Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

Kentuckians For The Commonwealth – KFTC
P.O. Box 1450
London, Kentucky 40743
(606)-878-2161

To those who believe our mountains and streams are special, necessary and worth protecting:

Our names are Rully and Erica Urias and we live on Island Creek of Grapevine in Pike County. Our home and our community is surrounded by coal mining going on in every direction in the mountains around Island Creek. We want to tell you what life is like when coal mining takes over your community, and then tell you how you can help out.

There is no aspect of our lives that coal mining has not affected in some negative way. We used to live in a beautiful place. When you drove down the road it was like driving through a tunnel of trees. It was beautiful, like a fairy tale experience. Now it is a sad and ugly place. All the trees have been cut down along the road so the coal company could move in their giant equipment.

That was just the beginning. The road has now gotten so bad from the coal company’s use that school buses won’t even run up the gravel road to our community. And we hope no one up here ever needs an ambulance. We either eat the dust from the coal trucks or hope we don’t get bogged down in the muck on wet days. Our neighbor Doug Justice twice had to use his own equipment to remove a mud slide that came into the road off the coal company’s mining operation.

The coal company has even invaded the privacy our home. The blasts that the company uses to blow up the mountain also shake our house. It can be strong enough to knock pictures off walls and stuff off of shelves. One night about 7:45 p.m. the blast was so bad that it took 10 minutes to calm down our two-year old daughter, Makayla.

The water from our well has been ruined, too. We can’t drink it and now we’re even afraid to give Makayla a bath. She loves to take baths and like most children will try to drink the water. We can’t let her play with any toys that she can put water into and drink from because of the contamination of our water. We bought her a kiddie swimming pool last summer and filled it up and it had black specs floating all through it. Our daughter cannot even enjoy her own yard.

All the while the mountains that make this place so beautiful are disappearing so that the companies can get out the coal as cheaply as possible. They blast the tops off of the mountains and push it over into the valleys where we live. We’re sure the companies just want us to go away, but we’re not. Our family has been here for generations and we plan to stay. But we wonder what kind of future Makayla will have if something is not done to control the coal companies.

We are not without hope. Our outlook changed dramatically last year when we started working with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. KFTC has been around for 25 years helping people like us and our neighbors take control of our future. Since we got involved with KFTC we’ve gotten the attention of the coal company and county officials. KFTC has been very supportive and has helped us find ways to educate and fight for ourselves. They teach us how to be leaders in our community.

It means a lot, knowing we’re not alone. Before we had KFTC we had nobody. I didn’t know there were other people with the same problems going through the same thing we were. Now we know that the problems we experience are faced by hundreds of families who live in the coalfields. KFTC helps us join together so that we speak and act with one voice. The more voices the better we can be heard.

You can help by joining us and becoming a member of KFTC or by making a donation to support KFTC’s work. It’s a great investment because you’re investing in Kentucky’s future. We can’t think of a better way to invest in the future than to preserve what we have now – like our homes, water and mountains. The more supporters, the stronger our voice and we want to add yours.

Thanks for listening to our story and for taking action to make Kentucky a better place for all of us.

Rully and Erica Urias

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Island Creek, KY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.