For more than 20 years there has been open warfare in West Virginia’s coal counties between community activists and the coal industry and its supporters. The fight is over a type of surface mining known to opponents as mountaintop removal, or MTR. Whatever your opinion of the practice, it’s hard to call it by any other name.
MTR has often pitted neighbor against neighbor, with battles fought in local courthouses and the statehouse in Charleston. The battles have been largely contained within Appalachian regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, where the practice is most prevalent. Now, after two decades, the war over mountaintop removal is moving to the national stage.
However the campaigns turn out, one thing is certain: The mountains of Appalachia and the words “mountaintop removal” could become as familiar to ordinary Americans as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Everglades are today.
“We have been reaching out for a decade and it’s starting to pay off,” said Janet Keating, co-director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Council, a Huntington, W.Va.-based organization formed in 1987 in part as a response to surface mining. She points to a national survey in which 45 percent of respondents said they had heard about mountaintop removal—name recognition that second-tier presidential candidates would welcome.
MTR coverage is now commonplace in such media outlets as The Economist of London, the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times. “We’re just starting to see this take off,” said Keating. “We have people all over the country. I think we’re starting to see critical mass.”
In the West Virginia statehouse, traditionally coal-friendly territory, this won’t be welcome news. The West Virginia Congressional delegation probably won’t like it, either. Few things rile a U.S. Representative or Senator as having the rest of Congress determine what goes on their states.
Yet in Jefferson County—a place that some politicians and homebuilders believe is captive to environmentalists—the Mountain State’s biggest environmental issue, despite its emerging worldwide interest, has remained largely off the radar screen.
Is it because we’re dealing with our issues surrounding smart growth, traffic, and water quality issues? Maybe it’s historical disconnect between the Eastern Panhandle and the rest of West Virginia—after all, you can drive to New York City faster than to our own state capital and to Niagara Falls in roughly the time it takes to drive to Mingo County—the epicenter of the MTR battles. Maybe we just like the cheap electricity we get from abundant coal.
If the rest of the country is getting so worked up—and we’re not—we have to ask: Is this our problem?
The irony about mountain top removal was that it was seen by advocates of so-called clean coal as a safe and effective way to get at the low-sulfur coal called for in the Clean Air Act. When burned, low-sulfur coal releases relatively less carbon dioxide, the primary cause of global climate disruption. But this type of coal cannot be readily mined from manned shafts because the thin seams are so close to the surface.
In a nutshell, here is how it works. First, the mountain is stripped of all tree and brush covering. Mature forest ecosystems are eradicated as the mountain is denuded. Then the topsoil is scraped off the mountain and put aside for the reclamation process that, as required by law, will take place after the mining operation. Finally, layers of up to 1,000 feet high are blasted away to “unburden” the coal beneath.
According to a recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey, the coal industry accounts for 69 percent of all the explosive use in the country. Blasting mountains represents a significant part of this. This blasting creates fly-rock and dust. Mining the exposed coal unleashes more dust and fly-rock. Because coal dust contains sulfur, when the dusty air settles, it corrodes whatever surface it comes into contact with: cars, homes, tomb stones—and lungs.
Coal companies like the method because it requires few miners to get the work done, relying on machinery instead of manpower. The coal industry asserts that because deep mining is dangerous for workers, surface mining makes sense from both safety and economic perspectives.
The blast debris must be removed from the immediate surface in order to retrieve the coal itself. So to clear the coal seam, the debris is typically pushed over the edge of the what’s left of the mountain, into the valleys below.
Dragline excavators remove the coal which is then taken away to be cleaned. Chemicals are used to separate the coal ore from other minerals bonded to it. The waste extracted from the ore—called coal sludge or slurry— is separated and confined in open ponds held back by earthen dams. The ponds must be constructed according to strict regulations that are meant to ensure against leaking and failure. One slurry pond, the Brushy Fork impoundment in Raleigh County, exceeds seven billion gallons of this highly toxic waste.
Eventually, after as many layers of blasting as is necessary to retrieve all the coal, the reclamation process ensues.
On some of the facts there is a clear agreement between environmental groups and the pro-coal Bush Administration. In fact, the environmental groups use the Bush Environmental Protection Agency’s and Office of Surface Mining’s own numbers.
These impacts include:
- 500 mountains that have been affected by mountaintop removal;
- 1,200 miles of streams completely filled in—more than 500 of them in West Virginia. These include headwater streams, seasonal streams and viable larger creeks that once supported sport and food fish stocks.
- A lot of land; some 1.5 million acres are projected to be affected by the practice by 2010.
Critics also bemoan the loss of what they say is one of West Virginia’s most important assets: its globally rare forests. The forests of Southern Appalachia are the most biodiverse temperate forests in the world and are some of the best forest habitat in the United States. More than 400,000 acres of this mountain forest—between 15 and 25 percent of southern West Virginia’s forest—no longer exist as forest ecosystems as a result of surface mining.
Names like white cedar, Canada yew, shale barren onion—which is found only in the Southern Appalachians—and the globally rare shrub Canby’s mountain-lover are not familiar names to most of us. But these species and their habitat make up a system that people from around the world study and appreciate on par with rainforests. But in Jefferson County, you’re as like to see as many “Save the Rainforest” bumper stickers as ones about mountaintop removal.
If this brand of surface mining is responsible for eliminating streams and creeks, it’s been blamed by some for unleashing water where it never was before. Stripped of forest cover and natural drainages, heavy rains now, say activists, pour off the mountainside to cause flooding. Watching a rainstorm do its work on a single construction site gives you an idea of how much water and mud can run off a half-acre lot under construction. You can imagine the effect on an entire mountain.
Flooding has increased dramatically in areas around mountaintop removal sites, resulting in deaths and property destruction. McDowell County was designated a federal disaster area due to flooding that left a thousand people homeless and caused damages of about $95 million. In a bit of dark humor, one activist said that the cost of the damage was actually higher, but was “only 95 million” thanks to downward pressure of mountaintop removal on home values.
Janice Nease, a founder of Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW), says surface mining is destroying homes and entire towns. She travels the region with a road show of graphic images and tales of children attending school beneath sludge dams and next to coal silos. She describes schools as becoming “inundated with coal dust.”
One example involves the 270 children, from kindergarten through fifth grade, who are enrolled in Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County. The school is directly beneath a containment pond. Despite the fact that the school has been operation since the 1930s, coal operations, which began in the 1980s, have been allowed to expand to the point where they threaten the school, says Nease.
Several students from the school have contracted asthma or cancer at a higher rate than would be expected in the population at large—illnesses which activists attribute to coal dust. The Environmental Protection Agency started an investigation in 2004 of all mining activities near the school, but so far have not linked the illnesses with the coal dust. “Usually,” says Nease, “They just close the school.” Closing Marsh Fork may be the final solution in this case, too.
An even greater concern to many is the existence of the containment pond on the mountainside above the school. Toxins from coal impoundments, said Nease, leech into the soil and groundwater in coalfield communities. These toxins are not removable once they enter the soil and water, she said, and are known to bioaccumulate in the food chain, so the long-term affects are yet to be fully evaluated.
There is one notable example of a containment pond failing. In 2000, in what the EPA called the worst environmental disaster ever in the Southeast, an impoundment near Inez, Kentucky failed, spilling 250 millions gallons of slurry and wastewater (more than 20 times the amount of oil lost by the Exxon Valdez). The spill, according to EPA, killed all aquatic life in more than 70 miles of West Virginia and Kentucky streams. EPA considers many other impoundments in West Virginia at high risk for failure.
One of the most often heard complaints is sheer proximity of mining to where people live. Coal companies are allowed to mine up to 300 feet from homes. According to CRMW, property values plummet in communities near surface-mining sites, leaving lifelong residents few options but to sell to the coal company or live with the continual blasting.
The blasts, says CRMW typically have a force 10 to 100 times of the Oklahoma City bombing. These blasts have been blamed for cracked foundations, contaminated or dried wells, and the deposition of huge rocks into peoples’ yards and public roads. There are cases in which blast-rock and debris has slammed into homes and cars—some people in the affected areas no longer allow their children to wait outside for the school bus.
Nease acknowledges that most of us don’t think of this when we turn on the lights. Still, coal-powered electricity accounts for a more than half of the electricity used in the United States. Less than five percent of that coal, says OVEC’s Vivian Stockman, comes from mountain top removal. “The small amount of coal obtained by mountaintop removal,” Stockman says, “could accounted for through increased energy efficiency.”
If topsoil has been successfully retained the reserved topsoil is re-strewn and the entire site is seeded. The idea is not so much to rebuild the mountain—if that were even possible—but to build a functional flattop area, which can be used for recreation, office parks, or other uses that were not possible when the mountain was in its natural state. In the mountainous, narrow valleys of Appalachia, where large flat spaces for development are at a premium, the flattop reclamation technique has its supporters.
One of the most famous reclamation projects is Twisted Run Golf Course, near Gilbert, W.Va., which opened in 2002. The course surely is eye candy for any links devotee. An Arch Coal subsidiary received one of the U.S. Department of Interior’s top environmental awards for development of the 18-hole, 7,010-yard golf course.
Local government support for reclamation projects runs high, too. “For years, Mingo County’s ability to recruit new business and industry has been limited by the lack of develbopment sites,” Mike Whitt, executive director of the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority. “Steep topography and narrow, flood-proned valleys have plagued the entire county. Level ground is scarce for any type of development, and the cost of ‘moving mountains’ to create a site for business development can kill a new project before the first nail is driven.”
Whitt points to the adoption by Mingo County of a Land Use Master Plan that has provided a solution to the lack of development sites, and its implementation is paving the way to a more diversified economy. The plan allows the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority to work with coal companies and permitting agencies to form a plan which will leave surface mined properties more useable once the minerals are extracted by the coal companies.
“A tremendous added benefit of the new King Coal Highway through Mingo County will be the creation of large, level sites that can be used for future development,” said Whitt. “Approximately 1,500 acres of level land will lie alongside the new highway to be utilized for the development of housing, recreational, educational, industrial facilities, and numerous other types of business and industry.”
Whitt said there are also plans to relocate the Mingo County Airport to a post-mined site that is being created as a result of coal mining. The new airport would boast a state-of-the-art 7,000-foot runway, lighting, and instrumentation—and, says Whitt, be a strong recruitment tool to draw new businesses to Mingo County.
Talking to Arch Coal employees, it’s clear they take a lot of pride in the reclamation work and the contribution to diversifying the economy, citing a state-sponsored trail system that attracts off-road enthusiasts into Southern West Virginia and will one day encompass nine counties. “Tourism, with the advent of the Hatfield McCoy Trails has become an important part of the economic mix in Mingo and Logan counties,” said Arch’s John Snyder.
Kim Link, manager of corporate communications for Arch Coal, offers these reclamation achievements:
- 600,000 trees in the past four years at one site, roughly doubling the number originally found at the site;
- national Good Neighbor Awards from the U.S. Department of the Interior for superior corporate citizenship in West Virginia;
- three safety awards and three reclamation awards during 2007.
Arch Coal also donated $490,00 over 19 years to a teacher awards program it sponsors.
In 1950, West Virginia coalmines employed about 143,000 miners; by 2002, the number of miners was down to 13,653. Total coal industry accounted for 18,635 jobs—a huge drop from 1979 when coal accounted for nearly 10 percent of the state’s jobs. But similar drops have been recorded in nearly every American industry that has become highly mechanized. Still, 18,00 jobs is still a significant number.
There are another 8,000 contractor jobs, “anything from painting to construction,” said Dave Kessler of the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “Each has to be licensed to work at a mine site.”
But the real money from coal comes from the coal severance tax, which nets West Virginia about $300 million annually. That money is apportioned by a formula. “Part of the money only goes to the counties from whence it came,” said according to West Virginia Delegate John Doyle, who serves on the House Finance Committee. The rest is divided up between the rest of the 55 counties of West Virginia.
The tax amounts to five percent of the sale price of mined coal. Of this amount, the state retains 93 percent. The remaining seven percent is apportioned like this: 75 percent of the seven percent is divided among coal producing counties according to each county’s coal production. The remaining 25 percent is divided among the state’s 55 counties and 230 incorporated municipalities regardless of coal production. All incorporated communities receive a share, based on population. All counties receive an additional share, based on the population of the unincorporated areas of the county.
According to that formula, counties and municipalities split about $21 million—not a lot of money to be divided up among so many jurisdictions, amounting to about $40,000 a year for Jefferson County. Still, it’s free money—and yet one more source of funds to feed the annexation frenzy.
The Eastern Panhandle contingency to the state House and Senate tend to vote with their counterparts on coal-related measures. “It’s legislative horse trading,” Doyle says.
Although it has been nearly universally condemned across the United States, the practice continues, in part, say opponents, because opposition has been largely localized, small, and fragmented. The dust the dust, noise, damaged water supplies, and threat of collapsed containment ponds might be driving the issue locally, but they don’t necessarily rise to the level of a federal case. The Clean Water Act and surface mining regulations do.
In the early 2000s, community and environmental groups stepped up efforts to enlist national organizations in their cause. Earth Justice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, took up the cause. With the West Virginia-based Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, they began efforts to force the federal government to enforce its own laws.
According to the Clean Water Act, permits can be granted under certain circumstances to deposit “fill material” into streams when it serves some beneficial primary purpose. The blasting and clearing of 1,000 feet of mountaintop creates a lot of rubble that had always been classified as waste material, and it’s illegal to dump waste into a stream. Community groups and activists sued coal companies in federal court to stop the dumping of mining waste into streams—effectively destroying them. In February 2003, a federal appellate court ruled that coal companies violated the Clean Water Act by filling stream valleys with coal waste, a ruling that overturned a lower court ruling.
What seemed like a victory for the anti-MTR forces was reversed with the stroke of a pen. The Bush administration reclassified coal rubble as valley fill—making it legal. “Every time we have a victory, the president changes a law,” said Stockman.
A second issue surrounds a regulation commonly referred to as the buffer zone rule. The thrust of it is that no mining can take place within a hundred feet of a stream. The problem with the rule is that, like the valley fill regulation, it was almost never enforced. Documented violations have resulted in the destruction of 535 miles of stream nationwide—these of the figures provided by the Office of Surface Mining (OSM). Rather than stronger enforcement, however, the OSM is promulgating a new rule that allows mining companies to do what they had been getting away with for years. The new rule is now open for public comment until November 23.
More recently, the Sierra Club, Rain Forest Network, National Wildlife Federation and other national groups whose memberships together amount to millions of voters, are pressuring the U.S. House and Senate to pay attention.
According to Ed Hopkins of the Sierra Club, there are 100 co-sponsors of House bill that would restore former regulations on mine waste. The bill’s lead sponsors are Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Frank Palone, D-N.J.
“For the foreseeable future,” said Hopkins, “coal will continue to be part of the nation’s energy mix. No one is trying to abolish coal. All we’re asking is that is mined responsibly and burned cleanly.”
Accompanying the legislative front is one on public relations. Ever heard of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Everglades? One reason you have is that local and regional groups have nationalized their cause. The vast majority of Americans will never visit Alaska, but across a broad political spectrum they have told their Representatives and Senators to oppose oil drilling in the Arctic refuge.
“That’s what we want for the Southern Appalachians,” said OVEC’s Keating. And if previous efforts to “nationalize” regional issues are any indication, that kind of name recognition is where the fight over mountaintop removal is going. Even the venerable Senator Ted Stevens, a contemporary of our Senator Robert Byrd, has not been able to use his considerable muscle to open the refuge for drilling. Will West Virginia’s delegation continue to get their way?
“It’s a moral issue,” said Melissa Ellsworth, a Shepherdstown native who spent summer 2006 living in Mingo County and working on MTR-related issues. She and a classmate from Boston, where she studies at the Museum School of Fine Arts, went there in part to understand what was going on.
“The coal companies are tearing up family graveyards and dumping them into stream valleys,” she said. “They don’t care; they’ll dig up your ancestors for coal.”
Ellsworth lived with a woman who was fighting a proposed mine permit behind her house. She spent a lot of time going door-to-door and attending hearings. She said that the specter of mining and the conflict over mountaintop removal is always present there, but not the conflict. “I would not say that every person was on one side of the fence or the other.” Rather, she said, it’s something they’ve come to live with.
“It’s important to remember that at one time those counties had large populations, but a lot of the people are gone now. Many of them don’t have the financial means to fight for their homes and towns,” she said.
Still, “You don’t want to have the wrong bumper sticker on your car in the wrong town,” she said, regardless of which side you’re on.
“It’s not about stopping coal,” said Ellsworth. “When the coal companies talk about ‘environmental terrorists being a threat to our economy,’ it’s all about intimidation. At hearings, when you see the coal company lawyers socializing with the members of the board they are testifying before, you understand this first-hand.”
Like many Jefferson Countians, when Ellsworth travels outside the state she hears the catcalls about mountaintop removal in West Virginia, the who-would-ever-want-to-live-there refrain, the extension of which is: What new economy business would want to move to a state that allows that to happen?
“I’m a West Virginian, too,” she said. “It’s my state, too. And I feel a responsibility. If you are made aware of an issue, and you still don’t act on what you’ve learned—then you become the issue.”
