Mountaintop Removal Damage via RAMPS

I love the smell of direct action in the morning.

Last week, I was part of Earth First! and Northern Rockies Rising Tide taking over the governor of Montana’s offices in protest of tar sands development, and this morning, the RAMPS Campaign put a couple of tree-sitters up on Coal River Mountain to stop mountaintop removal coal mining.

The tree-sit has stopped Alpha Natural Resources strip mining operations on Coal River Mountain. Catherine-Ann MacDougal and Becks Kolins currently are sitting in trees 80 feet off the ground about 300 feet from active blasting operations.

Their banners read “STOP STRIP MINING” and “FOR JUDY BONDS.”

via americanswhotellthetruth.org

Judy Bonds was an Appalachian leader in the anti-mountaintop removal fight who died of cancer earlier this year.

Judy’s daughter, Lisa Henderson, said in support of the tree-sit, “I hope that today’s actions serve as a symbol that the struggle to live peacefully and pollution-free in the Coal River Valley did not end when my mother’s life did.  My mother and I often compared the fight to survive here on Coal River to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.  I am sure that generations from now, our children will look back on this movement also and the actions of the people involved, and ask the question of their elders, ‘Whose side were you on?’”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 20th, 2011
Contact: Mathew Louis-Rosenberg, 304-924-1836

Activists Block Mining Operations on Coal River Mountain Call for end to strip mining in the Coal River Watershed

MARFORK, W.Va. – Two protesters associated with the RAMPS Campaign halted blasting on a portion of Alpha Natural Resources’ Bee Tree mountaintop removal mine on Coal River Mountain today by ascending two trees.  Catherine-Ann MacDougal, 24, and Becks Kolins, 21, are on platforms approximately 80 feet off the ground within 300 feet of active blasting on the mine.  The banners hanging from their platforms read “Stop Strip Mining” and “For Judy Bonds” in honor of strip mining activist Julia “Judy” Bonds of Packsville, W.Va. who died of cancer earlier this year.  The activists demand that Alpha Natural Resources stop strip mining on Coal River Mountain and that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection prohibit future strip mining in the Coal River Watershed.

“I feel, with the keen urgency of extinction, that Alpha Natural Resources cannot be allowed to tear apart Coal River Mountain and allow all those living below it to suffer for their profits. The Coal River watershed cannot tolerate any more damage. There is no way that I can begin to detail the comprehensive destruction that surface mining and mountaintop removal wreak on the forest ecosystem of the southern Appalachian mountains,” said Catherine-Ann MacDougal.

Coal River Mountain is the last major intact mountain in the watershed, which encompasses roughly 570,000 acres in the heart of the southern WV coalfields.  Nearly a quarter of total land area in the watershed is being mined or permitted to be mined in the future, including over 5,000 acres of Coal River Mountain.  As of January 2011, Marfork Coal Company, a subsidiary of Alpha, has destroyed about 75 acres of Coal River Mountain on the Bee Tree permit, the only active mountaintop removal permit on the mountain.  Activists say they are determined to prevent further strip-mining.

Elias Schewel, 27, and Junior Walk, 21, are supporting the sitters from the base of their trees.   Walk, who grew up in Eunice W.Va. at the foot of Coal River Mountain says that he was inspired to take action, in part, by his lifelong relationship with Judy Bonds.

“The last two families to be driven out of this holler we’re in today were Judy Bonds and my great uncle and they both died of lung cancer. Judy spoke often about how hard it was to leave, but black water spill after black water spill, the blasting dust clouds, and fears for the health of her family forced her out. Packsville is gone. We’re not just losing our clean air and clean water. We’re losing our communities, our history, and our culture.”

Judy Bonds’ fears of the health impacts from coal operations have been increasingly backed up by research from WVU.  A recent public health study found a correlation between residence in a mountaintop removal area and higher rates of birth defects, even accounting for other socio-economic factors(i).  Public health research has linked residence in coal-impacted regions to increased rates of cancer, kidney disease, and some chronic illnesses, confirming long-held community concerns.(ii)(iii)

“Those who are drinking tainted water, breathing coal dust, and watching the mountains fall around them don’t need a scientific study to tell them what’s wrong,” noted MacDougal. Fellow tree sitter Becks Kolins remembers their first visit to the home of a Coal River Valley resident last year.

“He showed me his yearbook and pointed out everyone that had gotten cancer. The only teachers that hadn’t gotten cancer had made a point of not drinking the water.”

Lisa Henderson, Judy Bonds’ daughter and Coal River Valley resident, sees this action as a continuation of her mother’s work.

“I hope that today’s actions serve as a symbol that the struggle to live peacefully and pollution-free in the Coal River Valley did not end when my mother’s life did.  My mother and I often compared the fight to survive here on Coal River to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.  I am sure that generations from now, our children will look back on this movement also and the actions of the people involved, and ask the question of their elders, ‘Whose side were you on?’”

RAMPS (Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival) is a non-violent direct action campaign based in southern West Virginia dedicated to ending all forms of strip-mining in Appalachia.  Ongoing updates about this action will be available at www.rampscampaign.org.

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i M. Ahern, M. Hendryx, J. Conley, E. Fedorko, A. Ducatman, and K. Zullig, “The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996-2003” Environmental Research in press, 2011 ii N.P. Hitt, M. Hendryx, “Ecological integrity of streams related to human cancer mortality rates.” Ecohealth. 2010 Aug;7(1):91-104.
iii M. Ahern, M. Hendryx, ““Relations between Health Indicators and Residential Proximity to Coal Mining in West Virginia.” American Journal of Public Health, 2008.

via RAMPS

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MARFORK, W.Va. – Protestors associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice have locked to and shut down a highwall miner on Coal River Mountain today. Colin Flood, 22, and Katie Huszcza, 21, are locked to the mining equipment on Massey Energy’s Bee Tree Surface Mine, near to the Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment. Their banner states “Save Coal River Mountain” alongside images of ginseng, a morel, a deer and a bear.

The human rights activists locked down in order to bring attention to the many local resources that will be lost if blasting on Coal River Mountain continues. This destruction led the four protesters, including 22-year-old Jimmy Tobias and 20-year-old Sophie Kern, both of whom acted as direct support, to take part in the action. “These mountains are home to some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world and contain a variety of precious flora and fauna including edible and medicinal plants that can save lives, a wide array of extremely nutritious mushrooms, old growth forest and an abundance of deer and trout,” Huszcza said. “Coal River Mountain is priceless.”

Local resident Ed Wiley laments the loss of wildlife caused by the construction of the Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment, built in what was once some of the densest, oldest forest on the mountain.

“You could look off through the woods there and see a big Mamma bear with three or four cubs,” he says “But now they go on in there and remove the timber, and then start removing the overburden, and Momma bears with their cubs don’t come out of their dens until about the end of May, so they’re getting buried alive.”

“When the timber is gone, when the topsoil is gone, when the air and water are destroyed, the less than 4 percent of our nation’s energy needs that mountaintop removal provides will be small consolation,” said Flood, one of the four protestors, “The coal companies and land companies are blasting this land, ruining its rivers and poisoning its people for the sake of flat screen TVs, pick-up trucks and profit margins.”

The activists are spotlighting dangers associated with the massive Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment, which is permitted to contain 8.2 billion gallons of toxic coal waste and estimates put the current level at seven billion gallons. Brushy Fork’s foundation is built on a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines. If the foundation were to collapse, as in Martin Co., Ky., the slurry would engulf communities as far as 14 miles away, according to Marfork Coal Co.’s emergency warning plan regarding the impoundment.

“The Brushy Fork sludge dam places the downstream communities in imminent danger. The threat of being inundated by a wall of toxic sludge is always present. Blasting next to this dam increases this risk at the same that it destroys the opportunity for renewable wind energy,” said Vernon Haltom, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch, in reference to the Coal River Wind Project.

“The protesters expect a long fight before blasting on Coal River Mountain stops and they remain committed to that fight,” said Tobias, one of the members of the support team. “This is a fight for the heart of Appalachia and the soul of America,” he said. “Land and freedom have always gone hand in hand. When you strip bare the land, you strip bare freedom. We won’t stop until the land is safe in the hands of those in the community who care for it.”

“It [the destruction of wilderness] makes mountaintop removal an act of treason,” Flood said.

Climate Ground Zero’s action campaign, begun in February of last year, has kept up a sustained series of direct actions since that time, continuing decades-long resistance to strip mining in Appalachia.

This week, we commemorated the 50 year anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins that were an integral part of the civil disobedience phase of the civil rights movement. Many of the students that participated in those sit-ins were trained at the Highlander School in Tennessee near Coal River Mountain tree-sitter Eric Blevin’s home.

As we ponder our next steps in the climate action and climate justice movements, we need to remember that this sort of large scale change requires sacrifice. With sacrifice, we need support. The civil rights activists risked their lives fighting segregation in the south. Many spent long periods of time in jail. During the Greensboro sit-ins, violence and harassment of protesters often escalated.

So far, the coal industry and their political allies, inside and out of Appalachia, are fighting the anti-mountaintop removal legally (both criminal and civil), often resulting in jail time and fines. There have also been threats and acts of violence directed at community members, organizers and activists in the coalfields. Eric and his fellow tree-sitters sat in 60 ft. trees for over a week while coal company employees harassed and abused them with constant noise, bright lights, tree shaking and threats of spraying them down with fire hoses. At the end of their tree-sit, Massey Energy has sued them for $75,000 and filed for a temporary restraining order in federal court.

To me, there are a number of obvious parallels to the Greensboro sit-ins and the Coal River tree-sits. Like our predecessors in the civil rights movement, the anti-mountaintop removal movement has drawn a line in the sand to end the “pervasive and irreversible impacts” of mountaintop removal and can’t give up.

Here’s Eric’s letter from a jail in southern West Virginia:

This is in response to the article in Saturday’s paper about Amber and I coming down from our tree sit and the letter about paid, outsider environmentalists who support the EPA, which I read while sitting in the Southern Regional Jail.

I am not an outsider. I am an Appalachian. Virginia-based Massey Energy is an outsider. The people who live in the mountains and work on the mine sites work harder, longer hours and make less money than those who work at Massey’s headquarters in Richmond. All the people here should control how the land around them is used and they should profit the most from it, not people in an office far away who aren’t as impacted by the decisions they make that destroy our mountains.

I and most activists I know are not paid. We are volunteers. Groups like Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero help raise funds for legal fees and action supplies, but don’t pay people. Their money is donated by people who support the abolishment of mountaintop removal. They have budgets of just a few thousand dollars each. Massey has billions of dollars. They recently laid off workers and raised CEO Don Blankenship’s salary.

I and most activists I know do not support the EPA. They are not doing enough to stop the destruction of our mountains. While they review permits, the explosions are still going off in our home every day.

I climbed a tree to defend God’s beautiful divine creations: the people who live below the Brushy Fork sludge impoundment being threatened with imminent death by the blasting, the plants and animals being slaughtered, Coal River Mountain, our air and our water. The actions of my friends and I were nonviolent and defensive. Massey’s actions are violent and offensive. They blasted air horns and sirens at us in the trees almost nonstop for days on end. They have said that 998 people will die if the dam there fails, yet they set off explosives near it. It is an unlined earthen dam and those fail, like the one operated by TVA near my home in Tennessee that spilled 1.6 billion gallons of coal waste just over a year ago, practically destroying an entire community. Brush Fork holds back over 7 billion gallons, for now. It may not hold it back much longer if we don’t stop the blasting.

Eric Blevins

Eric Blevins stopping MTR on Coal River Mountain

Activists will most likely be undeterred by Massey’s legal actions.

Please donate to support the ongoing legal battles.

Eric Blevins Stopping the Blasting

Amber stopping blasting on Coal River Mountain

Yesterday after meeting with coalfield activists, WV Gov. Joe issued a moratorium on Massey’s use of sound machines and asked the WV state police and Raleigh County prosecutors to investigate whether Massey was endangering the sitters lives with their noise abuse.

Coal River Mountain Map

Nine-Day Tree Sit Ends, Sitters Vow Not Over Until Blasting Stops
January 29, 2010

PETTUS, WVa—After blocking Massey Energy’s operations on the Bee Tree Permit for nine days, Amber Nitchman, 19, and Eric Blevins, 28 descended from their respective trees. They had occupied the two oak trees—originally accompanied by a third tree sitter, David Aaron Smith, 23—to protest mountaintop removal and the blasting of Coal River Mountain. Upon descent, they were immediately arrested by West Virginia State Troopers. The sitters’ decision to leave the trees was made in light of the recent drop in temperature.

After a week of Massey security harassing the sitters with deafening sirens and air horns, a call-in pressure campaign was launched by Climate Ground Zero, Mountain Justice and other anti-mountaintop removal groups. The receipt of hundreds of calls from around the country led to an emergency meeting with Climate Ground Zero volunteers, the Raleigh County prosecutor and Governor Manchin. The meeting resulted in the moratorium and a call for an investigation of the abuse. The tree sit represents Climate Ground Zero’s most sustained intervention in mountaintop removal mining operations since its campaign of nonviolent direct action began last February. Volunteers know that the fight is far from over and expect work to commence on the Bee Tree site immediately. However, they see this tree sit as a victory. “It halted blasting for nine days. I think they’ve wildly succeeded with their goals,” said Climate Ground Zero volunteer Mike Bowersox. In a final communication from her perch, Nitchman captured the group’s resolve. “Its not over until the blasting is stopped,” she said.

On Jan. 26, anti-mountaintop removal activists met with WV Gov. Joe Manchin and asked that he do something about the noise abuse. Manchin’s public statement after the meeting was “We will not in any way, shape or form in this state of West Virginia tolerate any violence against anyone on any side. If you’re going to have the dialogue, have respect for each other.”

So far the abuses have not stopped.

Today a helicopter did a flyover of the tree sit, check out the pictures here.

Call Massey and Demand a Stop to Their Illegal Abuses

In response to Massey Energy’s harmful abuse of the Coal River Mountain tree sitters, call Massey’s international headquarters Monday, Jan. 25, starting at 9 a.m. and demand they immediately stop illegally using noisemakers to harass the tree sitters.

Can you call Massey?

Call Massey NOW and ask for
Baxter Phillips, President 1804-788-1807. If you can’t reach him, call the switch board at:
(804) 788-1800 -

After four days 60 ft up in the air, the treesitters, David Aaron Smith, 23, Amber Nitchman, 19 and Eric Blevins, 28, are still going strong. Massey’s sleep deprivation by air horn isn’t making things easy, and the sleet, fog, mist, and rain aren’t helping either – but every time that people have talked to them, they sound upbeat and steadfast. The sitters plan to endure the discomforts created by Massey security and the weather and hold out for as long as possible to defend Coal River Mountain.

Instead of permanently ending blasting on Coal River, Massey is trying to harass the sitters into leaving using the sound machine, hitting the platforms with a rope, cutting down nearby trees and constant flood lights. Some of the harassment has stopped, but the sound machine continues, possibly causing permanent hearing loss. We need to call Massey’s international headquarters Monday, Jan. 25, starting at 9 a.m. and demand they immediately stop illegally using noisemakers to harass the tree sitters.

The following is a sample script for the call:

Hi, I am calling to demand that Massey Energy halt blasting on Coal River Mountain and the abuse of the three tree-sitters occupying Massey’s Bee Tree property. Security personnel have been incessantly blasting noise from an air horn to keep the tree-sitters awake. This puts both the sitters and the miners at the site at risk for hearing loss, and could be considered a felony under West Virginia state law. Also at risk are the lives of the 998 people who Massey predicts will be killed should the 8.2 billion gallon Brushy Fork Impoundment fail. To dynamite in the surrounding area is to gamble with the lives of the people of the Coal River Valley. The mountains of Appalachia soak up water and act as a water filtration system for millions of Americans inside of and surrounding Appalachia. To release toxins into Appalachia’s waterways puts the health of these millions in jeopardy. Please stop this abuse of our forests and our health and halt the blasting..

Let us know you called by submitted this form at the bottom of this <a href="http://climategroundzero.net/2010/01/callmasseyonjan25/

“>link

Check out this brief video of the tree sit set up:

Yesterday, West Virginia police arrested two ground support and left the area. After their departure Massey began clearing trees around the tree sit making room for cherry picker to extract the sitters. For unknown reasons, the cherry picker left the premises. Too rough a terrain? Weather? The tree-sitters are currently not located on the permit, but close to it. Regulations do require that no blasting occur when individuals are 300 feet from the blast area. The trees’ location on Coal River Mountain directly impedes on Massey Energy’s attempt to build an access road to an impoundment where the toxic leftovers from coal processing (or, “slurry”) are being held back from the communities below. Their banners state: “EPA: Halt the Blasting”, “Windmills Not Toxic Spills”, and “Save Coal River Mountain.”

In Charleston yesterday, before the Blankenship vs. Kennedy debate, a group dropped a banner off of the bridge over the Kanawha River. The action was in solidarity with the tree sit.

It’s ON! This is how 2010 begins in the Coal River Valley, with a non-violent bang not a whimper.

After almost a year of sustained direct actions in southern West Virginia, three Climate Ground Zero activists scaled trees to stop blasting on Coal River Mountain. David Aaron Smith, 23, Amber Nitchman, 19 and Eric Blevins, 28 are on platforms approximately 60 feet up three tulip poplar trees. They are located next to where Massey Energy is blasting to build an access road to the Brushy Fork Impoundment on its Bee Tree Strip Mine. Their banners read: “EPA Stop the Blasting,” and “Windmills Not Toxic Spills.”

In the past two weeks, mountaintop removal coal mining has thrust itself into the national consciousness with an article in the prestigious science journal Science calling for a ban on mountaintop removal, a feature on the popular comedy show The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert and tonight’s debate between Massey CEO Don Blankenship and environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the University of Charleston. Never before has MTR received such scrutiny.

Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a MTR permit in West Virginia signaling the weakening of their position on the issue. EPA inaction for decades has left over 500 mountains in Appalachia barren moonscape, poisoned numerous communities and profiting mining execs throughout the region. Obama’s EPA had promised to act on MTR, but has yet to take any significant steps to outlaw the practice. Likewise, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had failed to even visit the region or do a flyover of affected areas.
The tree sitters are committed to staying until the blasting ends on Coal River Mountain.

Currently, a winter action camp is underway at Climate Ground Zero in Rock Creek, WV and more actions are expected throughout 2010. It’s going to be a kick ass year.

Tree Sit on Coal River Mountain Strip Mine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kim Ellis – 304 854 7372
Email: news@climategroundzero.org
Note: For more info, see www.mountainjustice.org, www.climategroundzero.org, www.ilovemountains.org

“Coal River Mountain was the last mountain around here that hasn’t been touched and they could’ve been using it for windmills…But Massey wants to get that coal. It seems like they just don’t care about the populace. Just the land and their checkbook.”
- Richard Bradford

MARFORK, W.Va. – Protestors associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice halted blasting on Coal River Mountain today with a three-person tree-sit. David Aaron Smith, 23, Amber Nitchman, 19 and Eric Blevins, 28 are on platforms approximately 60 feet up two tulip poplars and an oak tree. The mountain has become a rallying point for local activists, representing for many the cleaner, more sustainable possibilities of wind energy. Their banners state: “EPA Stop the Blasting”, “Windmills Not Toxic Spills”, and “Save Coal River Mtn.”

The sitters are calling for the EPA to protect American air and water by putting an end to mountaintop removal and encouraging the development of clean energy production in central Appalachia. The lack of EPA enforcement combined with Dr. Margaret Palmer’s findings, published in Science Magazine’s January issue, that “Considering environmental impacts of MTM/VF[mountaintop mining/valley fill], in combination with evidence that the health of people living in surface-mining regions of the central Appalachians is compromised by mining activities, we conclude that MTM/VF permits should not be granted,” encouraged Joshua Graupera, a member of the support team, to take part in this action. He said, “I knew that until I took an active role in the struggle to end MTR, I was passively condoning the poisoning and displacement of countless communities.”

Massey Energy’s blasting on the Bee Tree Strip Mine threatens both the possibility of wind power on Coal River Mountain and the foundations of the nearby Brushy Fork impoundment. “The government has given them [Massey Energy] permission to blast next to a dam full of toxic coal waste that will kill 998 people if it fails,” said Blevins, who works with Mountain Justice. The Brushy Fork Impoundment, permitted to contain over nine billion gallons of toxic coal waste, lies on a honeycomb of abandoned deep mines. If the foundation collapses the coal slurry will blow out from all sides of Coal River Mountain, harming communities in the mountain’s periphery, as occurred at Massey’s Big Branch slurry impoundment in Kentucky.

“Brushy Fork sludge dam places the downstream communities in imminent danger. The threat of being inundated by a wall of toxic sludge is always present. Blasting next to this dam increases the risk as well as destroying the opportunity for renewable wind energy,” said Coal River Mountain Watch’s Vernon Haltom. According to the Coal River Wind Project the wind energy produced by a turbine farm on Coal River Mountain could power 70,000 homes, provide permanent jobs for local residents and annually bring over a million more dollars in tax revenue to Raleigh County than coal currently does.

The sitters plan to remain in the trees as long as it takes to stop blasting on Coal River Mountain. Climate Ground Zero’s action campaign, begun in February of last year, has kept up a sustained series of direct actions since that time, continuing the decades-long resistance of dedicated individuals and groups like Mountain Justice to strip mining in Appalachia.

The group, Philadelphia Coalition Against Coal, was demanding that the EPA reject all new permits for mountaintop removal as well as intervene to stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain. They even mocked up a few example citations to illustrate to EPA what they should be doing.

After a few hours of flyering the employees and others passing by, Jeff Lapp, EPA staff in the Watershed division came down to speak with the youth.  Read more about their conversation here

You will recall that the EPA is holding 79 permits for “enhanced review”, and of those 23 fall within the Region 3 jurisdiction. Lapp was able to clarify the status of these permits and invited the group to sit down and meet with him to discuss their concerns. The group happily accepted this offer and gave him a letter they had prepared as well as the mock citations.

The group also demanded that the EPA intervene to stop blasting on Coal River Mountain which has been the target of much recent grassroots pressure.

UPDATE: Late in the day Friday, EPA sent a letter to the operator of this mine, Marfork Coal (Massey Energy subsidiary) demanding answers to some very tough questions. Read Dana’s blog for more on the letter.

Stay tuned for a report back from their meeting, the Region 3 office includes West Virginia and Virginia, so its a critical decision-maker on the future of MTR operations in these states.

The activists were demanding that Ms.Jackson end blasting on Coal River Mountain in Coal River, WV. The mountain is the site of a campaign by local residents for a commercial-scale wind farm. A wind resources assessment and economic study commissioned by the group Coal River Mountain Watch in 2008 revealed that Coal River Mountain has enough wind potential to provide electricity for over 85,000 homes.

Instead, the EPA has allowed Massey Energy, one of the largest coal producers in the country, to begin blasting at Coal River Mountain as part of mountaintop removal mining excavation. The blasting is occurring near the Brushy Fork impoundment, the largest slurry dam in Appalachia. Critics of mountaintop removal argue that an estimated 1,000 lives are at risk if the dam at Brushy Fork were to fail. Last December, a containment pond in Kingston, Tennessee burst, flooding the area with over one billion gallons of coal ash sludge, producing the largest environmental disaster in United States history.

Attendees to the APHA’s annual meeting were given flyers on their way into the opening session urging them to “Tell Lisa Jackson: Save Coal River Mountain.” Ms. Jackson and the EPA have been the targets of a campaign by a coalition of environmental groups working to end mountaintop removal for several months.

Why would I fly across the country on my own dime knowing I would most likely end up in jail in one of the poorest parts of America?

Well, have you ever heard of MTR?

Don’t feel bad, my friends are intelligent well-read and informed people, but most of them had never heard of MTR (Mountain Top Removal) either.

So, I went to Coal River to help bring much needed attention to this hidden, criminal (but somehow legal) form of mining. I was honored to be joining an inspiringly brave group of concerned Americans, which included – NASA climate scientist James Hansen who was among the first to sound the alarm on the climate crisis. The sharp, charismatic, 94 year old, former West Virginia U.S. Representative and Secretary of State Ken Hechler, who was the first congressman to introduce a Federal bill to abolish strip mining in 1971. (If passed the bill could have prevented this mess we find ourselves in). And Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforests Action Network who is committed to ending to this terrible, destructive practice. I was deeply moved to be arrested with those affected by MTR in Kentucky, and the many local residents fighting for their very lives, including a half dozen senior citizens, canes, walkers and all.

Me with Dr. James Hansen at Marsh Fork Elementary School

Mountain Top Removal is a devastatingly destructive form of mining and has already destroyed 2,000,000 acres in the Appalachian Mountains.

Coal companies have literally blown up over 500 mountain tops to access the coal seams and then dumped the refuse into the valleys below, killing over 3000 miles of HEADWATER streams. The EPA just gave the go ahead for an additional 42 mountaintops to be blown off with another 6 permits pending.

Mountain Top Removal leaves behind a virtual hideous moonscape of devastated earth, billions of gallons of poisonous toxic sludge, and boarded up towns with dramatically high rates of cancer.

Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for, and am deeply indebted to the miners working in coalmines and on MTR projects who risk their lives daily to bring power to our country. I understand they feel threatened by anything that might take away their jobs. And, I don’t want to see them lose more jobs, as 75% of mining jobs have already been lost to the machines and explosives of MTR.

While it takes fewer miners to remove coal with Mountain Top Removal there are just as many dangers, accidents and fatalities! It is a cheaper way for the companies to mine and that’s why it’s becoming so pervasive.

Yesterday, I received this email from a woman in Virginia -

Dear Daryl,
Thank you so much for coming to West Virginia and trying to save our mountains from Mountain top removal. I am a 9th generation Appalachian and it pains us to see what is happening. If it was not for the Internet I wouldn’t have known about your efforts. Massey has quite a bit of influence of the local media in the coalfields. I am sorry you were arrested but I thank you for standing up for what is right.  We need to work on sustainable communities here in the mountains so that coal miners will have opportunities for jobs not so dangerous. My brother works, when he can’t find anything else, at the mines driving the large dump trucks that haul the coal out of the pits. It’s dangerous work even if you are not underground. You just wouldn’t believe the equipment they give them to work with. This one site he was in this massive huge dump truck that the floorboard was rusted out with open holes. Rocks would fly back into the cab from the tires. And when it rains, it’s a mudslide. One of his co -workers was killed when the dump truck went over an embankment last year. Reporting gets you fired. And yet these workers will defend the job because there is nothing else. So thank you for standing up with us. We do appreciate it.

Then there’s the sickness…

According to WVU’s institute for health policy research, coal county residents are more likely to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases, cancers and generally suffer from excess numbers of premature death. There’s a high cancer risk for up to 1 out of every 50 Americans living near the more than 100 billion gallons of toxic sludge in the clay-lined and unlined  (the majority unlined) coal ash landfills and slurry ponds, such as the TVA Kingston ash sludge landfill that collapsed into the Emory River in December.

Tennessee Valley Authority officials consistently have said the ash spilled in December from the utility’s Kingston Fossil Plant wet landfill in Harriman, Tenn., and in January from its Widows Creek pond in Stevenson, Ala., is non-hazardous…  but after the spill, regulatory and independent testing have found high levels of toxicity in the spilled waste and raw water where the two spills occurred. 31 of the landfills and slurry ponds in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are on or near major waterways!

The slurry pond above the Marsh fork elementary school where we held our protest holds 2.8 billion gallons (it’s one of the smallest ponds – one nearby in brushing fork holds 9 billion gallons) of sludge in unlined pits containing arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.

Marsh Fork Elementary School site and toxic holding pond

Tragically but predictably in coal river valley, the children are often sick with headaches and asthma and of the 200 students and teachers at Marsh fork elementary school cancer rates are higher than average.

Three teachers have died from cancer and one is struggling with disease now.

In 2005 one student died from ovarian cancer at age seventeen and another was still battling ovarian cancer.

Today I received this from a man in Raleigh County, West Virginia –

West Virginia. It is hell.
Every morning a 6 am my cat starts coughing. My eyes burn, my nose burns (sometimes bleeds), I get ill, and my health continues to fall apart. I got two forms of cancer, I can’t drink the water.. and we are 15 miles from Marsha Fork where they are making (was supposed to be shut down) a cyanide based pesticide that in an accident killed 1800 people in India. My kid is lead poisoned, my wife is- and in a mile radius 10 people have had heart attacks or died from whatever is here. The dust is full of arsenic and the Massey power plants create a blue haze which is really sulfuric acid. EPA won’t come near this place. It is owned by the coal industry. Thousands, who live here and are dying from 100 miles of rivers under coal sludge, Do the earth a favor and check on this and if you feel like improving our life send us a ticket out of here. I am sending you a picture of my son. He is being poisoned here. It breaks my heart. We cannot even get workman’s comp and have huge families. We are the poor of southern West Virginia..

State regulators are telling the people that it’s an “improvement” to flatten a forested mountain, seed it with grass and hope that some shrubs will grow – and then allow hunters who have signed “the appropriate waivers of liability, indemnifications and assumptions of risks” to hunt whatever animals might choose to inhabit such barren fields.

As humorist Dave Barry says, we’re not making this up, although we wish we were.

Let me make one thing clear…  there is no such thing as clean coal!!!

I wish President Obama would stop using the term and take CEQ chief Nancy Sutley and EPA head Lisa Jackson to visit these unfortunate mining sites under their jurisdiction.

When we flip the switch to turn our lights on, most of us have no idea where that power comes from. According to the U.S. dept. of energy, more than 50% of our electricity comes from coal.

Coal emits much more carbon (CO2) per unit of energy than oil and natural gas. From the acid drainage of mines polluting rivers and streams, to the release of mercury and other toxins when its burned into the atmosphere, the fine particulates that wreak havoc on human health, and the colossal waste, coal pollutes every step of the way.

“Clean coal” is the industry’s attempt to “clean up” its dirty image – the industry’s green wash buzzword. It is not a new type of coal. “Clean coal” methods only move pollutants from one waste stream to another.  Coal is a dirty business!

The good news is we have a solution! A study of the long-term benefits of INFINITE Wind Power versus FINITE coal MTR in Coal River Mountain, West Virginia already exists. They show “excellent potential” for efficiency, productivity and economic benefit. Though it doesn’t have short-term financial returns, wind promises to provide clean, inexpensive energy and offer scores of safe jobs for the long term. Just check out the staggering figures from a report released by the American Wind Energy Association “wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year”. Renewable energy will continue to grow exponentially where as mining jobs have decreased or remained relatively stagnant at “81,000 workers” for the over 20 years, according to the 2007 U.S. dept of energy report.

I can understand why those who live in coal towns are frustrated, because while we have this technology available to us NOW – it is still just “a promise” in these regions.

Being led away by the police

It’s imperative we let our president, our elected public servants and entrepreneurs know that this is where we want our investment to be directed.

Hopefully some wise, forward thinking heroes will step up the plate, build the wind farm and take this incredible win, win, wind, opportunity to bury the dirty dinosaur of Mountain Top Removal forever.

Daryl Hannah
http://www.crmw.net/
http://www.appvoices.org/
http://ilovemountains.org/
http://www.ram.org/obamamtr

You can follow Daryl on Twitter: http://twitter.com/dhlovelife