Appalachian coal is a dead end road. With coal production declining across the Appalachian region and prices nearly tripling since 2007, economists and energy analysts are increasingly saying that Appalachian coal is the wrong investment for America. In Appalachia alone, we’ve seen over 1 million acres of America’s oldest mountains destroyed forever, 1200 miles of headwater streams buried, and some of the highest poverty in the nation due to mountaintop removal mining. But, though we have lost much, the people of Appalachia are fighting back through organizing and advocacy from Charleston to Frankfort to Washington DC.
Coal River Mountain, located in Raleigh County, West Virginia is one of America’s Most Endangered Mountains. The communities surrounding the mountain have a rich and mixed history with America’s most polluting fossil fuel. As the name implies, many of the towns in the Coal River Valley grew up with the expansion of coal-mining. But, 150 years after coal-mining began in Appalachia, much of the central and southern Appalachians stand devastated by mining, and impoverished by coal companies hell-bent on keeping coal “cheap” at the expense of our land and people. The communities of the Coal River Valley are no different. The people of the Coal River Valley – having seen and experienced firsthand the devastation that the mining and processing of coal causes – have seen enough to know that they need to take a new direction in choosing their future economic path.
When you’re talking about Appalachia and coal, the word “battle” is not used lightly. From Matewan, to Harlan County, to Blair Mountain, violence and bloodshed are a very real part of our history. Now the inherently American legacy of the miners of Blair Mountain, courageous coalfield labor organizers, and the grassroots movement that led to surface mining laws in the 70s has reached a head. The Appalachian people have drawn our line in the sand. We stand here together to tell companies that would practice mountaintop removal to stop NOW. We have popular support for clean energy, a better economic alternative, and literally everything at stake, and the Appalachian people will win this battle of wind vs. fire.
The Battle for Coal River Mountain…
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There are two potential futures for Coal River Mountain, WV and the people of the Coal River Valley.
Industrial Wind Power (potential shown below) OR a Mountaintop Removal site (permit area in black)
Remember that mountaintop removal does the same thing to our economy that it does to the environment. Industrial wind development will create more jobs in the short AND long-term, as well as more energy in the long-term.
Coal companies have been to the neighborhood before, and still have a heavy presence in the area, having destroyed several nearby mountains and leaving Raleigh County with an 18.5% poverty rate.
Coal River Mountain remains one of the most potentially productive spots in the surrounding coalfields for wind. You’ll notice many areas of class 4, 5, 6, and even class 7 wind potential here. This is a prime spot for wind power, and the future of Appalachia’s clean energy economy.
Coal River Mountain is approximately 20,550 acres in size, and 30 miles of if its ridges receive commercially viable wind speeds. There is room on Coal River Mountain to place 220 2.0MW wind turbines. Such a project would have the potential to produce 1.16 Million Megawatt-hours (MWh) every year, or enough to power 150,000 homes, forever
On Coal River Mountain, four surface-mining permits either approved, pending or in formation, together span 6,000 acres. As currently proposed, these “mines” would reduce wind potential to a point that a Coal River Mountain Wind Farm would become commercially unviable. The ensuing ecological devastation will be immense.
According to Coal River Mountain Watch:
These mines [on Coal River Mountain] will be at the heads of Horse Creek, Dry Creek, and Rock Creek, and will surround nearly the entire length of Sycamore Creek, considered to be the most pristine stream in the area. Communities are situated at the mouth of each of these streams.
But if coal companies have their way, they would blast Coal River Mountain right off the map. In fact, by overlaying permit data onto a topographical map in Google Earth, we can show you what the hypothetical coal company vision of Coal River Mountain would look like. On the left side of the image, you can see what a mountaintop removal site on Coal River Mountain would look potentially like.
There is so much at stake in Appalachia. Wind power is cheaper to extract. Wind power is cheaper to produce. Wind power has zero emissions. Wind power does not require us to tear down our mountains. Wind power will provide greater economic benefit. Wind power will provide more jobs. Wind power will provide more energy. The benefits are endless. Mountaintop removal has to end and it has to end now.
We all stand to gain by supporting the efforts of CRMW to save Coal River Mountain from mountaintop removal by setting up industrial wind energy.
If you can join the effort, and would rather see a windmill than a toxic mountaintop removal mine, please sign the Coal River Wind Petition and check out CoalRiverWind.org.
“This is the first alternative ever proposed that has a strong economic component, that has real benefits to it that could be brought to local communities,” said Rory McIlmoil, campaign coordinator for Coal River Wind. “The wind potential would be destroyed if they continue with the strip mining.”
The advocates from Coal River Wind are still open to allowing Massey to mine there as long as it’s at least 300 feet below the surface. They argue that the underground mine would actually create more jobs for local residents than an MTR site, which relies mostly on heavy machinery.
2. MTR Fact of the Week
According to Dr. Matthew Wasson of Appalachian Voices, energy produced by the Coal River Mountain Wind farm would be cheaper than energy produced by Duke Energy’s proposed “Cliffside” coal-fired power plant in North Carolina. So much for “cheap” coal.
Cliffside Energy Cost: $0.150 / kWh
Coal River Mountain Wind Energy Cost: $0.094 / kWh
3. Mountain Video
(Congratulations to the production team. This was one of the top 15 non-profit videos on YouTube last week!…)
I also highly recommend watching these:
Rory McIlmoil and Lorelei Scarboro on this weeks’ Decision Makers: Part I Part II Part III
4. Featured Activist
Lorelei Scarboro
Lorelei Scarbro was born and raised in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. She is the daughter and wife of coal miners, and has been active in the fight to save rural schools in West Virginia. She is now fighting for a clean just energy future for West Virginia and the Nation. Her writing, such as Winning with wind: Hope for Coal River Mountain in the Coal Valley news is spreading hope for people in the valley that they can save their economy and their mountains simultaneously by ending mountaintop removal and supporting industrial wind energy.
“My father was a coal miner. My grandfather was a coal miner. I have two brothers that are coal miners, my son-in-law is a coal miner,” says Scarbro, a life-long West Virginian and probably not someone you’d expect to be an outspoken opponent of coal. But Scarbro says, “I believe that the time for coal has come and gone, and I think we’re destroying our earth with fossil fuels. That’s the reason that we’re in the climate crisis that we’re in. I believe that we need to start transitioning.”
“It’s like living in a war zone when you have to sit in you home, you hear the blasting, and you breathe in the coal dust and you breathe in the rock dust,” says Scarbro. “To live with your house shaking every day, the foundation cracking, the windows rattling, it is really like living in a war zone.”
Learn more about Lorelei by watching this video on CoalRiverWind.org and this video on iLoveMountains.org.
5. Mountain Music
Check out Tim O Brien and Kathy Mattea original of “Walk the Way the Wind Blows” here
Walk the Way the Wind Blows (performed by David Grisman, Tony Rice, Bob Wasserman, and Mark O’ Connor)
Coal River Mountain is one of the most beautiful mountains in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia.
But Big Coal has plans for a major mountaintop removal coal mining operation at Coal River Mountain. If their plans go through, nearly 10 square miles of the mountain would be destroyed, and 18 valley fills would devastate the Clear Fork River watershed.
Fortunately, there is an alternative to mountaintop removal mining on Coal River Mountain — and it’s literally hanging right there in the mountain breeze.
In 2006, a study of the wind potential on Coal River Mountain demonstrated that Coal River Mountain is an ideal location for developing utility-scale wind power.
Building a wind farm at Coal River mountain would produce enough wind power to keep the lights on in 150,000 homes… pump $20 million per year in direct local spending during construction and $2 million per year thereafter… create hundreds of jobs…. and preserve Coal River Mountain for generations to come.
Starting today, citizens from the Coal River Valley and across the country are launching a major new campaign to to move our nation toward the production of clean energy by making this unique opportunity a reality.
And please, take a moment to forward this email on to your friends and family. We need your help in spreading the word about this incredibly important new initative.
Over the last year, we’ve seen the price of Appalachian coal nearly triple. In 2007, Appalachian coal prices hit a low of around $40/ton on the spot market. But last month, at the end of July 2008, we saw Appalachian coal hit $150/ton.
With regional coal production in a long-term decline, we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the upcoming months and years.
AEP needs to hike Ohio rates 45% over 3 years
COLUMBUS, Ohio – American Electric Power said Thursday it must raise electricity rates 45 percent for its nearly 1.5 million customers in Ohio over the next three years, to cover soaring coal prices and the cost of modernizing its systems to keep them reliable.
That 18 percent rate hike Dominion just got approved? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
From EnergyCentral in Kentucky, we hear similar news:
On Wednesday, TVA Chief Executive Officer and President Tom Kilgore said that rising production costs will drive up the price it charges local distributors for that power. TVA is allowed to make such fuel cost adjustments quarterly, and this one could increase individual bills by 10 percent to 20 percent, Kilgore said. A 15 percent boost would be TVA’s biggest rate jump since 1977.
That means an extra $12 to $25 charge per month for the average household, he said. Local utilities expect to pass that increase directly on to their customers.
And with production declining, and renewable energy becoming more cost competitive, we may soon see states who hope to protect their consumers begin to invest in conservation, efficiency, and real renewable energy in a serious way.
1. This weeks featured blogs…
David Roberts expands on the topic of coal prices over at Grist
After gas prices, electricity bills are probably the most salient energy price indicator for average folk (albeit a distant second), so the current gas price hullabaloo offers a decent preview of what we can expect.
There will be outrage. There will be demands for increased mining. (Mine here! Mine now!) There will be Republican demagoguery on behalf of coal companies (and as a bonus, coal-state Democratic demagoguery too). There will be promises that coal mining and burning aren’t like they used to be, because these days super shiny technology makes them clean. There will be expert testimony saying that coal prices are rising because of structural economic forces that won’t be affected by an uptick in mining; that testimony will be disregarded by the demagogues. Greens and their legislative friends will push back with a scattered, incoherent message that involves half capitulation to mining and half boosterism of alternatives.
How will it all shake out?
Well, let’s wait and see how the gas-price thing goes. That will tell us a lot.
Climate Progress points out some of the dangers of continuing our current polices by looking at McCain’s pros and cons (their take is mostly cons on energy).
For those who enjoy the work of the farmer-poet, Wendell Berry, and/or agree that we are steadily losing a part of what makes us human in our rush to embrace technology and uber-industrialism. For those that retain agrarian values in the face of mass development and rampant consumerism.
4. Featured Activist
Donna and Charlie Branham of Mingo County, West Virginia: Donna, a retired nurse, and Charlie, a member of the United Mine Workers of America, have successfully organized with their neighbors to keep valley fills and strip mine permits away from their home in Lenore, West Virginia for the past ten years. They have worked with other Mingo County residents to form a new citizens group, West Virginia Future. With support from OVEC members across the state, the group launched an outreach media effort with two bill boards along highway 119, encouraging other residents to join together and protect their mountain heritage.
“We aim to ensure good paying green jobs through deep underground mining, reclamation, renewable energy, and sustainable industries. We recognize how hard our people have fought in the past for our rights and freedom and are working today to carry out that tradition.”
Right now the group is organizing against a mountaintop removal permit that will flatten five miles of Buffalo Mountain and fill in 14 streams. Donna, Charlie, and their neighbors are also beginning to plan for alternative jobs in the county. To learn more about the group and find out how you can help Donna, Charlie, and the Mingo County Group, call (304) 475-2529 or visit WestVirginiaFuture.org
Addendum: Many thanks to Kentuckians for the Commonwealth for organizing the mountaintop removal flyover tour with Congressmen Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Norm Dicks from Washington State.
With Congressional Representatives heading to their home districts for the August Recess at the end of this week, is there anything we can do to keep the momentum going in Congress on the Clean Water Protection Act, whose passage would sharply curtail mountaintop removal coal mining?
The answer is yes. Last summer, many citizens just like you visited their Congressional representatives’ local office while he or she was at home.
These volunteers for the mountains spoke with their representatives about the damage done to our environment and the culture of Appalachia by mountaintop removal coal mining — and their efforts played a crucial role in helping us get to our current record 146 co-sponsors for the Clean Water Protection Act.
Would you consider visiting your representative during the August Congressional recess? We’ll guide you through the process of setting up the meeting, and supply you with materials that you can give to your representatives to make sure they understand the scale and scope of mountaintop removal coal mining:
Congressional interest in mountaintop removal coal mining has never been higher, which is why your efforts this summer can make a tremendous difference.
Just two weeks ago, for example, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks from Washington State — the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that has oversight of the Office of Surface Mining’s budget — joined Kentucky Congressman Ben Chandler in a flyover tour of mountaintop removal sites in Kentucky. This is the first time a member of Congress in such a powerful position has gone to Kentucky to view large-scale surface mining and meet with citizens affect by mountaintop removal.
To read more about the Congressional flyover of mountaintop removal coal mining site, click here and here.
If you have any questions about how you can meet with your representative this August, email outreach@iLoveMountains.org.
Finally, I wanted to let you know about a recent radio show worth listening to.
Two weeks ago, NPR affiliate KDHX in St. Louis featured iLoveMountains organizer Benji Burrell and retired miner Cary Huffman for to talk about America’s Most Endangered Mountains and to talk about the threat mountaintop removal poses to the Gauley River, which I recently wrote to you about.
The Public Welfare Foundation’s Newsroom posted this article about the Alliance for Appalachia and its two-year $225,000 grant:
New Appalachian Alliance receives $225,000 grant
Washington, D.C.–The Public Welfare Foundation has awarded a two-year, $225,000 grant to the [Alliance for Appalachia], a cooperative effort launched by 13 advocacy groups in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The Alliance aims to stop mining companies from shearing off mountaintops to get at coal deposits, a practice which the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates has damaged or destroyed at least 400,000 acres of southern Appalachian forests and 1,200 miles of mountain streams since the 1980’s.
“By combining forces, we feel very strongly we have a better chance of protecting these communities and stopping mountaintop removals,” says Mary Anne Hitt of Appalachian Voices, an advocacy group based in Boone, NC. “We’re trying to build a national network of people who will help change federal policies and educate decision-makers on mountaintop removal.”
Opponents of mountaintop mining argue that it not only wreaks havoc with the environment but that it also sinks Appalachian communities deeper into poverty. “One of the biggest tragedies of mountaintop removal is that it has left in its wake some of the worst poverty in the nation,” says Hitt. “You’d think that with all the billions of dollars being extracted out of these areas, the streets should be paved with gold. But it’s the exact opposite.”
Much of the profit flows out of state in the form of royalties to out-of-state owners or proceeds from coal sales. Automation has reduced the number of jobs in mining. “The vast majority of the profits are going out of those communities,” says Hitt, “and what’s left behind is a toxic, denuded landscape that’s not very attractive for future economic development.”
“I grew up in the mountains, and there were trees and plants and lots of wildlife,” says Terri Blanton of Berea, Ky. “People supplemented their income by collecting different herbs, ginseng being the most important of them.” Such woodland plants don’t grow back, she says, after nearby mountaintops have been leveled and the topsoil stripped away, and tougher non-indigenous grasses introduced to mined areas can’t sustain wildlife such as deer.
“It’s almost like you’ve been transplanted into the desert someplace,” says Blanton. “And mountaintop mining also destroys the water tables and the aquifers underneath. We’re having a lot of heavy metal runoff. It’s killing the streams – they’re just gravel pits, like drainage ditches. People live in the valleys, so when it rains, we’re having great floods, and all our streams are running with dirt. People down here say the Kentucky River is too thick to swim and too thin to plow.” Silt fouls drinking water, kills fish and, without mountain vegetation to hold water, the valleys become caught up in cycles of drought alternating with flash floods.
The situation could worsen by 2012, when the US Environmental Protection Agency projects that mountaintop removal mining could encompass some 1.4 million acres of Appalachian wilderness and 2,400 miles of streams, obliterating the habitat of countless birds, fish, wildlife and plants and scarring a vast landscape rich in natural and human history.
Over the summer, after years of waging often futile local campaigns to block nearby mountaintop mining operations, citizens’ advocacy groups across the southern Appalachian region decided to band together to form the multi-state Alliance. The Public Welfare Foundation, which had previously awarded grants to five Alliance member organizations over the past four years, strongly encouraged those groups to coordinate efforts and take advantage of force-multipliers such as shared research, litigation, leadership development and training and public and media strategies. In addition to the $225,000 committed by the Foundation, alliance members are seeking $200,000 from several other foundations and funding sources.
Alliance leaders say their first priority is convincing federal policymakers to retain a regulation barring surface and mountaintop mining from disturbing land within 100 feet of a stream. The US Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining is proposing to do away with the so-called “stream buffer zone” rule. Over the longer term, Alliance members plan to intensify their efforts to raise public awareness about the damages inflicted on highlands and the communities below when stream beds are buried under tons of mining rubble. In 2002, federal officials loosened anti-dumping regulations issued under the US Clean Water Act. That’s a stance the citizens’ groups hope to reverse.
“Dumping mountaintop waste into streams makes it economical for them to do mountaintop removal,” says Hitt. If filling streams with rubble is banned, she argues, it stands to reason that many mining companies will shift to more surgical coal extraction methods, creating a more conducive climate for farming, tourism and other industries.
An every day fossil fuel…
An influential lobby on Capitol Hill…
Dwindling supply…
Spiking prices, effecting nearly every facet of the American economy…
Big industries exploiting high prices as an excuse for unnecessarily increasing extraction at any environmental cost…
…while stuffing their pockets with record profits.
Sound Familiar?
One of the most dramatic and pivotal price shifts in the weakening economy over the last 7 years has been the price of a gallon of gasoline. As we turned over the millenium in 2000, gas was at a balmy $1.26 according to the Energy Information Administration. Since then, the price has more than tripled, breaking $4.00 nationally for the first time just last month. The increase in fuel costs is already having dramatic impacts on our food and supply costs, making it more expensive to buy anything across all markets.
Are we on the verge of seeing electricity rates pull a “gas-prices?”…
A little less conspicuous than the price of fuel for our automobiles has been the insane upward spike in price of America’s “most abundant fuel” for electricity – COAL.
From a low of roughly $30 in 2000, the cost of a ton of Appalachian coal has increased 5 fold from 2000-2008, now fetching roughly $150/ton. Roughly half of America’s electricity is produced by coal, and a Appalachia produces a large percentage of our fuel for electricity. Most of this production in central Appalachia is from “mountaintop removal coal-mining” . This is a barbaric process by which entire mountains are blasted apart for coal. Their toxic corpses are then dumped into adjacent river valleys, poisoning the fountainhead streams for many of the major rivers in the east. Over 1 million acres of Appalachia, and over 1200 miles of streams have been destroyed by mountaintop removal and the dumping of mountaintop removal waste according to government statistics.
We will continue to cover this emerging story in the coming weeks.
See if you are connected to mountaintop removal at the My Connection page at iLoveMountains.org, and check to see if your Congressman is a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169) here.
We also need you to join the iLoveMountains.org Bloggers Challenge. Over 470 bloggers have participated, but we need to spread the word until every American and every politician is hearing about mountaintop removal on a daily basis.
They’ve told us time and again that we’ve got an almost limitless supply of coal in this country and that if only we’d let them destroy our mountains and valleys, and suck it up when it comes to mercury, a happy future of “clean” coal would await us! With what seems to be wee bit of a supply problem on our hands, do you believe the coal industry when they say they’re going to make all those investments to make coal clean?
Your power comes from this coal. So, your comfort is based in this destruction. Also remember that the mountains of Appalachia are also the “mother of waters” and many of you are downstream. In the big picture, we are all downstream.
2) Mountaintop Removal Fact of the Week
Appalachian coal cost $40 in 2007 (low).
Appalachian coal costs $150 in 2008 (high).
3) Mountain Movie/Image of the Week:
Buffalo from the Sky
Logan County, WV
4) Featured Activist:
Larry Bush, from Wise County Virginia: Himself a former miner and American veteran, Larry Bush traveled with other Appalachian residents to Washington DC last month to lobby Congressional Representatives to co-sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169)” which now has 146 co-sponsors thanks to the efforts of Larry and others. Larry has also been an outstanding organizer in SW Virginia and a leading voice against the dangerous new coal-fired power plant proposed by Dominion in his home of Wise County. In Wise County, 25% of all the land has been strip-mined, and there is already another coal-fired power plant 4 miles away from where the proposed coal plant would go. Despite all of this, Wise County suffers from 20% poverty, and according to the County profile:
The population of Wise County is considerably less prosperous than the population of Virginia. Wise County’s poverty rate is 108% higher than the Virginia poverty rate. The per capita income for Wise Countians is only 59% of the per capita income for Virginians.
Thanks to the efforts of Larry and others, the people of Wise County and SW Virginia may yet be able to stop the efforts of Dominion and Governor Kaine to build another deadly, GHG emitting, mountaintop removal using coal-fired power plant in their backyard.
5) Mountain Music of the Week:
Indulge in watching a few of the best musicians in the world – Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas , Sam Bush , Mark o’Connor, and Béla Fleck rip through Rice’s classic version of “Freeborn Man.”
Lorelei Scarbro was born and raised in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. She is the daughter and wife of coal miners, and has been active in the fight to save rural schools in West Virginia. She is now fighting for a clean just energy future for West Virginia and the Nation. Her writing, such as Winning with wind: Hope for Coal River Mountain in the Coal Valley news is spreading hope for people in the valley that they can save their economy and their mountains simultaneously by ending mountaintop removal and supporting industrial wind energy.
Donna, a retired nurse, and Charlie, a member of the United Mine Workers of America, have successfully organized with their neighbors to keep valley fills and strip mine permits away from their home in Lenore, West Virginia for the past ten years. They have worked with other Mingo County residents to form a new citizens group, 
Himself a former miner and American veteran, Larry Bush traveled with other Appalachian residents to Washington DC last month to lobby Congressional Representatives to co-sponsor the 
