Foes
of mountaintop mining, rebuffed at local and state levels,taking
fight to Washington
By Mary Jo Shafer
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
August 2007
PHYLLIS, Ky. -- The curling dirt road to the home
of Rully and Erica Urias, near Kentucky’s eastern tip, is
a path through a changed landscape. Their home is surrounded by
strip mines that remove the tops of mountains to reach the underlying
coal seams and push dirt and rock into heads of the surrounding
hollows.
Rully and his mother Brenda, who lives next door,
have worked for coal companies. They don’t want to see all
mining go away, but they want current laws to be enforced and
they want mountaintop removal limited.
They say blasting routinely shakes their homes
and coal dust settles over everything, so that Brenda says she
“can’t even keep lawn furniture outside.” And
they worry about floods, erosion and water pollution from the
mines.
Since strip mining came to their road two years
ago, the family has watched their neighbors and relatives move
away. “People got tired of it,” Brenda said. “Most
people sold out.” (From left: Erica,
Brenda, Makayla and Rully Urias. Photo by Mary Jo Shafer)
But the Urias family is determined to stay, and
they have spoken out about the effects of mining. They have found
some allies in their fight, but most come from outside the Appalachian
coalfield – activists, authors and journalists who write
stories for national and regional newspapers and magazines.
“We get help from Louisville and Lexington,
but as far as around us, you won’t see a lot of support,”
said Rully. Their neighbors in Pike County are “told we’re
trying to take their jobs away from them,” Rully said.
Much the same has been said in the legislatures
of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, where efforts
to limit mountaintop removal have failed or never gotten off the
ground. So now the debate is moving to the halls of Congress,
where opponents think they have a better chance for change.
Chuck Nelson, of Sylvester, W. Va., an underground
miner who dislikes mountaintop removal, agreed that in his state
the coal industry is too powerful and intimidating for restrictions
to pass. He said a regional alliance of opponents could organize
communities across state lines and “overcome that power.”
For opponents, the term “mountaintop removal”
conjures up images of decapitated hills, fouled streams and a
landscape forever changed, not for the better.
For others, the practice means more developable
land for Central Appalachia, good-paying jobs and a well-managed
natural resource.
Because that view is widely held in the Appalachian
coalfield, opponents acknowledge that they must turn the tide
of coalfield opinion to be successful, even in Congress.
Widespread opposition from coalfield residents
to industry practices in the 1960s and 1970s helped lead to the
passage of the 1977 federal strip-mine law, but now supporters
of mountaintop removal point to the economic benefits of mining
and the development on reclaimed sites.
“Things flourish” where you have those
sorts of new developments, said Tom “Tick” Lewis of
Hazard, Ky., He cites local developments as diverse as a wildlife
management area where elk now roam, to sites for Wal-Marts, hospitals,
nursing homes, schools, industrial parks and golf courses.
Reclaimed land can be a “productive natural
resource” for grazing, wildlife habitat and forestry, said
Carl Zipper, director of the Powell
River Project at Virginia Tech, which works with the coal
industry to “enhance reclamation through research and education.”
Opponents say much of the land permitted for mountaintop
removal is far from infrastructure, making development unfeasible.
They also note that it is impossible to reclaim the diverse forest
ecosystem destroyed by mining, and long-term problems, like the
pollution of waterways, will persist even after reclamation is
over.
Lewis concedes that if mountaintop removal is
going on behind one’s house, then “it becomes more
personal.”
“We’re throwaway people”
The first thing a visitor sees when pulling into
the Urias family’s driveway, where their houses sit tucked
into a forested hollow, are boxes of bottled water stacked neatly
in the front yard.
The water is delivered to them by TECO
Coal Corp., they said, because, since the surface mining began
around their home, their water is unfit to use.
Several miles to the southwest, in Letcher County
near the Virginia border, mines operate behind the home Sam and
Evelyn Gilbert of Eolia, Ky. (Photo, by Mary Jo Shafer, shows
Sam Gilbert at an active and partially reclaimed mine)
The Gilberts successfully fought the permit for
a valley fill that would have been placed behind their home. But
they feel like they are up against powerful forces. “We’re
throwaway people. They look upon us as ‘the hell with them,
they’re of no benefit to us.’ The coal is more important,”
said Evelyn.
Sam has worked in underground mines, on strip
mines and in highway construction. He firmly declares that he
is not opposed to mining — it helped support him for decades.
But he thinks mountaintop removal is wrong. “Mountaintop
removal is done for greed,” he said.
Ten men from Eolia work on the site near the Gilberts’
house, Sam said. “They won’t say anything because
of their jobs,” he said. And many local residents still
live on land leased “cheaply” from the coal companies,
he said. “They can’t speak out,” for fear of
losing their leases, he said.
Gilbert said the fight to limit mountaintop removal
needs to involve all levels of government. Federal laws should
be passed and strictly enforced and local and state governments
should be held accountable for enforcing these laws, he said.
Gilbert and the Urias couple are members of Kentuckians for the
Commonwealth, a social-justice group opposed to mountaintop removal.
Turning public opinion
Mountaintop removal opponents have “emotion”
on their side while proponents have the facts, said Bill Caylor,
president of the Kentucky
Coal Association. “Emotions will trump facts just about
every time,” he said.
Because it is an emotional issue and there is
a “knee-jerk” perception that mountaintop removal
is bad, Caylor said he could envision public opinion turning.
Legislation could gain support and could be reintroduced over
and over until it progresses, he said.
Legislation
to limit mountaintop removal in Kentucky, by banning valley fills
that bury streams, has twice died in the state House Natural Resources
and Environment Committee.
In West Virginia, the other state where mountaintop
removal is prevalent, “It would be pointless to go to the
Legislature,” said Joe Lovett, executive director of the
Appalachian
Center for the Economy and the Environment.
Lovett said more limits on mountaintop removal
mining on the state level have “zero chance.” West
Virginia is “much more dominated by coal” than other
Appalachian states and coal is “spread throughout the state,”
he said.
Lovett says the strategy he follows is to use
lawsuits and permit challenges to “fight the worst abuses,
stop things as much as we can and hold the line until we get an
administration that would enforce the laws.”
Tennessee has a much smaller coal industry and
fewer mountaintop mines than the other three states, and has a
hearty tourism base, which could influence the political climate
on the issue. The state’s student legislature has submitted
legislation to ban all surface mining in the state. The bill has
yet to find a sponsor in the legislature.
Carol Judy of Clairfield, Tenn., said she doesn’t
“look for the political will” in her lifetime to make
real change. She compares the way the land in Appalachia has been
treated with how the people are treated.
“Our voice is ignored, or made fun of, or
belittled,” she said. “I think it’s so sad that
people in my community tell me that they can’t speak out.
It makes it look like it’s just a few oddballs” who
are opposed.
In southwest Virginia, that sense of isolation
is heightened, said Kathy Selvage, vice president of the Southern
Appalachian Mountain Stewards. “We’re lost,”
she said. “ Kentucky and West Virginia have achieved a degree
of exposure that southwest Virginia has not.”
Aligned with the Sierra
Club, Selvage’s group is headquartered in Appalachia,
Va., where in 2004 a three-year-old boy, Jeremy Davidson, was
killed when a half-ton boulder dislodged from a strip mine crashed
into his house while he slept.
That event helped to galvanize opposition in the
region, said Selvage. But, as in the other affected states, it
is hard for them to speak out because they feel intimidated, she
said. “It’s an ongoing conversation,” she said.
“People have to be nurtured.”
Selvage is not optimistic about change on the
state level. Politicians from the eastern part of the state “don’t
understand what we live with every day,” she said. “They
don’t come to southwest Virginia, don’t see the mountaintop
removal in our backyards.”
In Kentucky's Harlan and Letcher counties, on
the Virginia border, public opinon about mining and the environment
is deeply divided, according to polling
done for the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire
as part of a survey of certain counties in selected regions of
rural America. Harlan and Letcher were the counties chosen to
represent Appalachia.
The poll asked, "For the future of your community,
do you think it is more important to use natural resources to
create jobs, or to conserve natural resources for future generations?
In the two counties, 37 percent said it's more important to create
jobs, 33 percent chose "conserve natural resources"
and 30 percent volunteered that the two interests were equal.
Organizing for Washington
With prospects for state action poor, opponents
have directed their gaze to Washington. More than 100 traveled
there in May to lobby for federal legislation, the Clean Water
Protection Act, HR
2169. The law, which has at least 79 co-sponsors, would limit
mountaintop-removal mining by overturning a Bush administration
change to the Clean Water Act that reclassified mining waste and
made it acceptable to dump the debris into valleys, covering streams.
West Virginia’s Nelson said building an
alliance across state borders is crucial to turning public opinion.
Organizations and citizens should “come together and form
one coalition,” he said. Their influence would grow and
they could work together toward change, he said.
Nelson joined about 70 others at the Mountain
Justice Training Camp in the coal-laden Cumberland Plateau
of East Tennessee in May. For a week, organizers held workshops
and strategy sessions, shared stories, networked and planned for
the future.
Judy said she can see some hope in the younger
generation, like some of the attendees at the training camp. “These
kids are a testament that all is not well and they’re not
OK with the status quo,” she said.
While local foes of mountaintop removal value
the help they get from outside the coalfield, there can be tensions
when outsiders bring their activism to the mountains, said Julie
Shepherd, a North Carolina native who is an operations and production
assistant at WMMT Radio in Whitesburg, Ky.
Outsiders often don’t understand the complexity
of the issues and can unwittingly uphold stereotypes of the mountains,
Shepherd said. “Local people need to drive the movement,”
she said, adding that the tone and attitude of people from outside
the coalfield can come across as “We know what’s best.”
Shepherd said solutions could come from inside
the coalfield: “If the political climate was right, there
could be a local movement.”
Even if the fight moves outside the coalfield,
with federal legislators or state lawmakers from population centers
ultimately deciding the issue, both sides of the debate say affecting
public opinion is key.
Caylor, of the Kentucky Coal Association, said
environmental groups have deep pockets and powerful public relations
tools. “A vocal minority and the press” keep the issue
alive, while many of the outspoken opponents and the media lack
understanding about mining in general, he said. “These people
are just against mining, period,” he said.
For Appalachian residents, the issue is not black
or white, which is the way both opponents and supporters often
frame the debate, said Shepherd. “It’s a gray issue,”
she said. “It’s the environment, but it’s also
people’s livelihoods. There should be more dialogue, not
‘my way or the highway’.”
Caylor, of the Kentucky Coal Association, said
environmental groups have deep pockets and powerful public relations
tools. “A vocal minority and the press” keep the issue
alive, while many of the outspoken opponents and the media lack
understanding about mining in general, he said. “These people
are just against mining, period,” he said.
For Appalachian residents, the issue is not black
or white, which is the way both opponents and supporters often
frame the debate, said Shepherd. “It’s a gray issue,”
she said. “It’s the environment, but it’s also
people’s livelihoods. There should be more dialogue, not
‘my way or the highway’.”
Bluegrass-area legislator keeps trying to pass
law limiting mountaintop-removal mining
By Mary Jo Shafer, Institute for Rural Journalism
and Community Issues
WINCHESTER,
Ky. -- The Kentucky River, which flows through the district of
state Rep. Don Pasley of Winchester, left, has its headwaters in Eastern
Kentucky, home of the state’s main coalfield.
Downstream, residents of Central Kentucky are
feeling the effects of pollution from mountaintop-removal coal
mining, Pasley says, and he has been trying to do something about
it.
Pasley believes sediment and other pollutants
fouling the river are “directly related to mountaintop removal,”
because mine refuse enters streams that flow into the river and
Pasley’s district – Clark County and part of Madison
County.
Pasley said 750,000 people get their drinking
water from the river, including all of Lexington and Frankfort,
and all are affected by the pollution. Pasley also says the sedimentation
has increased water treatment costs and threatens navigational
dams that create pools from which cities draw water.
Pasley twice introduced legislation that would
have limited mountaintop removal by banning valley fills —
the practice he says is causing the pollution downstream. The
fills, in the heads of hollows, are made from rock and dirt blasted
and excavated from above.
Pasley’s latest measure, House
Bill 385, died this year in the House Natural Resources and
Environment Committee, mainly because the chairman, Rep.
Jim Gooch of Providence, would not let it have a hearing.
Pasley said Gooch, a fellow Democrat, is “much
more sympathetic to the coal companies.” Gooch represents
a coal-producing region in Western Kentucky, site of the state’s
other coalfield.
If the bill could just get out of committee, Pasley
said, it might pass the House. “I think it would be very,
very close.”
Twelve co-sponsors signed on to Pasley’s
bill. None were from Eastern Kentucky, where it met stiff resistance
from lawmakers.
Pasley said it is unlikely that any coalfield
legislator will sign on to the legislation.
“It’s a political hot potato for them,”
he said. “They see the destruction, but the region is economically
dependent on coal mining. The economics are such that they can’t
take a stand against it.”
A
longtime coalfield lawmaker and former underground miner, Rep.
Robin Webb, D-Grayson, right, said the mining industry
is already highly regulated and new laws are not needed.
A balance can be struck between care of the environment
and mining, and water systems of the state can be protected under
existing laws, which require permits and reclamation, she said.
“I would hate to see a carte blanche prohibition on mountaintop
removal.” Looking at each proposal “case by case is
proper.”
Mining provides jobs to residents who want to
stay in the region, she said. And that doesn’t mean they
don’t care about the environment. “It’s my water,
I’m drinking it,” she said. “My family settled
here 200 years ago. This is my home.”
Most residents want to protect the land, “but
they also want to be able to stay there,” she said. “It’s
a conflict, a legitimate one, for those of us who love the mountains.
I love the mining industry, but I love the mountains too.”
Current laws provide the correct balance, she
said, noting the benefits the industry provides, such as the low
electricity rates from power plants fired by Kentucky coal. “When
the power rates go up, I hear it, too,” she said. “There’s
lots of political layers there.”
Pasley says he won’t give up, but said that
in order for any such legislation to pass, public support is key.
“You have to get public support at the local level because
legislators listen to their constituents, ” he said. Pasley
said he hopes for “a tipping point” at which public
opinion turns legislative opinion, and said the time is right
for environmental legislation.
He said mountaintop removal is already a topic
that resonates with his constituents, and he hopes voters in Eastern
Kentucky will begin to see likewise. The coal industry is powerful
and wealthy and money affects politics, he said, but he is optimistic
that the “grassroots can overcome money” in advocating
change.
He said advocates should note that there are other
ways to mine coal, and create more jobs in the process. “Mountaintop
removal is such a small percentage of coal mining in Kentucky,
but it has such a devastating impact on the mountains and the
environment,” he said.
He also wants more Kentuckians to see the effects
of mountaintop removal firsthand, including the mine sites, and
hopes it can become a campaign issue. If voters and public opinion
were mobilized, he said, that could compel a “dramatic change
in politics.”
Mountains ‘good for looking at’ but
don’t put food on table, mining advocate says
By Mary Jo Shafer, Institute for Rural Journalism
and Community Issues
WHITESBURG, Ky. -- Tom “Tick” Lewis knows these hills and the winding roads that weave through them with the sure familiarity of someone born and raised here.
He points out old company towns, active underground mines, coal tipples and rows of tidy houses and neat Main Streets and their history. This region is his home. (Encarta map)
He doesn’t see anything wrong with strip
mining or its mountaintop-removal form, and thinks most local
residents see likewise. In the early morning rush at McDonald’s,
he pointed to a group of men clustered at a row of tables. All
of them agree with him, he said, and they include retired miners,
school board members, teachers and other people involved in the
civic life of the community.
Lewis worked for decades in the coal industry,
at strip mines, as a worker’s compensation arbitrator and
as deputy state commissioner, and now in insurance. He is galled
by the criticism of mining that comes from outside the mountains.
“It’s our resource and we ought to
be able to use it,” he said, noting that people opposed
to mountaintop removal still use the cheap electricity it provides
-- and saying that much criticism comes from people who have no
understanding of coal mining.
Lewis says reclamation is largely successful and
he believes that mountaintop removal brings more good than bad
to Eastern Kentucky – including flatter land for development.
He drove up to the Raven Rock golf course to illustrate
this point. Rolling hills dotted with golfers and golf carts rose
into view. He also stopped off at the new Pine Mountain High School
and Whitesburg’s new industrial park, all built on former
mining sites.
Coal is the engine of Eastern Kentucky’s
economy, said Lewis and coal mining provides many residents with
“great jobs,” that have “raised the standard
of living in the area.”
To make his point, he drives through Jenkins.
Tidy homes graced with nice cars, neat yards and gardens cluster
in the bottomlands. All this is possible because of the coal industry,
he said, adding that the scene contradicts the stereotypical view
of impoverished Appalachia.
Lewis says he believes that the people living
in these and other hollows in Central Appalachia have a right
to mine coal and provide for their families, to use these mountains,
these resources, as they see fit.
He said mountains are “good for looking
at but that doesn’t put food on your table.”
To see areas disturbed by mining in Central
Appalachia, use any Web mapping service to locate Williamsson,
W.Va., then select Aerial or Satellite view. The white areas that
may appear to be clouds, in a southwest-to-northeast band on the
map, are actually surface mines. Not all involve mountaintop-removal
mining. For the Web site of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining,
click here.
