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.
Potentially volatile prayer vigil turns to calm discussion
ANSTED, W.VA. — Early Saturday (April 5) morning, dozens of mountaintop removal opponents converged on Gauley Mountain for Blessing of the Mountain II, intending to pray near a mountaintop removal operation above the Fayette County community of Ansted. But, a similar number of employees of CONSOL coal company were already there, blocking access to the prayer site.
So Reverends Roy Crist and Stan Holmes set up a music stand amongst the strip mine workers’ vehicles. The mountaintop removal opponents stood amongst the coal workers and services began.
“There are no enemies here,” Crist said. He made an effort to shake the hand of every one of the mountaintop removal workers present.
The mountaintop removal opponents read prayers, sang hymns and spoke against mountaintop removal. At one point, a CONSOL worker stepped into the midst of the service and it looked as if the situation could turn volatile. But the crowd began singing “Amazing Grace,” easing the tension between the two groups.
After the services concluded, many from both sides stood and talked calmly with one another about the need for change.
“We let our presence be known to the public. Even though we had opposition, everything came out in a positive manner,” said Ansted Historical Preservation Council member Karen Huffman.
Allen Johnson, a founder of Christians for the Mountains, said the event, “dissolved some of the polarization” between the community and the strip mine workers.
The Ansted Historical Preservation Council planned the vigil. Fliers for the event said people were invited to join in prayer, to seek “Divine intervention and wisdom to contradict the devastation created by mountaintop removal mining practices.”
The council has been organizing in Ansted and surrounding tourism-dependent communities, attempting to stop a 286-acre Powellton Coal mountaintop removal operation which would be visible from the New River Gorge Bridge and would affect the Gauley River National Recreation Area. The permit boundary allows mining right up to the boundary of Hawks Nest State Park.
Residents worry the mining might unleash flash flooding if old abandoned mines and tunnels in the area are breached. They also worry that blasting will send clouds of silica laden dust into the air.
A recent WVU study indicates that people living near coal mining operations suffer higher incidences of certain diseases and increased mortality rates.
“It was good to see both sides of the issue, and the vigil drew attention to the question of what is West Virginia going to do,” said Peter Bosch, with the Christian student group Restoring Eden.
“What are you going to do in a few years down the road when your job is gone?” Ansted community leader Cary Huffman asked a group of coal workers. They agreed there needs to be more conversation between the workers and community members. They exchanged names, handed out phone numbers, shook hands and went their separate ways.
For more on the organizing in Fayette County, WV go to: www.ohvec.org
CNN Heroes debuted the story “Larry Gibson: Defending the Planet” on Tuesday, 8/14, during Anderson Cooper 360. It will also be aired this Thurs 8/16 and Sun 8/19 all day ON CNN & CNN HEADLINE NEWS. (2 separate channels). An extended version will be available on the CNN Hero’s website next week.
For more than 200 years, Larry Gibson’s ancestors have lived on Kayford Mountain in the Appalachians of West Virginia. Today, he is fighting to protect his coal-rich land from mountaintop blasting and the consequences he fears it would have for the environment.
Ansted, WV group fears devastation to local community
November 10, 2007
A preservation group in Ansted sponsored a blessing ceremony Saturday morning as they sought divine intervention to stop what they fear will be devastation in the area between the Gauley River and the New River.
Members of The Ansted Historic Preservation Council Inc. believe the timbering and mining proposed for the area just outside of Ansted will affect a nearly 3,000-acre watershed.
In September, members of the newly formed group testified at a packed Department of Environmental Protection agency hearing, and asked state officials to deny a national pollution discharge permit for Powellton Coal Co. LLC, the company that plans the large mining operation. The company wants to discharge into Rich Creek, a trout stream and a tributary to Gauley River.
At the hearing, they also voiced their fears that the coal seams to be mined will cause toxic levels of selenium to be released into the waters. Several communities use water from the upper Kanawha River for drinking water.
The area to be mined is covered with trees and creates a backdrop for the Gauley Mountain Recreation Area. People in Ansted are also developing a trail system that follows tributaries that could be impacted by water pollution.
Father Roy Crist, who heads the group, will offer the blessing Saturday. He is a Missioner of the New River Episcopal Ministries. He said he wants everyone to know his group does not oppose mining.
“Mining is an honorable profession. We admire and respect those who work in the mines. But mountaintop removal is a crime against man and nature and must be stopped while we still have mountains left. These corporations rip, rape and run, and leave us with unredeemable land, toxic streams and rivers and air pollution which cause illnesses and disease.”
In her communications with DEP officials, Katheryne Hoffman, secretary to the Hawks Nest State Park Foundation, wrote that the connectivity of the streams worries her.
“At Gauley Bridge is the confluence of three rivers, the Gauley, the New and the Kanawha. The New is a National River, the Gauley runs through the Gauley River Recreation Area and both flow into the Kanawha. Rich Creek flows into the Gauley. Bridge Fork, West Lake Creek, Shade Creek and Mill Creek may also be affected in various ways by this operation. That these waters remain as unpolluted as possible is critical to the economic engine now fueling Fayette County, which is not coal, but tourism.”
Although the operation is outside the corporate limits of his town, the mayor of Ansted, R.A. Hobbs, told DEP officials he worried about the company’s plans to use settlement ditches instead of settlement ponds. Hobbs also explained times when Ansted has flooded. He said he feared the increased potential for flooding from the proposed mine ditch system would threaten his town with flooding.
State inspectors have previously cited Powellton Coal for allowing sediment to enter Rich Creek and the Gauley River. Powellton Coal has an 18,000-acre tract located between Ansted, Gauley Bridge and Jodie in Fayette County. A spokesman for the company said Thursday that he could not comment for this story.
Reprinted from the Charleston Gazette
By Susan Williams
See more on the ongoing organizing in the Ansted, WV in the latest Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition newsletter.
Over 100 gathered to pray for an end to devastation from mountaintop removal mining
CABIN CREEK, W.VA. — Over 100 people of all ages and faiths gathered on Kayford Mountain Saturday (Oct. 20) at a prayer vigil for the mountains and people of Appalachia affected by mountaintop removal mining. Religious leaders representing a range of denominations and backgrounds led prayers and hymns honoring the state’s mountains and asking for the healing of people harmed by surface mining.
The vigil, hosted by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, a West Virginia group fighting mountaintop removal, brought together families, college students and faith-based groups from across the state and region with attendees from as far as Michigan and South Carolina. The gathering came on the heels of last week’s Council of Churches statement condemning mountaintop removal as “unprecedented and permanent.”
“We organized this event to help connect religious communities in the region and hope it will compel people of faith to tell the story of what mountaintop removal is doing to our people,” said Rev. Robin Blakeman, a Presbyterian minister and OVEC volunteer who organized the event.
Throughout the vigil, people directly impacted by this extreme form of mining shared their experiences, including Pauline Canterberry of Sylvester, one of the famed “Sylvester DustBusters.” She explained how coal dust covers the inside of Sylvester residents’ homes, clogging indoor air filters and in some cases causing black lung disease in people who have never entered a mine.
Brenda McCoy of Mingo County held up jars of dark red and black water from people’s homes in her community and explained how their water was poisoned by the underground injection of coal sludge, a waste product from coal preparation plants. People in Mingo County just recently won access to city water from the state after their water was declared toxic. Other communities with similar water issues are also facing unusually high levels of cancer and organ trouble, according to OVEC.
“I think we are looking for a transformation of the heart, to care and weep for God’s creation, and become instruments of healing for the earth and justice for people,” said Allen Johnson, coordinator of Christians for the Mountains, an organization working to rally Christians for solutions to mountaintop removal.
After prayers led by Presbyterian, Unitarian, Episcopal and United Methodist pastors, and testimonies from directly impacted residents from all over southern West Virginia, the group walked to a spot on Kayford Mountain from which they could overlook part of the 12,000 acres of mountaintop removal operations that are consuming the mountain.
“I was blown away that something like this could happen in the United States. It looked like a scar on the land, like a huge bomb had been dropped in the mountains,” said Briana McElfish, a Marshall University student from Putnam County. “We have to look for different ways to get energy. Our country’s coal dependence affects us the most, so we, more than anyone else, should be looking at alternatives. We should be leading the way in renewable energy and efficient technologies, creating jobs and protecting our people.”
“So many children and families are harmed by mountaintop removal in this state. I hope the faith community gets more organized and aware and acts from a deep theological place making this one of the primary moral and ethical concerns for people of faith in our area,” said Blakeman.
In mountaintop removal, coal companies raze forests, then use explosives and giant machines to scalp hundreds of feet off the tops of mountains, in order to get to thin seams of coal. Central Appalachia’s forests are some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests on earth, and studies show mountaintops-removal-mined forests may not recover for centuries.
Hundreds of millions of tons of rubble from the blasted mountaintops is pushed into nearby valleys, burying streams and creating valley fills. In West Virginia, over 1,200 miles of biologically crucial headwaters streams have already been buried or impacted by valley fills.
Concerned citizens say mountaintop removal not only destroys water and forests, but that it also erodes mountain culture. Some people are driven away, and those who do stay see their property devalued and their water wells ruined. The noise and silica-laden dust from blasting at the mine sites adversely impacts people’s health. Studies have shown that valley fills mountaintop removal exacerbates flooding during storm events.
On April 18, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition board member Larry Gibson and OVEC organizer Abe Mwaura met with Lois Armstrong, a longtime resident of Cabin Creek. Lois, along with others in the community of Coalville, organized to stop the construction of a coal loading dock, which would have been illegally close to folks’ homes in the area.
The following is part of the rich conversation that took place when Larry and Lois met. It begins abruptly when Abe realized that he should probably be recording the conversation – with their permission, of course:
Larry: It’s got to be a human rights story, linked to mountaintop removal.
Lois: But you don’t have any rights.
Larry: That’s it. That’s the whole point…
Lois: We don’t have any rights.
Larry: And you and I both remember the time… if somebody in our area worked for a non-union outfit, they wouldn’t tell anybody back then. Now, if a man works for a union, he doesn’t tell anybody.
Lois: He’s afraid of being ostracized too.
Larry: Sure. I don’t have the wisdom of time like you have. So I’m looking to you to kind of guide me and my friend here. What we’re trying to do is really trying to save some lives. We’re not trying to punish the workers. If they had the choice, they wouldn’t be destroying their own back yard…
I can’t back up from this. When I was a kid people used to tell me I was crazy. But I still gotta stay with this. This is not a jobs issue. This is not simply an energy issue. It’s a human rights issue. You know that it is. Until we can strike a nerve in people, whatever the discomfort is in their lives at this point will still be there in the future.
Abe: How do we do that?
Lois: I don’t know.
Abe: How did they do it in the past?
Lois: [pause] I don’t think people used to be as intimidated as they are now.
Larry: No they weren’t.
Abe: Hmm. What’s changed?
Lois: [very deliberately] The feeling of powerlessness.
Abe: You think it’s more now than it used to be?
Lois: Oh yes.
Abe: Well what’s caused that? Why now, and compared to when? Ten years ago, 20 years ago?
Lois: Compared to when I was a kid. Yes. My grandfather was a very strong man. Very quiet – but very powerful. He didn’t shout or make a big noise. What he did, he did very quietly. And he would talk to different people there in Chelyan, when people would come in and try to change things. And he would do it one on one – you know go in and talk to the old-timers. But, I think people now feel hopeless. They feel overwhelmed with the power that others have – that they don’t feel they have.
Abe: And now I’m trying to figure out what is it that caused that. What changed in that amount of time that made them feel so powerless, so that we can figure out what it would take to make them feel powerful again. And it’s not just feel… really, we all have some sense of power – sometimes we just don’t use it. What is it that changed? They’ve lost their power – but why?
Larry: Could it be that the fact that the different leaders of not only the government, but even the union itself…
Lois: Even the courts…
Larry: …even the courts have caved in to the industries. That’s my opinion. That they have caved in to the industries. The people that you and I count on to oversee our rights are the ones who’ve given up our rights – as far as fighting for us.
Lois: But not only on the local level, but the state level, the national level – the whole thing.
Larry: Right. But it starts here. We have more power than we realize because we all have a voice – if we can get it together, and start getting people back together again, and start focusing on what they’ve lost. If we can do that, we can encourage them to take another look at themselves. Otherwise, like I said the miseries that they have now will only get worse.
Abe: And your father did that one on one?
Lois: My grandfather. Ya. Chelyan is still unincorporated, and it was those old timers who decided that they did not want to be incorporated. He was one of those old timers and he would say “if you give them a little bit of power they’ll take it all. As long as you don’t give them any power, they can’t take it.”
Larry: Hmm. Well that’s the whole point. That’s what we’re saying. It’s time, with whatever power we’ve got left… we have to organize and direct it in a positive direction instead of letting it sit dormant. We can have all the power we’ve got now, and if its not being used, then what’s the use of having it… We used to have some choice in the direction we were going in, and now they’ve taken that away.
When I went to New York last week I called for the rebirth of resistance, and I never thought I’d hear such a roar of people saying “Yeah, we need the rebirth of resistance.” Well yeah, we need a rebirth of resistance here to get back what the people have lost!
Abe: What does that mean? What does it look like?
Larry: Well right now there is not enough resistance. You know that…
We are natural organizers. We live in the area called the coalfields – where the union was strong. If we hadn’t organized in the beginning we would never have had anything.
We can’t back up… We gotta get that grit back. That’s what we’ve got to find in people today. They’ve got it; they’ve just forgotten that they have it.
To support and learn more about communities organizing in Cabin Creek and around Kayford Mountain go to www.ohvec.org
People often ask, “Are there pictures of the mountains before mountaintop removal coal mining destroyed them?” Thanks to the United States Geologic Survey and Google Earth, they are right here at your fingertips!
Load image overlay to show Blair’s terrain before
mountaintop removal coal mining began. (Download these images by clicking on the pictures below)
Photos by Vivian Stockman, Oct. 19, 2003 unless noted
West Virginia’s Most Massive Coal Waste Impoundment
The massive Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment (also referred to as a coal waste or coal sludge impoundment) is located in extreme westernmost Raleigh County, West Virginia. Marfork Coal Co. (a subsidiary of the violation-prone Massey Energy) operates this impoundment.
Before transporting coal to market, coal companies wash the coal. Up to 60 different chemicals, some of which are known carcinogens, can be used in the coal-washing process. The heavy metals that occur naturally in coal (mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, etc.) leach into the water used in the coal washing process. The slurry that results from the cleaning process is often stored in coal waste impoundments–sometimes with catastrophic results. There are alternatives.
Brushy Fork is only about half completed right now (see pictures below), and it’s size is already mind-boggling! At its final stage, the impoundment will hold over 8 billion gallons of coal-waste sludge! The dam will be 954 feet high–that’s 80 feet taller than the New River Gorge Bridge!
Our concerns include:
Catastrophic failure of the impoundment into underlying underground mine works (the same engineers that designed this facility worked on the failed Martin County Coal impoundment), a disaster which could result in the loss of life and unprecedented environmental damage;
Toxic heavy metals (naturally present in coal) and chemicals discharged into streams during blackwater “spills;”
Toxic heavy metals and chemicals leaching from the impoundment into groundwater;
A series of permit violations by Marfork–Brushy Fork has at least been cited at least 37 times, often for blackwater or surface water contamination and runoff;
Potential compaction /engineering problems with the impoundment’s dam;
Mountaintop-removal related blasting near the impoundment;
A ludicrous emergency evacuation plan that would have residents going upstream into the sludge to supposedly escape it;
Brushy Fork is a tributary of Little Marsh Fork, which flows into Marsh Fork, comprising part of the headwaters of the Coal River upstream of the town Whitesville. The Coal River flows into the Kanawha River, which flows into the Ohio River, which flows into the Mississippi, which flows into the Gulf, which mingles with the ocean waters, which is all part of the planet’s hydrologic cycle, which means we all live downstream. Drink deeply–and think deeply! Join us as work to protect coalfield residents and the environment from this and other coal slurry impoundments.
Approaching Brushy Fork
Marfork Coal Co.’s (Massey Energy) massive Brushy Fork impoundment
near Whitesville, WV, is designed to hold 8 BILLION gallons of sludge Click for high resolution view
Debbie Jarrell, Rock Creek, WV; originally printed as a letter to the editor in the Appalchian Voice, June 2006
Dear Editor,
I hope this finds you doing well. I enjoyed the visit with you and compadres, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon. I am going to attempt to type my poem that I had printed in the newspaper. This was written when I had enough of just sitting quietly by and letting my granddaughter be one of the mice in the world’s dumping ground.
SITTING QUIET AS DARK TERROR GRIPS MY HEART
I have sat quiet as the shiny sterilized truck marked “radioactive” slips up the hollow at the edge of dark.
I have sat quiet as the coal truck haulage covered by tarp, permeates the air with the stench smell of rancid garbage down Route 3.
I have sat quiet as the dark holes on Montcoal Mountain have been filled in and filled in, giving the impression of undisturbed graves.
I have sat quiet as the hoses have been laid over the edge of the slurry pond under the guise of darkness, pumping out filthy black slurry hurriedly before inspectors came.
I have sat quiet as the run-off from the ponds have been guided to our mountain springs- chemicals added making the water appear clean, preventing the glancing eyes from knowing their dark secrets.
I have sat quiet as the massive dirt dams have been erected, peering out over the mountains and looking as ominous as Godzilla in Hong Kong.
I have sat quiet as one by one our mountains are made to look like flattened biscuit dough as the chef rolls and manipulates it with his hand.
I have sat quiet as the men from the mines get their disability checks for black lung from the air they breathe, yet watch as my granddaughter mounts her schoolbus only to breathe the same air as the miner, day after day.
I have sat quiet as I tell my granddaughter, when rains trouble me, “stay home today, there may be a little flooding” not wanting her to be aware of the dark terror that grips my heart.
I can honestly say I sit quiet no more
Taken from the Courier-Journal 6/18/06 in Louisville Kentucky
By Dianne Aprile
Special to The Courier-Journal
Two weeks after coming home from a tour of mountaintop-removal mining sites in Eastern Kentucky, one particular image lingers in my mind. More than all the other sights and experiences of the trip – and they were plentiful – I remember the figure of Daymon Morgan, an 80-year-old World War II veteran, wearing bib overalls and a wide-brimmed hat, standing in the lush green woods of his Leslie County farm, holding a broken wildflower in his hand.
Beneath a canopy of trees, he described in plain but stirring terms his love and concern for the mountainous land above Lower Bad Creek, land he has nurtured and defended for half a century. It was here, among his family and friends, that he returned to build a home after serving his country.
The wildflower he held in his hand was bloodroot, one of the first signs of spring in Kentucky. It was broken because Morgan wanted to demonstrate how the flower got its name. He showed us that when you snap the root, it bleeds a sticky, red-orange sap. Long before Kentuckians inhabited the commonwealth, Indians used the plant for medicinal purposes as well as a dye to paint themselves for battle.
Morgan’s woods are teeming with bloodroot, as well as golden seal, ginseng and wild ginger. Not too long ago, these native plants grew wild and plentiful not just in Morgan’s woods but in the neighboring mountaintops adjoining his property, on the tree-laden slopes that have been part of the majesty of the Appalachian landscape – and integral to the lives of his community – for generations.
But now, the mountaintops surrounding Morgan’s land are bleeding. More precisely, they are being blown apart with explosives. Mining companies are blasting the tops off the mountains, pursuing a technique that makes it easier and faster and cheaper to remove coal from the earth that holds it. It’s an efficient technique: Explode the mountain; remove the coal; shove the waste over the nearest hillside; “reclaim” the site; move on to the next site.
But Morgan is a hold-out, a resister to this process. He’s told the mining companies they’ll never take his mountaintop. Therefore, his land – untouched by their equipment – is a good starting point for understanding exactly what this brutal mining technique is removing from Kentucky’s land, people, communities and natural ecology.
One has only to drive a short distance from Morgan’s home, down dusty, eroded, pot-holed roads, to get a glimpse of what he fears and wants to stop: barren plateaus of land, flat as airstrips and far more desolate, that once, before the bulldozers and explosives had their way with it, looked just like Morgan’s lush woods. Today, many of the neighborhood’s streams – once home to fish and wildlife – are dried up, vanished, filled with sediment or, worse, with the demolition debris that is allowed to tumble down newly decapitated mountains into once-running, now unrecognizable creeks and brooks.
Abe: How do we do that?
I have sat quiet as the shiny sterilized truck marked “radioactive” slips up the hollow at the edge of dark.
Beneath a canopy of trees, he described in plain but stirring terms his love and concern for the mountainous land above Lower Bad Creek, land he has nurtured and defended for half a century. It was here, among his family and friends, that he returned to build a home after serving his country.