Archive for October, 2007
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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In order to make sure mining operations stayed off of his property, McKinley Sumner had the boundaries surveyed and marked with bright orange markers. When mining began near his property, not only did the markers disappear, but also the big, old tree used to indicate the property line. One lawyer says it would now be hard to prosecute the company for trespassing on his property, because there is no property there any more. It’s just a straight drop-off now.
According to Sumner, “Back in August, I was out in the yard one day and I heard this awful commotion. It didn’t sound right to me, so I decided to go to the top of the mountain. I put on my boots to keep the copperheads and rattlesnakes away and headed up. When I got back there, I saw this monster bulldozer. At about the time I got to the top, a truck pulled up. I went up to the person in the truck who was apparently the foreman, and asked him if he realized they were on private property.
“He said, ‘No, I don’t think so.”
“I responded by saying, ‘Yes, I do think so!’ I talked to him for a minute and then I started on down the ridge to see what all they had done.
“I am 74 years old, and I hike up to the ridgeline three times a week to make sure the company is not trying to come on my property again. I just want them to know that I’m still here and I’m watching. I just don’t think that this should be happening in the United States.”
Click here to learn more about Montgomery Creek and the communities that live nearby.
Summary and photo courtesy of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.
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After mountaintop removal coal mining started above the community of McRoberts, KY, the community experienced three hundred-year floods in ten days. Local resident Lucious Thompson, a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, describes the devastation this way:
“The good things disappearing are the trees, the wildlife. The streams of water have stopped running. And that’s some of the good parts of life.
“It’s nerve-wracking; you can’t sleep at night like you used to. You can’t enjoy yourself. The coal trucks will run you off the road – they run 24 hours a day. The noise will kill you; the dust will kill you. You can’t keep your house clean because of the dust. They’ll come right down to your back door if you don’t stop them. They will really hurt you.
“Years ago there was wall-to-wall people. Everyone had a job. The way it’s going now, no one’s ever going to have a job in this area. I figure in 10 years this will be a ghost town. Tumbleweeds will be going down the road. This place will never be like it used to be.”
Click here to learn more about McRoberts, KY and the communities that live nearby.
Summary contributed by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. Photo by Builder Levy.
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Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia is located directly below the 2.8 billion gallon (yes, with a B) Shumate sludge impoundment on Cherry Pond Mountain, secured by a 385 foot tall earthen dam. Operated by a coal company, this ill-constructed sludge dam is one of West Virginia’s largest and most dangerous, threatening the lives of 230 children each school day. According to a Mine Safety and Health Administration report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, this dam is leaking.
Should the earthen dam of the Shumate impoundment ever be breached, there would be less than three minutes to evacuate the Marsh Fork Elementary School before the water at the school was 6 feet deep, and in only minutes more it would rise to over 15 feet. Residents of the community are particularly concerned because the emergency response plan calls for notification of school children and others at risk by bullhorn.
This coal company also operates a coal preparation plant about 200 feet from the school. Coal dust from the plant perpetually coats the school with a black film, which many residents complain is making their children sick. A geologist at Marshall University confirmed that there was coal dust in every air sample he took in and around the school.
Ed Wiley, whose 12-year-old granddaughter attends Marsh Fork, walked for 40 days from Charleston, WV, to Washington, DC, in August and September of 2006 to call attention to the plight of the children at Marsh Fork Elementary School. When he arrived in Washington, Ed held a news conference and met with Senator Robert Byrd to discuss Marsh Fork Elementary School. Despite Ed’s reports that Senator Byrd “had tears in his eyes,” and had promised to “leave no stones unturned,” there has been no action to date on Ed’s requests. Ed has formed an organization to raise money to build a new school called Pennies of Promise More about Ed’s walk and the effort to move the school can be found on their website, or by contacting the community organization Coal River Mountain Watch .
Click here to watch videos about the plight of students at Marsh Fork Elementary School, watch video flyovers of the mine site, and learn more about the communities nearby.
Summary and photo contributed by Benji Burrell of Appalachian Voices.
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