A Sundance Official Selection, The Last Mountain is described as, “…a passionate and personal tale that honors the extraordinary power of ordinary Americans when they fight for what they believe in. The Last Mountain shines a light on America’s energy needs and how those needs are being supplied. It is a fight for our future that affects us all.”
Determined to bring the film’s message to every corner of the country, Director Bill Haney and the film crew worked to secure theatrical distribution. Their efforts paid off –Dada Films picked up The Last Mountain, making it the first mountaintop removal documentary to enjoy a nationwide theatrical release.
Haney was inspired to make the film because of “the heroic quality of the people of Appalachia. In an interview with Appalachian Voices he explianed, “I met these people who are so inspiring and want to protect their heritage and use their right to the democratic process. But the fact is that 2/3 of the folks in Coal River don’t want mountaintop removal, but all of their politicians do. This is not democracy and these people are fighting to see it. They are fighting to maintain their cultural heritage and the land they rely on–these glorious beautiful mountains.”
iLoveMountains.org is excited to go on the road with The Last Mountain. We will be present at many of the showing across the country to funnel the passion that the movie is sure to inspire into action. Please support the fight to end mountaintop removal by going to see the film. The length of movie’s run is dependent on how well it does the first weekend it opens, so bring at least three friends with you on opening weekend. If you want to get a big ol’ group of friends to the show, get more info here.
This film is a great way to introduce mountaintop removal to the masses and is sure to compel new voices to join our movement.
Please view the schedule of this film and go see the film or contact Kayti (at) iLoveMountains.org for more information about the possibility of bringing this film to a theatre near to you!
Study, after study, after study, after study, after study, after study, show that these crises are due in large part to the negative impacts of coal mining, burning, and processing.
The Appalachian people have demanded and demanded and demanded that our rights to be protected from these dangers, including the protection of basic rights such as clean air, clean water, and a safe place to live.
What has been the response from Appalachian politicians, like members of the West Virginia delegation such as Congressman Nick Rahall, Senator Joe Manchin , and Senator John Rockefeller? A great big SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP. Rahall, Manchin, and Rockefeller have not only completely ignored the work of the Central Appalachian people to protect ourselves from coal, but these men are actively pursuing policies that make matters worse, while removing some of the simple protections that the Appalachian people have. Its time they are called out on their dangerous and cowardly decisions to toe the coal-industry line at the expense of their constituents.
A group of West Virginians impacted by mountaintop removal recently ran into Senator Rockefeller in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, to ask Senator Rockefeller to come for a tour of mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia. Here is video of the interaction between Rockefeller and his constituents.
Rockefeller, who first ran for Governor of West Virginia in 1972, had a strong stance on strip mining, saying:
Strip-mining must be abolished because of its effect on those who have given most to the cause – the many West Virginians who have suffered actual destruction of their homes; those who have put up with flooding, mud slides, cracked foundations, destruction of neighborhoods, decreases in property values, the loss of fishing and hunting, and the beauty of the hills. …
Unfortunately, he made a 180 degree turn when he ran again four years later, handily won the governorship. He has been supportive of the coal industry ever since, and has all but ignored the part of his constituency who have been fighting to protect their homes, communities, waterways and mountains from the devastating impacts of mountaintop removal mining. Rockefeller’s story demonstrates the institutional power of the coal industry and its stranglehold on true democracy in West Virginia and other states where mountaintop removal is occurring.
This stranglehold is why its so important for the entire nation to join citizens directly impacted by mountaintop to build broad-reaching support, within and without the Appalachian coal-bearing regions. The bottom-line: the voices fighting to protecting their very lives are being drowned out, and a bigger choir is essential to make sure the message is heard loud and clear: Mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying Appalachian mountains and communities and it needs to end.
Because as Americans we believe, as Martin Luther King Jr, wrote so succinctly in his letter from Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
This movement has created real change- we now see more and more, members of Congress willing to speak out against the politically powerful coal industry. We most recently witnessed this show of political courage in the recent budget debates, where several policy riders in the House bill threatened to stop the EPA from living up to its name in protecting the environment in the Appalachian coal-bearing regions. Many members of Congress got on the floor of the House when those amendments came up for debate and spoke so eloquently and passionately against the destruction of America’s oldest mountains for 5% of our nation’s electricity. As members of the Alliance of Appalachia, we recently hosted a Congressional Reception during our 6th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington, where we invited those members of Congress to accept an award and say a few words. Here is a montage of their comments– THIS is what democracy sounds like!
Two citizens reflected on their experience in Washington DC below.
Wendy Johnston of Mercer County, West Virginia:
In West Virginia, where I live, people are dying. They are dying from drinking poisoned water and breathing air filled with coal dust and the explosive dust that rains down on them from the mountains above their homes that are being destroyed for coal. The coal industry rapes and pillages our mountains daily to extract whatever coal it can find in what used to be the oldest mountains in the world.
As someone who left 25 years ago to go to college and moved back 10 years later to raise her children in the most beautiful place on earth, this was heartbreaking.
When we ran into Senator Rockefeller after meeting with his legislative, he remarked that I lived in the Northern part of the state when I told him I was from Mercer County, which is actually one of the southernmost counties in our state. When we begged him to visit our communities and pointed out that the mountains and communities there were decimated he said, “I’ve been on all of them”. He showed no emotion when he said this, it was obvious he did not care. I left there pleased that we had been able to voice our opinions to him but wondering what good it did. I didn’t realize that just because that was what I had come to expect from my representatives that other people expected more.
When I heard the Congressmen from Virginia and Kentucky speak to the Alliance for Appalachia gathering last night it hit me. I realized that other representatives do care, they see the value of the mountains, clean water and clean air but above all that they see the value of the people. I now have a new understanding, I must give my life, my family, my environment the value that I think that it deserves and demand that those representing me reach my high expectations and if they cannot I will no longer support them.
——————————————————————
-West Virginia Resident, Robin Blakeman (OVEC member/employee):
In Senator Rockefeller’s office… An appointment with an aide – Pat Bond – someone whom we know, from previous meetings, doesn’t do much after we talk to him. He has even occasionally been quite hostile to our citizens. He seemed to listen to us this time. He seemed to respond to personal stories. He agreed that tourism and water quality are important to the state’s economic and social well-being.
When we left, we were somewhat hopeful that there might be a response to our two requests: 1) that the Senator arrange to come to West Virginia and meet with many of the affected residents we know, and 2) meet with Sen. Alexander of Tennessee to discuss reasons that he’s sponsoring the Appalachian Restoration Act.
Afterwards, standing by the elevators, trying to comfort the folks who were upset, we saw Sen. Rockefeller himself walking out of a nearby elevator.
After a few moments of listening to us quickly pour out our hearts – regarding why we were there, and about the connections we had back home which were being severed – he abruptly said, “Hey, do you know what happened to me last night? My electric was off… and I’m now a half hour late for a meeting…” Within the next 30 seconds, he had turned for us, and was gone, with us shouting our thanks to him for the few minutes time he granted us.
Tonight, however, listening to John Yarmuth and others speak – our champions, I realized what a true “public servant” is supposed to be like. I also realized that, in West Virginia, we do NOT have any national level public servants. We only have elite corporate lobbyists and their representatives, whose very existence, it seems, depends on serving those who covet a dirty, lifeless, flammable, and toxic black rock. I wish we could clone public servants like John Yarmuth, and somehow replace our NON-representatives with them.
If you haven’t yet joined the national choir to stop the destruction of our nation’s oldest mountains and to help democracy thrive in all parts of the country, please sign the pledge to end mountaintop removal at iLoveMountains.org.
‘As an air-breather and a water-drinker, I take offense to the notion that coal company profits are more important than my children’s lives.’
Big Coal’s backlash over the EPA crackdown on future mountaintop removal operations went from denial and anger to the outright absurd last week, as state legislatures conjured their own versions of a sagebrush rebellion and the new Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a sheath of regulatory gutting amendments to its budget bill.
On the heels of its Tea Party-backed coal rallies last fall, the dirty coal lobby couldn’t have paid for a better show. As millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosives continued to detonate daily in their ailing districts and affected residents held dramatic sit-ins to raise awareness of the growing health crisis in the central Appalachian coalfields, Big Coal-bankrolled sycophants fell over themselves from Virginia to Kentucky to West Virginia, and in the halls of Congress, to see who could introduce the most ridiculous and dangerous bills to shield the coal industry.
Their breathless message: “The EPA don’t understand mining,” as Kentucky’s House Natural Resources and Environment Chairman Jim Gooch, D-Providence, declared to his colleagues.
That misunderstanding dates back to last spring’s breakthrough announcement by the EPA, following up a memorandum of understanding between the numerous federal agencies, including the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation Enforcement, on finally issuing guidance rules and cracking down on the irreversible and pervasive destruction of mountaintop removal mining operations to waterways. Based on government studies that conclusively demonstrate that “burial of headwater streams by valley fills causes permanent loss of ecosystems,” the EPA issued new conductivity levels “to protect 95% of aquatic life and fresh water streams in central Appalachia” and effectively bring an end to the process of valley fills (and the dumping of toxic coal mining waste into the valleys and waterways).
After an eight-year hiatus of enforcement under the George W. Bush administration, in which an estimated 1,000-2,000 miles of the headwater streams were jammed and sullied by toxic coal waste, along with the destruction of hundreds of mountains and tens of thousands of hardwood forests and the depopulation of historic Appalachia communities, the EPA’s return to its true role as enforcer of the Clean Water Act made it a convenient target for Big Coal outrage.
Not for coalfield residents.
“The actions of these state governments trying to circumvent federal law reminds me of the old, discredited tactic of ‘nullification,'” Coal River Mountain Watch president Bob Kincaid noted. A resident in the Raleigh County, West Virginia coalfields, he added, “Kentucky’s, Virginia’s and West Virginia’s bought-and-paid-for retro-confederate governments have completely forgotten the lessons of history. They want to pick and choose the laws they obey. Where the EPA is concerned, it’s especially bad, since the EPA is all that stands between Appalachia and the utter ruin of what’s left of it. As an air-breather and a water-drinker, I take offense to the notion that coal company profits are more important than my children’s lives.”
Kentucky state legislature had a new take on nullification. Only days afters celebrated author Wendell Berry and 13 other Kentuckians, including a retired coal miner and inspector, occupied Gov. Steve Beshear’s office in a protest over the state’s 40-year crisis of mountaintop removal mining, the Kentucky state legislature attempted to officially establish a “sanctuary state” for the coal industry that would be exempt from “the overreaching regulatory power.” Kentucky already underwrites an additional $115 million each year in state funds for maintenance and health damages beyond any coal industry revenues.
“My friends, we Kentuckians are in a very sick family,” responded Harlan County-raised author George Ella Lyons in the Lexington Herald-Leader. “Our government is owned by big corporations and the result is obscene. Sanctuary — sacred protected space — is declared for those who are abusing the basis of our survival. How long do you think we can live without clean water and air?”
Even the Herald-Leader editorial board lectured its legislature:
Smith’s resolution would declare Kentucky a “sanctuary state” in regard to EPA regulation. Gooch’s bill would exempt from Clean Water Act regulations mining operations involving coal that never leaves the state.
Since coal mining in Kentucky impacts rivers flowing into other states, thus making mining operations subject to regulation under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, neither measure would accomplish a single thing other than letting its sponsor preen and posture in public while wasting other lawmakers’ time.
Wasting lawmakers’ time, perhaps. But Kentucky state officials were already on overtime in their attempt to divert attention from a stunning circuit court judgment last week that granted citizens participation in the state’s gross mishandling of indisputable acts of Clean Water Act violations by two coal companies in eastern Kentucky.
Last fall, clean water advocates from the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Appalachian Voices, among others, filed an intent to sue notice against Kentucky subsidiaries of International Coal Group and Frasure Creek Mining for “over 20,000 incidences of these three companies either exceeding permit pollution limits, failing to submit reports, or falsifying the required monitoring data. These violations could result in fines that may exceed 740 million dollars.” Embarrassed Kentucky state officials rushed to slap a small fine — less than 1 percent of the possible fine — and limited “corrective actions” on the two companies’ admittedly blatant violations, and sought to kick off the citizens groups in the suit as “unwarranted burdens.”
Judge Phillip Shepherds summed up the key reasons for granting the intervention in his order, stating, “The Cabinet, by its own admission, has ignored these admitted violations for years. The citizens who brought these violations to light through their own efforts have the legal right to be heard when the Cabinet seeks judicial approval of a resolution of the environmental violations that were exposed through the efforts of these citizens. In these circumstances, it would be an abuse of discretion to deny those citizens and environmental groups the right to participate in this action, and to test whether the proposed consent decree is “fair, adequate, and reasonable, as well as consistent with the public interest.”
The state’s response? Kentucky is now appealing the ruling. Once unwarranted burdens, in essence, always unwarranted burdens to the state. Kentucky residents, meanwhile, are appealing for Gov. Beshear to spend a little more time in their region and keep his promise to the sit-in activists and simply visit affected residents in the mountaintop removal areas.
“Every time I’m at a particular place in Harlan County, Kentucky, in Appalachia, I go look at the junction of two creeks there,” said Appalachian scholar Chad Berry from Berea, who participated in the sit-in. “One comes off a large mountain that is protected and is clear and looks to be drinkable. The other comes off a surface mining site and often looks like coffee with too much cream in it. Where they join is always interesting tangible proof of the toll surface mining is having on the Appalachian region’s watersheds.”
When the NRDC released a study last year that found that over 293 mountains and nearly 600,000 acres of hardwood forests had been destroyed by mountaintop removal, with reclamation efforts resulting in less than 4 percent of any follow-up economic productivity, fellow sit-in protest Mickey McCoy, from Inez, Kentucky, noted: “This research shows what a sacrificial lamb Kentucky has been for an industry that is not interested in any kind of restoration. Here in Martin County, more than 25 percent of the land has been leveled by coal companies yet we are among the poorest of counties not just in Kentucky, but the entire country.”
In an unflinchingly quick move, the state legislature in Richmond passed a bill that would eliminate citizens’ participation and basic regulatory oversight of clean water laws for strip-mining by shifting control of water quality to a political appointee. In effect, coal lobbyists managed to jam through a bill that placed a stranglehold on state officials by restricting the state’s ability to adequately review stream monitoring or toxicity testing in permitting and enforcement actions. “If the coal industry doesn’t want state officials testing the water, what are they afraid the tests will reveal?” asked Tom Cormons, Virginia director for Appalachian Voices. “The industry is trying to tie state officials’ hands to prevent them from doing their job.”
Accusing the EPA of “soft tyranny,” a West Virginia state delegate introduced “The Intrastate Coal and Use Act” to strip the EPA of its regulatory overview for Clean Water Act permits in West Virginia. In a stunning move last week, a state committee gutted a long-awaited bill to regulate coal slurry injections despite overwhelming evidence that such operations have resulted in widespread health damages and huge cancer rates.
But West Virginia’s state antics over the EPA paled in comparison to the U.S. Congress last week.
In an 11th-hour debate on the floor of Congress, Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-VA, whose Congressional district includes the Abingdon, Virginia-headquarters of Alpha Natural Resources, which recently purchased Massey Energy company to become one of the largest coal companies in the world, chastised the EPA for unfair rules and compared toxic coal waste to Perrier water. In one of the most ludicrous statements in the history of debates on the floor of Congress, Griffith reached deep into the Big Coal depths and responded to one of his colleague’s calm review of mountaintop removal mining destruction with his final delusion: “Our data shows there is greater biodiversity after mountaintop mining than before.”
Despite the fact that the highly mechanized mountaintop removal mining has led to record losses of underground mining employment — nearly 65 percent in the last 20 years — and has left the mining districts at the bottom of virtually all poverty and health care rankings in the nation, Griffith defiantly railed on the House floor over the EPA’s war to create poverty.
In the end, Griffith and his House Republican majority won their battle — though, hardly “the war” in the coalfields. The House passed amendments that would defund the EPA’s authority to implement its recent guidance regarding mountaintop removal or invoke its authority under section 404c to veto Clean Water Act permits. Another amendment would defund the Department of Interior’s role over the “Stream Protection Rule,” which limits the dumping of coal waste near waterways. While the White House has already floated a possible veto balloon, and with the Senate Democrats vowing to scuttle the plethora of House amendments in their budget bill, the future of EPA enforcement of mountaintop removal operations still remains entangled in an endless parade of legal and state legislative challenges.
And mountaintop removal mining blasts on.
Standing at the east entrance of the Kentucky capitol earlier this month, Wendell Berry emerged from his sit-in and reminded me of his four-decades-long struggle to halt reckless strip-mining and mountaintop removal:
You can go to a little stream that’s coming down off the mountain, and you know that one day that stream ran clear and you could have knelt down and drunk from it without any hesitation — it would have been clean. And now it’s running orange or black. And what people have to understand is that there’s heartbreak in that. Harry Caudill said “tears beyond understanding” have been shed over this by people who love their land and have had to sit there and see it destroyed. I live right on the Kentucky River, and that river’s running from those headwater streams. My part of the river is under the influence of this destruction that’s going on up above.
Added Truman Hurt, a retired coal miner in Perry County and member of activist group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, in a letter to his Kentucky state legislators:
The people and communities of Eastern Kentucky have suffered unnecessarily for years because the state environmental and mine safety agencies have failed to fully and fairly enforce the law. Now that the EPA is finally stepping up to enforce the law and protect our precious water, you and the governor are making every effort to block that enforcement. You seem willing to sacrifice the health and safety of your own constituents and the future of Eastern Kentucky in order to protect the rights of the coal companies to flatten the mountains and fill the valleys with their mine waste.
Judy Bonds, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch and inspiration to the movement to end mountaintop removal and for a clean energy future, succumbed to cancer last night.
Judy was a passionate women who sparked that passion in others to fight against injustice. She was loved by many, and will be sorely missed in the physical form, but her spirit will live within all of us who fight to protect these Appalachian communities and the ancient mountains that sustain them.
Biography:
Born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, Julia Bonds, 51, is a coal miner’s daughter and the director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Over the past six years, Bonds has emerged as a formidable community leader against a highly destructive mining practice called mountaintop removal that is steadily ravaging the Appalachian mountain range and forcing neighboring communities, some of whom have lived in the region for generations, to abandon their homes.
In 2001, Bonds and her family became the last residents to evacuate from her own hometown of Marfork Hollow where six generations of her family had lived, due to mountaintop removal operations that had encroached into her community.
Bonds, who previously had worked as a waitress and manager at Pizza Hut and for convenience stores, now devotes 90 hours a week to protect Appalachia and the people who live there from the ravages of mountaintop removal mining. The catalyst for her activism, she says, was the day her grandson stood in a stream in Coal River Valley with his fists full of dead fish and asked, “What’s wrong with these fish?”
Since then, her dedication and success as an activist and organizer have made her one of the nation’s leading community activists confronting an industry practice that has been called “strip mining on steroids.”
Yesterday, the agency rejected 10 petitions, including those of coal companies such as Massey Energy and Peabody Energy, that challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 determination that climate change is real, caused by humans and a threat to human health and the environment.
According to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson:
The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world. These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare. Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security.
Appalachian Voices traveled to eastern Kentucky to show Reuters the impact of mountaintop removal.Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a partner organization, helped to coordinate the trip.
The video focuses on the impacts of mountaintop removal in eastern Kentucky and the great strides Google Earth has made in communicating the scale of the devastation it is causing.
“What Google Earth allows you to do is to show this is millions of acres,” said Matt Wasson referring to how important a tool Google Earth is in showing the bird’s eye view of the immense destruction spreading across the Appalachian Mountains.
Rick Handshoe, resident of Floyd County Kentucky and member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth shares Wasson’s concern.
In the video he vividly describes the pollution that mountaintop removal mining has caused in streams while the camera pans slowly across the creeks gurgling brown down the hillside. The land has been in his family for nearly 200 years.
Dr. Matthew Wasson, an ecologist and the director of programs for Appalachian Voices, also took some still shots of mountaintop removal and valley fills while there.
A month ago, before the nation’s attention was drawn to the tragedies at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia and the oil rig off the Louisiana coast, the EPA issued a blockbuster announcement about a strict new guidance for the permitting of mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia. The announcement left many people – reporters, politicians and the general public alike – confused whether or not the EPA had just put an end to mountaintop removal. The announcement generated headlines ranging from a fairly modest “E.P.A. to Limit Water Pollution From Mining” in the New York Times to “New regulations will put an end to mountaintop mining?” in the Guardian.
Certainly at the press conference EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used some strong language:
“Coal communities should not have to sacrifice their environment or their health or their economic future to mountaintop mining. They deserve the full protection of our clean water laws.”
On a recent trip through eastern Kentucky, set up by our good friends at Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the answer to whether mountaintop removal in Appalachia has come to an end was abundantly obvious.
The photo to the right of a new active mountaintop removal mine looming above Route 23 in Pike County, Kentucky, tells the story.
To the extent that some in the media overstated the impact of EPA’s new guidance, they can be forgiven. During the press conference, Jackson herself said, “You’re talking about no or very few valley fills that are going to meet standards like this.”
Valley fills are the typical disposal sites for the waste that is generated when coal companies blow the tops off mountains to access thin seams of coal. As community activist Judy Bonds of the organization Coal River Mountain Watch describes it, “A valley fill is an upside down mountain turned inside out.” Most – but not all – mountaintop removal mines require valley fills.
But Jackson was also very clear that this was not a blanket ban on mountaintop removal permitting and that the guidance would not apply to permits that had already been granted. The standards Jackson said would lead to “no or very few valley fills” establish limits on the permissible level of stream water conductivity. Conductivity is a measure of salt – and an indicator of metals including toxic and heavy metals – in water. Remember the experiment where you put salt in a glass of water to make it conduct electricity and light a bulb?
A plethora of recent scientific research has shown that conductivity higher than about five times the normal level downstream from valley fills is associated with severe impairment of the ecological communities in Appalachian headwater streams. The photo to the right that I took below a valley fill in Magoffin County, Kentucky, illustrates the trouble these standards create for coal companies. According to a huge compilation of scientific studies that the EPA simultaneously released with their guidance, conductivity levels below Appalachian valley fills average around 10 times normal levels. The bright orange water coming out of this valley fill indicates enormously high levels of iron, which in turn suggests both high conductivity levels and high levels of toxic and heavy metals regulated under the Clean Water Act.
To be sure, EPA’s move is a big first step that provides immediate protection to Appalachian families threatened with new mountaintop removal permits above their homes. It’s a tourniquet that will stop the hemorrhaging, but here are five reasons why this guidance doesn’t immediately or permanently put an end to mountaintop removal:
EPA’s action will not affect permits that have already been issued. Moreover, an excellent piece of reporting by Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward revealed that those existing permits will allow some companies to continue mountaintop removal operations without a hitch for the next couple of years.
Not all mountaintop removal mines require valley fills and coal companies are already using loopholes by which they can obliterate miles of streams without the need to obtain a valley fill permit. The million or so acres of wholesale destruction that coal companies drove through a narrow loophole in the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act since 1977 is testament to their skill and creativity at exploiting loopholes.
Some valley fills will still be allowed under this guidance and the EPA even provided a set of “best practices” by which companies have already proven they can be successful in profitably operating Appalachian surface mines in a manner consistent with the new guidance. Moreover, there are a number of recent cases where coal companies went ahead and constructed valley fills without even bothering to obtain a permit.
While the guidance takes effect immediately, it is a preliminary document released in response to calls from coal state legislators and coal companies for greater clarity on how EPA was basing it’s decision whether to grant a valley fill permit for an Appalachian surface mine. The EPA plans to initiate an extended public comment period before the guidelines will be finalized.
An agency guidance document is different from a formal rule and can be easily overturned by a new administration. Even if this guidance proves to be effective in curtailing mountaintop removal, environmental and community advocates still need to ask what happens when a hypothetical President Palin enters the White House in January of 2013 or 2017.
There are any number of laws and regulations that affect surface mining, and so there is no single mechanism to ensure mountaintop removal is stopped permanently. But the first and most important step is for Congress to pass a strong law that prohibits the dumping of mine waste into streams.
In 2002, Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey introduced just such a law called the Clean Water Protection Act (H.R. 1310). Pallone, together with Republican Cristopher Shays, introduced this bipartisan bill in response to the Bush Administration’s catastrophic “fill rule,” which made it easier to permit mountaintop removal mining and for coal companies anywhere to dump waste into streams. Since then, people and organizations across Appalachia have supported Pallone’s bill by carrying a simple message to universities, church groups and Rotary Clubs across America: they’re blowing up our mountains and there oughtta be a law!
Over the past eight years, the nationwide organizing efforts led by groups in Appalachia have generated a remarkable 170 co-sponsors of the Clean Water Protection Act – more than almost any other bill before Congress. Unfortunately, the bill continues to be held up in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, with West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall recently claiming credit in a West Virginia newspaper for bottling it up.
If Rahall’s contention is true, it’s a powerful testament to the level of influence he has accumulated, given that the bill has more cosponsors than any other of the 323 bills currently before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. More importantly, Rahall does not actually have the power to prevent the bill from being heard except through his influence over Chairman James Oberstar of Minnesota, who is the only one with the actual power to decide whether the bill is brought up in his committee.
It’s particularly unfortunate that House Democratic leaders and committee chairs like Oberstar would give Rahall so much power over national policy, given how poorly his own constituents have fared under his leadership. After 33 years in office, Rahall’s district ranked 434th out of all 435 Congressional districts in Gallup’s recently-released 2009 well-being index rankings (see map below).
The only district that ranked lower was Hal Roger’s neighboring district in eastern Kentucky. Notably, Rogers’ is the only district that has suffered more destruction from mountaintop removal mining than Rahall’s.
A big question in the wake of the tragedy at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine is whether the obescience of coal state legislators toward the coal industry will change after the disaster. Traditionally, the pandering of Congressman Rahall and Senator Rockefeller toward Big Coal has been almost embarrassing to watch – kind of like witnessing an overly-exuberant public display of affection on a park bench. But when it comes to the safety of the guys in the hardhats, these gentlemen strike a very different tune.
Given that the same company, Massey Energy, is by far the largest operator of mountaintop removal mines, was assessed the largest penalty in the history of the Clean Water Act, and has a record of environmental violations to which their horrible safety record pales in comparison, these legislators have a unique opportunity to lead their constituents in a new direction. And Senator Byrd of West Virginia has paved the way.
One of the most under-reported elements of EPA’s announcement was that Administrator Jackson specifically mentioned the EPA had worked with Senator Byrd to develop their new guidelines. She would not have said that without explicit approval from Senator Byrd. While Byrd has not explicitly called for an end to mountaintop removal or co-sponsored legislation to do that, his leadership in promoting a more thoughtful and reasonable view on climate and the future of coal in his state represents a sea change from the public statements of statewide elected officials over the past few decades. Rahall and Rockefeller would serve their constituents and their country far better if they followed Byrd’s lead.
Is Passing a Law in this Polarized Congress Realistic?
More important than the enormous number of cosponsors that legislation to stop mountaintop removal enjoys is the fact that the support is bipartisan. Immediately following the EPA’s announcement, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said in a press release:
“The new EPA guidelines are useful in stopping some inappropriate coal mining in Appalachia but Congress still needs to pass the Cardin-Alexander legislation that would effectively end mountaintop removal mining.”
Alexander, together with Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, introduced the Appalachia Restoration Act (S. 696) last year, a Senate companion to the Clean Water Protection Act designed to eliminate mountaintop removal (or at least permanently curtail it – we’ll see what the final language says after mark-up). That bill got a boost the same week of the EPA announcement when coal-state Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio announced he would become the 11th co-sponsor of the bill.
Whether the Senate bill can survive the committee mark-up process in a form that Appalachian citizens groups can support remains to be seen, however. The Nashville Tennessean recently published an editorial that gave voice to the concerns many coalfield citizens have about forms of mining that may not be covered by the Senate bill, particularly cross-ridge mining. Cross-ridge is a type of mountaintop removal mining that requires little or no valley fill and is based on the assumption that a mountain can be put back more or less how it was after it’s been blown up – kind of like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.
The photo to the right illustrates one of many problems with the theory that mountains can be put back together without causing major ecological degradation. While the type of mining shown in the photo would not be classified by state agencies as mountaintop removal (only part of the ridgeline has been removed and there is no valley fill at the headwaters of this stream), the impact of this mining on water quality is indistinguishable from the impact shown in the previous photo below a valley fill.
Some insiders have also expressed concern that EPA’s strict new guidance will take the wind out the sails of the campaign to pass a law, but from the perspective of Appalachian groups that have been working to ban mountaintop removal for decades, that concern is misplaced. The citizens of Appalachia have led this fight from the beginning, and have a much more vested interest in making these protections permanent than any group in Washington DC.
It may be that some big environmental groups that have only recently made mountaintop removal a priority will move on to other priorities once the Administrative decisions are played out – and make no mistake that the contributions of those groups over the past few years in pressuring the Obama Administration to take action were exceedingly welcome and timely. But it was not the Big Greens that made mountaintop removal a national issue or whose organizing in communities across America has generated such broad bipartisan support of the Clean Water Protection Act and Appalachia Restoration Act.
The people of Appalachia aren’t sitting around waiting for beltway insiders to tell them whether or how to pass a law, they’re just doing it. The legislative effort is led by the Alliance for Appalachia, an alliance of thirteen local and regional organizations that formed several years ago with the mission of ending mountaintop removal and bringing a prosperous new economy to the Appalachian coalfields that is based on sustainable industries.
It’s the Alliance for Appalachia that represents by far the greatest number of people impacted by mountaintop removal mining, and the alliance is composed of some organizations that have been fighting Appalachian strip mining for decades. The battle to end mountaintop removal will not be over until the Alliance for Appalachia says it is and I’m confident that that won’t happen until, at a minimum, President Obama signs a law banning the practice.
So What’s Next?
There is a window of opportunity right now to pass a strong law that will rein in mountaintop removal permanently. Also, with coal demand down dramatically due to the recession, now is the time to begin replacing demand for mountaintop removal coal with aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy policies in states like North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia that are most dependent on this source of coal.
From a local perspective, more delays, half-measures and uncertainty about the future of mountaintop removal will only lead to a myopic approach to rebuilding the Appalachian economy and bringing new jobs and new industries to the region.
And from a global perspective, at a time when America is finally getting serious about addressing climate change and moving toward a 21st century energy future built around renewable energy, isn’t it absurd that we’re still fighting to stop the wholesale destruction of the most biologically diverse forests and streams on the continent in order to mine climate-destroying coal? Can we really address climate change if we can’t even stop mountaintop removal?
For people around the country that want to see mountaintop removal end – and that should be anyone concerned about climate change, human rights or endangered species – a great place to start is by telling your Senators and Representatives that the time to pass legislation to end mountaintop removal is now. There are plenty of tools on the web to make it easy.
Let’s keep up the momentum, pass a strong law, and relegate mountaintop removal to its rightful place as just another tragic episode in American history books.
This study found that after controlling for covariates (other influences), residents in coal mining areas of West Virginia still had a higher risk of having a baby with a low birth weight. The authors state that the “persistence of a mining effect on low birth weight outcomes suggests an environmental effect resulting from pollution from mining activities,” and that air and water quality assessments are needed for mining communities.
Ahern, M., M. Mullett, K. MacKay and C. Hamilton. (2010) “Residence in Coal-Mining Areas and Low Birth Weight Outcomes.” Maternal Child Health, Jan 2010.
This study uses two geographical information system (GIS) techniques to find that the activities of the coal mining industry contribute to cancer mortality. This study uses a new measure to look at the distance of populations to components of the coal mining industry such as mines, processing plants, slurry impoundments, and underground slurry injections. The results add to the body of evidence that coal mining poses environmental risks to residents of coal mining communities in West Virginia.
Hendryx, M., E. Fedorko, and A. Anesetti-Rotherme. (2010) “A Geographical Information System-Based Analysis of Cancer Mortality and Population Exposure to Coal Mining Activities in West Virginia.” Geospatial Health 4(2), 2010
The authors show that residents of coal mining counties both inside and outside of Appalachia had fewer healthy days for both physical and mental reasons. The disparities were greatest for people residing in Appalachian coal mining areas. The authors conclude that residents living in coal mining areas are “characterized by greater socioeconomic disadvantage, riskier health behaviors, and environmental degradation” which are all associated with a lower health-related quality of life.
Zullig, K., and M. Hendryx. (2010) “A Comparative Analysis of Health-Related Quality of Life for Residents of U.S.Counties with and without Coal Mining.” Public Health Reports, Volume 125
‘As an air-breather and a water-drinker, I take offense to the notion that coal company profits are more important than my children’s lives.’
