Communities
While the Coal River Valley may be better known for the mountaintop removal coal mining that has created health and economic issues there for years, there are a lot of exciting community development efforts that show the spirit of the community and the potential for positive change. The community successfully organized to build a new school in their community, when Marsh Fork Elementary was threatened by a sludge dam and nearby prep plant.
The Tadpole Project,��which is run by internationally known group Coal River Mountain Watch,�has been working with youth in the Coal River Valley for several years now. The group organizes clean-ups along the river, and have one planned for tomorrow, April 26th. �The long term goals are to work together as a community to address all the pollution in the Big Coal River and it’s tributaries.
Along the way, the project is getting kids out of the house, cleaning up the rivers and swimming holes, and teaching some lessons to parents as well.
“One of our kids said to his dad, ‘Daddy, don’t throw trash out the window of the truck or we’re going to have to pick that up later!'” said Peggy Bone, who works with the program through Coal River Mountain Watch. �”If you teach them when they’re young to not throw out trash, then they grow up knowing that.”
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The Tadpole Project has adopted a stretch of highway in one of the most heavily strip-mined communities in Appalachia. This small but powerful effort showcases community pride and celebrates some of the greatest things about growing up in Appalachia.
“Our teenagers get excited about cleaning up our rivers, because that’s where they play.�Teenagers, including my son, are mainly interested in video games, he says so himself. It’s hard to get them outside and interested in picking up trash and volunteering on a Saturday. But they all want to help clean up their favorite swimming holes, because they all swim there,” added Bone.
The group has collected over 800 tires and provided community dumpsters to help people who don’t have access to bulk garbage clean-up.
�The Tadpole Project is developing youth leadership and direction through its youth advisory board. The group has leased a popular park in the area and have plans to create trails and fix it up for the entire community to enjoy. According to Bone, “A lot of groups doing similar work focus on teenagers, but we’re also working with even younger kids, who aren’t as influenced by the coal industry propaganda and have a lot of ideas about what they want to see in their community and in our park.”
The Tadpole Project works to protect and restore the Marsh Fork of the Big Coal River. �The 28-mile Marsh Fork tributary of the Big Coal River flows in the valley between Coal River Mountain and Cherry Pond Mountain in western Raleigh County.� The Marsh Fork, and the numerous creeks running into it, suffer from years of neglect and build-up of garbage and scrap metal. �Our goal is to foster community pride by getting community members involved in the restoration of our river and bringing awareness to the natural beauty of our area. �We are organizing clean-up days along the river and its creeks, going door-to-door talking to people who live along the river, and engaging local high school students to help with the clean up.
Ultimately, the Tadpole Project hopes to expand to involve the community in other aspects of watershed protection. �Coal mines, coal processing plants, mountaintop removal sites, gas wells, timbering, and personal waste waters all affect the health of our waterway.� These concerns all need to be addressed in order to have a healthy Marsh Fork watershed. � Our goal is to map out a watershed plan which would address all the sources and causes of stream impairment in the Marsh Fork tributary and to engage local residents in stream monitoring and water testing to involve them in protecting the health of our river.
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By Marlene Adkins Thames
I am a Mud River West Virginia Girl! More specifically, I am a Conley Branch Girl. Although not born on Conley, most of my childhood was spent there, leaving me with many wonderful memories of that area alive within me. There was so much to love. I loved the open fields that my great-grandfather, Lorenza Adkins, and my grandfather, Alfred, plus his siblings, cleared when they settled down on Conley. Being small at the time, I thought the mountains were the biggest in the whole world.
I loved the mountains that surrounded our little three room house and Grandpa and Grandma Adkins’ four room house. It was as if the mountains were there to protect us.
The mountain to the east of our house was my absolute favorite. Amongst all of the trees that are indigenous to the area stood a huge pine tree. It jutted out far beyond the top of the forest as if to say, “I am here. I will protect and shelter you from harm”. I made several trips a week up the mountain to that tree. Underneath the tree’s canopy was a solid bed of moss. Mountain Tea, with sweet, red berries, provided substance. This was my refuge; this was my solace.
One day, Daddy broke his back as he and I hauled coal down from the little abandoned mine on our property. I ran screaming to find my Mother, who sent me running to the only neighbor that had a vehicle. After the neighbor came with his truck and lifted Daddy onto the bed on a makeshift stretcher, I ran up the hill to my tree, my solace. I was so scared. I found comfort there.
There were other sad times when I sought out the comfort of the mountain. I ran to my tree when my grandmother died. I ran there when I got into trouble with my parents. I ran there when my cat disappeared and when my grandma’s dog died. That tree and that mountain shared some of my darkest moments, but I always felt better because they provided me a place where I could grieve alone, be scared of what was happening, or to simply be happy on “my” mountain.
I wish I could run there today, but the mining companies came after I left. Neither Conley nor Mud River will ever be the same. In my heart, I know “my” mountain is gone.
Conley is now blocked off with a “No Trespassing” sign at what used to be the turn off to enter the hollow. I can no longer go up the hollow to enjoy the scenes from my childhood. The mining company won’t let me. The mountain at the turn into Conley is even gone. No trees. No wild flowers. No squirrels. Like a lot of places in the Appalachians, nothing is left except what the mining company did not want.
Even the oldest mountains in the world could not stand up to the power of money.
I pray that those of us who love this land are strong enough to stand up for the mountains that remain. They have provided strength, solace, protection, and even life, to us. It is now our turn to return the favor.
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Description: On the border between Kentucky and Virginia, about one mile away from Pardee, in Wise County, VA
Home is defined as “a place where a person can find refuge and safety; it is a place to live in security.” Appalachia, Virginia residents Dennis Davidson and his wife Cindy Davidson, worked hard to provide a home for their two sons, Jeremy and Zachary. Despite their efforts to create both security and safety for their boys, the Davidson’s home was destroyed on August 19, 2004.
Jeremy, their youngest son, was asleep in his room when a half-ton boulder plummeted through his bedroom wall. The dislodged boulder, which had fallen 649 feet, flattened a path across the bed where Jeremy lay. In an instant, the boulder killed young Jeremy’s future and crushed his parents’ and many Virginians’ hearts. Jeremy was three-years-old.
The A&G Coal Corp, a strip mining operation, was responsible for the displaced boulder. According to officials, a bulldozer operator working the night shift for A & G Coal Corp unknowingly knocked the boulder loose. The employee was working above and directly behind the Davidson’s home to widen “a road to handle 18-wheel coal hauling trucks at a mine called Strip Number 13.”
Accidents do happen, but a heartbroken family and a mass of angry Virginians concluded that this accident cost too much to go unnoticed. Many Virginians continue to be outraged by the effect that strip-mining has on their communities and lives.
“The death of an innocent child, who had nothing to do with what’s going on, has brought us together,” said Carl “Pete” Ramey, a coal miner turned anti-strip-mining activist. “I think a lot of people feel guilty they didn’t do something before.”
However, due to the United States escalating demand for coal, the population of strip mines continues to increase in regions of Virginia and West Virginia. Such demand has made neighborhoods, like the Davidson’s, land mines for locals to live in.
Click here to learn more about Black Mountain, VA and the communities that live nearby.
Summary contributed by Angie Delynn Ryan courtesy of Appalachian Voices.
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Zeb Mountain has sustained rural communities for generations. The mountain is now home to the largest cross-ridge mining operation in Tennessee. In this new form of mountaintop removal, the company will attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. When mining is finished, they will try to pile the rock back up in the shape of the former mountaintop. In the meantime, the rock will be stored on adjacent abandoned strip mines.
More than 100 homes are located within a half mile of the mining area, and an elementary school is located less than a mile from mine. Residents worry that blasting, truck traffic, flooding or a landslide could damage life or property near the mine site. Endangered and threatened species living in the area, including the gray bat, the red cockaded woodpecker and the blackside dace, have suffered devastation from habitat loss and increased stream sedimentation caused by mining.
Mining has continued on Zeb Mountain despite lawsuits filed by Appalachian Voices and other environmental and community groups. The state has issued the mining company several notices of violations for infractions including failure to control sediment running into a nearby stream and building a containment pond (which holds the arsenic, selenium, lead, lime and mercury-polluted waters left over from cleaning coal) outside of the permit area.
Ann League, a member of Save Our Cumberland Mountains who built her dream home near Zeb Mountain, recalls the moment when she learned that mountaintop removal mining was going to begin near her property. “It just killed me that my home place – my family hadn’t been there for hundreds of years, but I still consider it my home place – was getting ready to be torn up like that.”
Click here to watch videos about Zeb Mountain and learn about the communities that live nearby.
Summary submitted by Caroline Monday courtesy of Appalachian Voices. Photo courtesy of Southwings.
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Sylvester is a small, friendly community tucked away in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley. Until recently, it was a place where area residents hoped to retire and spend their golden years relaxing, chatting with neighbors on the front porch, and enjoying the pleasures of a peaceful life in the mountains.
In 1998, a coal processing plant was built in the community, despite the fact that 75% of residents signed a petition opposing the permit for the facility. A mountaintop removal operation that removed a nearby ridge then allowed the coal dust from the plant to blow directly into the community. Now homes are frequently covered inside and out with coal dust, the same coal dust that causes the infamous black lung disease suffered by coal miners.
Two elderly women known as the Dustbusters are leading local efforts to protect Sylvester, working with Coal River Mountain Watch, a community organization. In a 2005 letter to the state, Dustbuster Pauline Canterberry, who lost both her father and husband to lung diseases caused by coal and rock dust in the mines, described daily life this way:
“For the past 8 years, life in the community of Sylvester, West Virginia, has been a living Hell of black coal dust, nerve shattering noises and broken promises, while we have watched our homes be destroyed, and respiratory illness invade our bodies. Many of those problems still remain unsolved. We do not oppose coal mining, but we do demand that it be done responsibly so as to protect our Town and its Citizens.”
Click here to watch a video of aerial flyovers of Sylvester, WV and learn about the communities that live nearby.
Summary contributed by Mary Anne Hitt of Appalachian Voices. Photo by Builder Levy.
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Penny Loeb tells this story of an historic black community threatened by mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia.
James Major was a leader of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. His daughter, Joan Hairston, founded New Directions for Women. And his granddaughter was valedictorian at Logan High School. Joan Hairston still lives in Superior Bottom, and New Directions for Women continues. She works with black teenagers in the high school, setting many on a successful path to college and careers.
Mining is returning to this area, only now it is a mountaintop mine. It will take the mountains behind Superior Bottom. But that isn’t all the coal company desires. It plans a preparation plant on the flat land of the community. In the fall of 1999, company officials began approaching residents with offers to buy them out. The houses were large, but mostly dilapidated. Most were long, two-story structures, with room enough to hold several families. One house, to the right of the bridge over Island Creek, is well-maintained, with an abundance of flowers and lawn decorations. Still, the mine officials offered most people only about $35,000 for their homes. Some felt they had no alternatives-they didn’t want to live by a prep plant.
In late October 1999, a woman in her 70s sat in a living room surrounded by the boxes and bags of her life. It had been her father’s house and her only home. She would be leaving soon. But $35,000 wouldn’t buy her a house in Logan. She was moving in with her son. “It’s sad,” she said.
Bulldozers and shovels roved her house and several across the street in the first months of 2000. But so far, there is no prep plant. At one end of the community, the closed school building remains. Joan Hairston bought it and isn’t letting Massey have it. “They can’t build the plant without that land.” Joan herself remains, too, as does the teacher who lives in the house to the right of the bridge. In the fall of 2000, the bridge was dedicated to James Major. Whether it will be a bridge to nowhere remains to be decided.
Click here to learn more about Sarah Ann, WV and the communities that live nearby.
Story and photo contributed by distinguished author Penny Loeb, www.wvcoalfield.com.
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Donetta Blankenship has lived in Rawl for about six years. Before she and her family moved to Rawl, they had no health problems. Since moving there, Donetta has been hospitalized for liver failure twice in the last year. Her mother-in-law suffers from pancreatitis. And whenever anyone in the family showers, they get a headache from the rotten egg smell caused by nitrogen sulfate in the water. Donetta has two children, a thirteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy, and two stepchildren. Her stepdaughter, at the age of 19, had her gallbladder removed. Since they’ve moved to Rawl, both her children have developed asthma. Her daughter has stomach problems; her son has bumps all over his back and refuses to bathe in the contaminated water that makes it worse. He also has trouble sleeping at night, worrying that the sludge impoundment above their home will give way. Donetta stays because she can’t afford to move her family elsewhere.
In 2005, scientists at Wheeling Jesuit University released a study indicating that water tested in private wells in Rawl, West Virginia exceeded federal drinking water standards for arsenic, lead, iron, aluminum, beryllium, barium, manganese and selenium. Though Massey Energy denied any correlation between nearby mountaintop removal mining operations and the elevated toxin levels, the toxins found in the water are commonly found in coal sludge.
A branch of Massey energy admitted to having pumped millions of gallons of coal sludge into underground reservoirs near Rawl in the 1980s. Ten years ago, a blast powerful enough to shatter windows in a nearby church and homes resonated throughout the Rawl area. Shortly after, the water started to go bad, and residents believe the same blast that destroyed the foundations of dozens of homes may have cracked the barrier between the buried sludge and the aquifer that provides Rawl’s city water. Currently, Donetta says, sometimes the water, “runs out of the pipe like tomato soup: thick with orange sediment.”
Donetta and over 700 other residents of the area filed a lawsuit against Massey Energy, but to date have not received any relief. Donetta says that if they win, they’ll use the money to move elsewhere. They have been working with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Sludge Safety Project to safeguard the health of their families and community.
Click here to watch a video about sludge injections in Rawl, WV and the communities that live nearby.
Story written by Lauren Benningfield and Anna Santo and provided courtesy of Appalachian Voices. Photo by Kent Kessinger provided courtesy of Appalachian Voices and Southwings
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Ragland is a community with a long history of both coal mining and mine-related problems. From contaminated water to local roads damaged by coal trucks, residents worry about the mounting toll of mining impacts on their community. According to author Penny Loeb,
“Many Ragland residents don’t oppose the mines, underground or mountaintop. But they have seen so much damage, that they are angry – and frustrated that politicians and public officials fail to help them.”
“What concerns many Ragland residents the most is the slag dam near the top of the mountains. It stretches nearly three football fields across and is twice as long. Originally it was about 140 feet deep. But waste coal covers the bottom, so the water depth is considerably less. The watery dump was used for nearly 30 years until it reached capacity a few years ago.”
“Since the dam sits nearly a mile off the road and is reachable only on four wheelers and steep roads, those just passing through wouldn’t know it exists. But for the Ragland residents, it lies above the community, a dark watery reminder of the tragedy at Buffalo Creek. The community has been evacuated at least once because of concerns that the dam would break. People who have worked around these kinds of dams find this one of the most worrisome. They believe it was improperly constructed, though improvements were made more recently.”
“As if bad water, lack of public sewers, a looming lake and pot-holed roads weren’t enough, soon a White Flame Energy mountaintop mine will move in at the end of one hollow.”
Click here to learn more about Ragland, WV and the communities that live nearby.
Story and photo contributed by distinguished author Penny Loeb, www.wvcoalfield.com
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Water is a resource most Americans take for granted. However, due to the pollution from mountain top removal in West Virginia, residents of the state have discovered that they are not “most Americans.”
A warm shower in the morning or a hot bath to relax after a long day are luxuries that several residents of Riffe Branch and Duncan Fork, West Virginia were not allotted in 2000 and 2001. Some residents say that due to Massey Energy’s Delbarton Mining operation, the local water taps ran dry. In an attempt to pacify the water loss, Massey Mining provided and filled water tanks for residents. In almost all cases, the water tanks were occasionally empty and inconveniently located outside of victims’ homes.
Riffe Branch and Duncan Fork are not the only two communities forced to fight mountain top removal for water. In Holden, West Virginia there is an abundance of water, but daily dehydration in Holden is not cured with a cold refreshing glass of tap water. The water in Holden is not for drinking. Due to acid mine drainage, the water in Holden is orange.
“At least one well has gone dry. Others just have bad water. One neighbor has water that smells terrible,” said longtime Holden resident, Ralph Preece. “Another family was sick for a year. Once they started drinking bottled water, they got better.”
Many residents of the above communities have exhausted their options for dismantling the destructive mining operations. Help is needed to put an end to mountain top removal.
“I know they are going to mine, and we probably aren’t going to stop that. The powers that be are going to let them. But they should be held responsible,” said Preece.
Click here to learn more about Pickering Knob, WV and the communities that live nearby.
Summary contributed by Angie Delynn Ryan courtesy of Appalachian Voices.
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Mud River hasn’t been much of a community for more than two decades. The Post Office and the school have been gone for a long time. But for the past 30 or so years it had been home to about 60 families.
The residents had two churches and a ball field. The flat land along the river was dark and fertile. Corn and vegetables grew well on the few acres. Some families had a few horses and cattle pastured on the flat land.
No longer. Where there were once some 60 families, only five remained at the beginning of 1998 after Arch Coal Inc.’s Hobet 21 Mine was expanded across the Boone County line into Lincoln County. West Virginia’s [then] longest valley fill was approved at Connelly Branch, less than half a mile from the start of Mud River. The fill comes two miles from the mine to the river.
When Therman and Lorene Caudill moved to their present home in Mud River in 1966, they planned to stay the rest of their lives. In the early years there was a moratorium on strip mining in Lincoln County. So they had few concerns about mines. With little notice, the moratorium expired when the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act was passed in 1977.
Since the Hobet 21 Mine moved in, blasting has been a continual problem. Therman Caudill’s brother complained a lot to the Department of Environmental Protection. The director of DEP actually issued orders to reduce the blasting. It didn’t seem to help much. Finally, the land company associated with the mine bought him out-under one condition: He could not move back into the Mud River watershed, ever. Seemed the mine didn’t want him complaining anymore. Bill Hoffman, who is one of the leaders of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental impact study of mountaintop removal, was shocked at the restriction. “We are still in America, aren’t we?” he said.
Click here to watch aerial flyovers of the mountains near Mud, WV and learn about the communities that live nearby.
Original text contributed by distinguished author Penny Loeb from her website www.wvcoalfield.com Photo by Vivian Stockman and provided courtesy of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Southwings.
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