC has performed well in ensuring adequate energy. There are enough power plants to supply all Kentucky’s electricity needs, and when a utility applies to build a new one the PSC usually approves it. I don’t know what the phrase “reasonable service” means, so I’ll give the PSC a pass on that one. But in terms of ensuring efficient energy service, the PSC has failed badly.
People don’t need electricity or natural gas in themselves; we want the services that these energy sources provide. We need heating, cooling, light, and the ability to run motors and appliances. The PSC should be making sure that customers receive these energy services in the lowest-cost possible way.
Very often, the most cost-effective way to provide better energy services is to improve efficiency in the customer’s business or home.
Sealing leaks in air ducts, windows and buildings, increasing the amount of insulation in ceilings and walls, using compact fluorescent light bulbs, using more efficient electric motors and drives, and a thousand other improvements is much cheaper than building new power plants and gas pipelines. When new buildings are designed and constructed, efficiency can cut long term energy use by half or more. Cogeneration, or generating electricity and useful heat at the same time, is at least twice as efficient as using fuel to provide the electricity and heat separately. Berea College in Berea, Ky recently proposed a new cogeneration plant, but the PSC allowed the utility company to block it by imposing excessive fees and requirements.
Instead of requiring utilities to help us improve efficiency, the PSC has taken a passive role. It waits for a utility company to propose an efficiency program, at which point it usually approves it. In view of the vast amount of energy waste in our economy, that is too little and too late. Kentucky’s existing efficiency programs are pitifully small.
Energy efficiency is our biggest energy resource, but the PSC hasn’t realized the potential.
For the past two years, Sierra Club members in the Bluegrass (Lexington, Ky) Group have been calling for a “truce” with the utility industry: If Utilities are willing to greatly increase the size and scope of their energy efficiency programs, environmentalists will ask the PSC to reward them with somewhat higher profits. If they fail to harvest the efficiency resources that are available, however, we will call for their profits to be cut. A working group consisting of representatives from the Sierra Club, ASPI, KFTC and electric and gas utility companies has been set up to explore this issue.
A related problem is that the PSC ignores environmental impacts when it assesses which generating technologies a utility should choose. If a new coal-fired power plant has a cheaper purchase price than a hydroelectric turbine or solar electric panels, the PSC has stated that the cleaner technologies shall receive no economic bonus. That is the same as saying that the environmental costs of coal mining and burning are zero.
What can the environmental movement do about this agency that appears to have been captured by the industry it was set up to regulate? The most effective strategy is public pressure. We should write letters to our local newspapers saying that the PSC and the Governor are failing to implement Kentucky’s largest, cheapest and cleanest energy source, energy efficiency. The result is that our bills are higher than they need to be and the amount of environmental damage is larger. If the three commissioners who are now on the APSC fail to change their policies, we should demand that the Governor replace them with people who understand the importance of efficiency and clean energy sources.

CALL TO ACTION

Rev. Ryan Dingus
Copper Creek, Russell County
President, Progressives for the
Virginia Coalfields

The current coal boom has not caused a building spree, nor a spike in employment, nor any other noticeable effect on the region aside from one very different and far more sinister: The mountains are disappearing. The people in them are dying faster and more painfully than ever before, there is no control, no reserve, no measure or dignity or courtesy. The streams, the forests, and the very air are being destroyed, and those people supported by them. The very population has been targeted as the greatest obstacle to the growth of coal consumption. They are the useless baggage of these mountains, which must be cast aside along with the forests, the biomes of diverse life, even the geology and even the dirt--all blown up, pushed over the hill and into the valley, buried and covered with toxic debris, all to get to that Black Gold. No tears are shed, no fines levied, no charges filed for this cruel act of murder, this rape of the land which now has become nothing short of ethnogenocide.
I issue therefore a call to action, that we who do not want this use every method and means at our disposal to end it, not only for the sake of Appalachia but for the sake of us all. For I promise you it will not stop here. It will not stop until it is your door that faces the destruction, your life that shall be taken in an “act of God,” your world that shall end.

Seeds of Change : Continued From Page 16

Most people, when they think of coal mining, think of Kentucky or West Virginia. But Virginia, too, mines tens of millions of tons of coal each year, in six counties in the southwestern corner of the state, north of I-81 near the Kentucky border. In recent years, nearly 100,000 acres of formerly forested mountains in Virginia have been turned into barren wasteland by large-scale strip mining for coal.
Worse, the devastation is accelerating. On a recent visit to the Big Stone Gap office of Virginia’s Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (DMME), a local activist learned that in Wise County alone more than 41,000 acres are currently permitted for strip mining of coal--16 percent of the county’s total acreage. Considering that much of Wise County is National Forest land unavailable for strip mining, the concentration as well as the extent of current and proposed mountaintop removal (MTR) and similar large-scale strip mining here is as shocking and calamitous as anything seen anywhere in Appalachia.
The human costs of the current strip mining boom have been awful here as well: homes cracked by blasting and covered by coal dust, neighborhoods depopulated, an elderly woman recently killed by a coal truck--even a three-year-old boy, Jeremy Davidson, crushed to death in his own bed by a boulder off an MTR site in August

2003. The multistate Mountain Justice campaign against MTR started partly in response to this child’s death.
Most pervasively, MTR has sucked the economic life out of local communities here as effectively as it has destroyed so much of the local landscape: In the past half-century, coal production in Virginia has doubled while coal-mining machinery replaced workers here as throughout Appalachia. Employment has dwindled further since the 1980s.
Highly mechanized, large-scale surface mining has increased, employing vast quantities of explosives and enormous pieces of equipment but few workers. As recently as 1990, more than 10,000 miners were employed in Virginia; in 2004, only 4,000 such jobs remained. There’s no reason to believe that the jobs picture in coal mining will improve in the decades ahead, as the last of the coal is mined out.
Virginia’s citizens have responded before with resistance to coalfield injustice, striking on picket lines and organizing to fight strip mining when it first began. Once again, it’s time to confront injustice, hold the coal companies accountable for their actions, and demand that the wholesale destruction of Virginia’s coalfield region be stopped.
In the summer of 2005, the Mountain Justice campaign against MTR visited southwestern Virginia only briefly. At that time, there was no grassroots group here focusing on MTR. That fall, residents of Wise County formed such a group, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS). Together with the Mountain Justice network
and organizations as diverse as Sierra Club and Earth First!, SAMS in 2006 began a wide range of projects seeking to protect southwestern Virginia’s environment, economy, and local communities from the ravages of strip mining, including:
Anti-noise ordinance: An ordinance banning mining noise at night has been proposed for Wise County.
Postcard collection: Hundreds of postcards have been sent asking Gov. Kaine to act against the ill effects of large-scale strip mining in Virginia.
Local outreach: Door-to-door flyering and other outreach has connected with local residents’ specific concerns about strip mining and connected concerned citizens with the fight to stop the ill effects of strip mining.
Broader outreach: Concerned citizens all over Virginia are letting their neighbors and elected officials know that MTR in Virginia is real and that people outside the coalfields are responsible for curbing their dependence on dirty sources of energy.
Mine permit task force: Volunteers aim to track permits and violations on particular mine sites, request hearings, document what’s happening at mine sites, and contact people in affected neighborhoods.
Power plant: Local residents and a host of interested organizations are responding to a proposal to build a new power plant near St. Paul that would burn as much as two million tons of coal each year for half a century or more, further accelerating strip mining in the area.
Community center: SAMS and Mountain Justice volunteers seek to establish a new youth and community resource center in Wise County.
Water testing: Groundwork has been laid for an ongoing program of testing streams and other water affected by surface mining.
Fundraising: Supporters from North Carolina to central Virginia to Wisconsin have raised money and sent donations to support anti-MTR work in Virginia.
Beyond the moonscapes of the strip mines, it’s beautiful here. In summertime the fabulous forest that’s natural to this part of the world is brilliant with more shades of green than can be imagined. It’s also beautiful that so many people, here in southwestern Virginia and beyond, are now joining together to defend this land and its human communities. Thanks to all who are helping.

Connecting at the Roots

Nable Wallin
Coming into southwestern Virginia, I’m struck with a sense of awe that can’t be explained solely by the gorgeous mountain vistas and picturesque landscapes. Everything about the place speaks to me, from the endless variety of flora and fauna deep in the lush forest groves, to the unexpected kindness from strangers and acquaintances, their lifestyles laden with mountain tradition.
I’ve worked here on a rural farm tucked snugly into a mountain hollow, using hundred-year-old agrarian skills and sleeping under the stars. I’ve pushed my way through slicks of rhododendron just to see what’s on the other side, a stream to follow or a forgotten stand of old growth oak. It’s hard to think of a place I’d rather be.
There’s a catch. Someone, long ago, came to this place of glory and bounty, and saw not the land that had been supporting abundant life, human and non-human, for thousands of years, but a source of wealth to pillage and exploit. More than a century later, coal extraction has been drawn to its logical conclusion, or final solution --mountaintop removal mining.
Like open wounds left to fester on a living body, these scars will never heal completely. For a resident and lover of southern Appalachia, looking at mountaintop removal is akin to having my heart ripped out of my chest, and then looking at it.
I’ve been called an outsider, coming here to work on mining issues, and to some extent I can accept that; the mountain culture that I admire so much is not mine, and I was not brought up here. But I do live in southern Appalachia, and we breathe the same air and drink the same water.
It is our mountains that are being ravaged. And as I get to know people here, making friends and finding allies, I know also that we feel the same pain, and we fight the same fight.
Nable Wallin lives outside of Asheville, NC, and spent the summer of 2006 living in Big Stone Gap, VA.

Power Plant: Blessing or Curse?

Tricia Shapiro


A consortium of five power companies led by Dominion proposes to build a new power plant near St. Paul, in Wise County, VA. The plant would generate 500-600 megawatts of electricity, enough to power as many as 360,000 homes. The plant’s “circulating fluidized bed” (CFB) technology would enable it to burn waste coal (a byproduct of coal processing that’s mostly rock) and biomass (trees or construction waste) as well as regular coal. With Dominion now just beginning to seek government permits and approvals, the plant is projected to begin construction in 2008 and begin operation in 2012.
Clean-air advocates, people concerned about global warming, people who care about the Clinch River and its tributaries, and people concerned about the ill effects of large-scale strip mining all have expressed skeptical points of view about the plant, for different reasons.
Dominion has been describing the proposed plant as a “clean coal power station,” with state-of-the-art pollution controls, although it’s doubtful whether the label “clean coal” should be applied to the end product of large-scale strip mining that destroys landscapes wholesale. Dominion has also claimed that the plant will benefit the area’s economy, through Dominion’s stated intention to buy coal for the plant in Virginia, and through jobs the proposed plant would add to the local economy. Skeptics note that most of those jobs will be temporary, for construction work at the plant, and that likely much or most of that work will be done by specialist contractors from outside the region, rather than by local contractors and workers.
Most people-- corporate spokesmen, government officials, and private citizens alike--have particular interests, and are more concerned about some factors relating to this power plant proposal than about others. But the potential impact of the plant can’t truly be assessed without looking at all of these factors at once, and looking at the plant’s wider context as well.
A key part of that wider context is the old and very dirty coal-fired power plant operated by AEP along the Clinch River in Carbo, just a few miles from the site of the proposed new plant. Operating since the 1950s and lacking modern pollution controls, the smokestacks at Carbo emit as much as a quarter of a million pounds of sulphuric acid and two million pounds of hydrochloric acid each year, along with mercury and other toxins. Shutting this plant down would be a pure blessing for everyone who cares about acid rain and water quality, or who breathes the air in this region--except perhaps for the people who have jobs at Carbo.
However, those jobs are likely to
be lost anyway--perhaps sooner if the new plant is built, as AEP is part of the consortium proposing the plant. So far, AEP has avoided installing pollution controls at the Carbo plant by cleaning up other, more modern plants it owns elsewhere, under federal cap-and-trade rules. It apparently has no intention of making similar upgrades at Carbo, but surely must expect that someday either the state or the federal government will no longer allow it to pump out as much pollution as the plant does today. When that day comes, it’s a good guess that AEP will shut the Carbo plant down rather than upgrade it. AEP’s stake in the new power plant, so close to its old one, certainly makes closure of the old plant look more likely. Dominion’s claim that the proposed plant means a gain in local jobs thus looks even more hollow.
The proposed plant’s wider context surely also includes its fuel sources. Local sourcing of any fuel for such a large plant would have large effects locally. If biomass is a significant part of the fuel mix, many thousands of acres of forest will be stripped. If waste coal is used, vast quantities of toxic ash will be produced. If regular coal is used, the proposed plant will create a large demand for coal for the next 50 years or more--while it’s typically projected that if coal mining continues at anything like its current rate, coal throughout Appalachia will be pretty much mined out in 10 to 30 years. Worse still, most of that coal would likely come from strip mining, which has already proved devastating to the region’s environment, economy, and local communities.

FROM THE COALFIELDS

Larry Bush, a former miner and mine inspector and a Vietnam veteran, says living in one of Virginia’s coalfield towns today gives one the same experience of post-traumatic stress syndrome he experienced after the war. “Our water is poisoned. We have asthma. Our homes and families are being destroyed. People around here are living in fear.
A lot of people around here feel helpless. No matter what we do, they mine anyway. Where is it written that I have to give up my home, my health, and my water so someone else can get rich?”

My Mother’s “Morning with the Lord”

The practice of mountaintop removal coal mining takes a terrible toll on the collective psyche of the communities it directly affects. Mountain people are known for their strength and deep-seated faith. The destruction of the mountains is more than an environmental issue; it’s an assault upon the very roots of a culture. This story, by Kathy Selvage, shows the depth of one woman’s faith and the weight of the disfiguration of her homeland.
She is 88 years old and has spent more years of her life getting to know this Lord than not. He has been the guiding force in my mother’s life and principles. She has advocated and taught those principles to others for a large portion of her life.
In the wintertime, she sits in a chair by the window in the early morning, curtains pushed back, sunlight perhaps shining through, with her Bible and her coffee. From springtime until late fall, it has been her practice to enjoy that “morning with the Lord” out on her porch, alone. Birds chirping in the trees or at a nearby feeder were practically the only background sounds she heard. She’d sip and continue her journey to get to know this Lord. When she lifted her eyes perhaps to ponder what she had just read, she could see and hear His creation.
She could see Him in every plant, tree, flower, and even in the tiniest of creatures. And it was good.
Now, though, she has been robbed of that! She no longer enjoys that outdoor “morning with the Lord.” It has been taken from her. She no longer spends her morning on the front porch with her Bible and her coffee. The smell in the air is not pleasant. The sound of the trucks, bulldozers, and drills preparing for the next blast, the sirens, the blasts themselves cover up the sound of the birds chirping. But the most pain comes when she looks across the way now, and sees the destruction of God’s creation.
She wonders what Bible they read.
Kathy Selvage and her mother live in Stevens, VA. Their lives were disrupted by the opening of a strip mine within direct sight of their homes. Several months later, the mine shut down due to bankruptcy. The site remains a desolate wasteland.

Show your support by sending this message to:

Governor Tim Kaine
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219

Dear Governor Kaine:
We, the residents and allies of Virginia’s coalfield communities urge you to use all the power and influence at your command to change the way strip mining occurs in Virginia by mandating
1) That there be no strip mining or coal traffic after 10 PM or before 6 AM;
2) That there be no blasting within 1,500 feet of any structure; and
3) A complete abolition of mountaintop removal and all other forms of steep-slope strip mining.
Finally, we invite you to join us in a flyover over southwestern Virginia to see the horrible destruction we live with every day.

Sincerely,

Gov. Kaine and Surface Mining

Becca Sender

“Virginia’s identity is its land,” says Virginia’s Governor Tim Kaine. In a speech at the 17th annual Environmental Virginia Symposium in April 2006, Gov. Kaine promised to protect the land, water, and air that he acknowledges define the state and its people. “When lands that are vital to the telling of our story, our history, and our culture vanish,” Kaine stated, “everybody loses.”

Kaine was elected in November 2005, and $88,000 of his campaign contributions came from Dominion, which proposes to build a new power plant in Wise County, VA, that will burn as much as two million tons of Virginia coal each year. Alpha Natural Resources, which donated $10,000 to Kaine’s campaign, is a leading extractor of Appalachian coal and is especially active in Wise County. James W. McGlothlin contributed $25,000 to Kaine’s campaign. McGlothlin is the founder of the United Company, which started surface coal mining in the 1970s. F.D. Robertson, a retired coal operator, donated $13,000 to the campaign. The Virginia Coal Association donated $10,000.

On July 19, 2006, Kaine announced a $2 million state grant toward developing the four-lane Coalfields Expressway in Virginia and a connector from it to Kentucky. The road is to be built in conjunction with surface mining of coal along its route.

Isn’t it curious that a governor with such ties to strip mining has promised to “preserve the natural, cultural, and historic resources that serve as the foundations of Virginia’s identity?” The centuries-old communities and traditions of Virginia’s coalfields are under attack from the practices of the rapacious coal industry.

Does Gov. Kaine’s leadership make you feel that your interests are being listened to and protected?

Activists blockade coal-fired power plant

by Matt Wallace

Inspired by Mountain Justice Summer and the ongoing campaign against the ill effects of strip mining in Virginia, activists with Earth First! and Rising Tide North America (RTNA) blockaded an aging American Electric Power (AEP) coal-burning facility at Carbo, in southwestern Virginia, for about six hours on July 10.
The Clinch River power plant is notorious for the millions of pounds of pollutants it spews into the air each year as well as for its use of coal from strip mines, which are devastating the region.
Protesters used a variety of methods to block the three-story-high bridge, the only access to the plant. One group stretched a rope across the bridge and dangled a platform over the edge, on which Patrick Garnett of Lexington, KY, was suspended. As that was set into place, an overloaded coal truck stopped on the bridge and two activists secured their bodies to the truck using heavy-duty locks.

Within minutes, several trucks laden with coal were backed up on the roads approaching the plant, as dozens of other protesters wearing dust masks flooded the site, bringing the crowd to about 75 people. The protesters carried signs reading “There are no jobs on a dead planet,” and a large banner that said, “The beauty of the mountains runs deeper then a coal seam.”
The protesters hoped to draw attention to the increasing devastation of the area’s ecosystems from mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining.
They demanded that AEP and the coal industry as a whole immediately shut down this facility and all other aging power plants; an end to all forms of strip mining, including mountaintop removal; and that there be “a nationwide response to the reality of global climate change marked by a move away from fossil fuels, transition towards cleaner sources of energy, and vigorous promotion of electricity conservation.”

Mountain Links: A Resource Center

By Colleen Cronin and Hannah Morgan

On the cool fall evening of September 20th, 25 people gathered in downtown Appalachia, VA to celebrate the grand opening of a resource center called Mountain Links. Activists have been working hard all summer to set up the resource center in this small town, which is nestled amongst the 202 active mining sites speckled throughout Wise County.
The center serves residents of Wise County and southwestern Virginia with a free library, internet access, and tutoring, community events, and as a gathering place for people to discuss mining issues and economic alternatives to coal. It occupies three rooms on Main Street in Appalachia, and is filled with used furniture and supplies.
Mountain Links, will offer free internet access, a library, free tutoring, and leisure activities. The space will provide information and a meeting space for community organizers to address mine related issues and to explore economic alternatives to the coal industry. It may also be used for public meetings, classes, workshops, and other events.
To start off, we are planning to have movie nights, discussion groups, tutoring sessions, public forums, and meetings with community activists and others working to deal with the local devastation of the land. More events and activities will develop as interest and demand grows.
The center welcomes a wide range of guests, including locals already outspoken against MTR, curious passersby’s surprised and intrigued who are by what we’re doing, and numerous teenagers who come in for free tutoring after school, or just to hang out. As the name implies, we’re here to link people together- people from neighboring hollers, from across the Appalachians, and from the different sides of electricity consumption. Mountain Links is here to provide resources for all to educate themselves on the connections between the disappearing mountains, coal dust that covers their porches, the dark storefronts, the disintegrating communities and the energy required for everyday excesses.
To keep the center running, we need your support! There are a variety of ways you can help, including fund raising, help with grant-writing, and donations of resources, supplies, and funds. One of our biggest needs is people! If you live nearby, we could use your help staffing the center or leading a class or event. For folks far away, please visit when you can and spread the word from wherever you are! You can also help find and write grants, or host a fund raiser in your hometown.
The space itself needs: furniture (chairs, bookshelves, small tables, a TV, DVD player, computers), resources (books, magazines, pamplets, videos) related to coal & mining, Appalachian culture, history, & ecology, small-scale agriculture & other economic possibilities, community and organizing, politics, reference books, etc.
Mountain Links can be reached by email at info@mountainlinksappalachia.org, by telephone at (434) 960-2080 or (781)308-2458, or by mail at P.O. Box 453, Appalachia, VA 24216. Thanks for your support!

-United Nations Sustainability Commission Hit with Reality

She had never been on a train before in her life. She had rarely been beyond the borders of West Virginia and Kentucky . And now, in May, Donetta Blankenship was on her way to New York City , to speak before the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) as it reviewed its “Energy for Sustainable Development” plans.
Donetta was traveling with ten other coalfield residents, including Patricia Feeney, who, before she joined OVEC staff, coordinated this trip to the UN, working with several groups in three states.
The coalfield delegation—six folks from West Virginian, four from Kentucky and one from Tennessee—presented their stories to civil society caucuses at the UN and met with U.S. State Department representatives and officials in the Department of Energy. They put a human face on the real tolls of our nation’s apparent energy policy: “cheap” energy, at any, usually hidden cost.
One of the first things they witnessed at the UN horrified them all. Jonathan Margolis, head of the US state department delegation to the CSD, ceded his speaking time to a vice president of Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Inc. It seems our government thinks “sustainable” is about sustaining mega-corporations’ bottom line, instead of about clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and societies where our kids have a chance at a healthy future.
Despite the rude start, overall, the trip was empowering for the participants. The coalfield delegation reminded the CSD, and delegates from all over the world, about human-level concerns. Some other people at the UN told them, “This is what the CSD is for— grassroots participation.” Our Appalachian Coalfield Delegation was the first group of impacted residents to participate in a CSD meeting! (The CSD was created to provide an avenue for grassroots participation at the UN. Before it’s founding, 14 years ago, the UN only recognized government delegates.)
The UN trip received quite a bit of publicity, including a spot on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and in the New York Post. A documentary filmmaker followed the group from Mingo County to New York City .
The delegation has commented that witnessing personal growth in one another was the best part of the trip. Bo Webb marveled on Donetta--shy Donetta, who was nervous the first time she spoke before state-level politicians. Here she was now, standing up in a room full of people at the United Nations, saying, “Excuse me, but I have to tell my story.” She was unapologetic and firm. She held up a jar of her water—black. She held up a picture of her family and explained how the sludge had made them sick. She inspired all on the trip.
Examples from the trip have inspired other communities to demand they be heard at all levels of governance. The group built alliances with communities in other regions of the United States and the world who are fighting the same cycle of exploitation and corporate takeover of their resources and lives— pushing them off their land, stealing their water.
The delegation left the UN with solidarity and ideas for strategy. They left revitalized and affirmed in the righteousness of the struggle we all share. They’ve already had a follow-up meeting, and they have started planning for the CSD next year, where they are preparing with other communities to lobby the corporate and government delegations more directly.
To each of you who donated to make this trip possible, thanks so much. Please consider supporting this effort again next year.