West Virginia, Mountain Mama

So this isn't really about oceans, but has a tie in with water, which I am going to let slide because this issue is a big deal. It has recently come to my attention just in fact how damaging mountain top removal is. I had always heard about it from friends and progressive media, however, I never really looked that much into it. When I did, my eyes were opened. I wrote an article about it (which could probably use a lot of editing buuuut will suffice for now.)

Coal mining, one of America’s biggest economic activities to date, could be destroying the second most bio diverse forest in the world, according to scientists. The technique causing an upset among a West Virginia mountain town is mountaintop mining, also called mountain top removal, which has damaged 2,000 miles of streams and could potentially destroy up to 1.4 million acres of forest by 2020.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mountaintop mining is a surface removal practice that uses explosives to remove mountaintops in order to expose coal seams, or beds of coal thick enough to be profitably mined. The debris and rubble are then disposed into nearby valleys and streams, an environmentally damaging process called valley fills, which causes irreversible damage and contamination to the streams.

Bo Webb, a Coal River Mountain, WV resident, has tirelessly attempted to stop coal companies to stop mining near his home. Webb said he and his neighbors live in constant fear that the mountain above may split apart and damage their homes.

Webb, a 7th generation Appalachian to call the West Virginia mountains home, lives in a hollow that can be traced back to his ancestors since at least 1823. Forced to leave the property at age 12 due to lack of jobs, his family moved to Cleveland, OH, but they returned every weekend as well as holidays and vacations to be with the rest of his family.

After the passing of his grandmother in 1984, Webb purchased the property from his uncle, and moved back to the hollow permanently in 2001 to enjoy early retirement and enjoy the connection with the mountains that he had when he was younger. However, shortly after the move is when he started experiencing the effects of the mining. He said one of the major issues in his community is flooding because there are no topsoil, trees or understory to absorb the rain.

“The mountain stream that runs at the edge of my property has been wiped out of all aquatic life within the past two years,” Webb said.  “As a kid we used to catch fish bait in that stream--lizards, crayfish and such.  It was a living incubator of life, probably for at least the last couple hundred million years.  Mountaintop removal wiped it out within two years, transforming it into a tomb of death.”

On Nov. 10, Webb was one of 10 people awarded the celebrated Purpose Prize in which he was given $50,000 for his efforts to end the Big Coal destruction to his homeland. He said he frequently travels to Washington D.C. with justice groups to urge the EPA to take stronger action against the mining that he said is destroying his community and his heritage and will not stop until something more is done.

“Our mountains are our connection with our heritage and our culture,” he said. “If we allow them to be destroyed we are allowing ourselves to be destroyed. The EPA could call a press conference tomorrow and declare a moratorium on all mountain top removal stating that in the interest of public health all mountain top removal operations are on hold until the EPA conducts a complete scientific study on the total impact of [the practice]. At the very least the EPA could enforce the Clean Water Act. That alone would end it.”

According to a press release from [name asked to be withheld] of the EPA’s Press Office, the EPA will use its Clean Water Act to guarantee that future mining will not cause significant environmental, water quality and human health impacts. He added that they are creating a permit tracking Web site so that the public can determine the status of mining permits to ensure transparency.

Jim Sconyers, chair of the West Virginia chapter of The Sierra Club, said valley fills and mountain top removal go hand in hand and agrees if the federal laws were better enforced mountain top removal would be banned.

“You can’t do much more damage to a stream than to obliterate it with millions of tons of debris,” he said. “This is the worst ongoing environmental disaster in the U.S., hands down. There are two disasters happening, one is damaging the mountains, the other being the eradication of thriving, pristine streams. Our protective agencies have admitted if everybody had to obey the letter of the law, most coal mining would have to stop.  It is only by turning blind eye or teasing out the loop holes that this goes on.”

According to the web site of Massey Energy Co., the regions largest coal producer, the company is committed to the safety of their employees.

However, the company has been cited for numerous safety violations over the years. A statement released by The Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA, states they responded to three separate complaints regarding hazardous conditions at mines owned by the company within the month of March 2010 alone. 


Some of the violations listed included failure to maintain the minimum air ventilation requirements, accumulation of combustible materials and roof control violations. According to the report, in one instance, the operator failed to follow the approved roof control plan by illegally mining 8 feet beyond the allowable depth of 20 feet.

In another instance, inspectors also found a mine operator not providing adequate ventilation to reduce risk of explosions after responding to an anonymous complaint about hazardous conditions at a site following a small fire. Proper ventilation is required by the law to prevent mine explosions and black lung.

A number of deaths have also reportedly happened on various company-owned sites. The most recent accident was an April 5 explosion that took the lives of 29 miners at the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine, making it the worst U.S. mining disaster in 40 years.

The company’s CEO Don Blackenship was scheduled to testify Dec. 14 before a federal panel investigating the deadly blast. However, after announcing that he will retire from the company at the end of the month in early December, he has joined other Massey employees by exercising his Fifth Amendment right and refuses to testify.

Repeated phone calls and e-mails to Massey Energy Co. headquarters were not returned.

Sconyers said although he and other Appalachia residents fighting to end mountain top removal have kept permits for new mining sites from being approved, he’s not sure if it means the end for coal mining in West Virginia.

“Who knows where it’ll go from there—the fact of the matter is that all the analysts that don’t work for coal companies are seeing that the handwriting's on the wall,” he said. “I’m up close and personal to it, so I know what it is what it looks like. If you haven’t seen it, it’s disgusting and tragic. It needs to stop.”