SierraScape December 2006 - January 2007
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by Jan Niehaus

You just have to see it for yourself - the mountaintop removal (MTR) that's decimating the Appalachians. Hundreds of thousands of acres of naked, gray, rocky plateaus have displaced an undulating landscape that once cradled rounded peaks draped in hardwood forest, lush valleys, rushing rivers, rich species diversity, and humble communities.

Lest you think I exaggerate, consider these statistics, offered by Appalachian Voices (AV):

• More than 7 percent of Appalachian forests have been felled for MTR mining.
• A million acres of Appalachian Mountains have been destroyed, 400,000 acres in West Virginia alone.
• More than 1,200 miles of Appalachia streams have been buried under mining debris.
• If MTR continues unabated, we will lose more than 1.4 million acres by the end of the decade - an area equivalent to the State of Delaware.

After attending an EMG presentation by AV Field Organizer Austin Hall in St. Louis in September, 2006, I decided that I had to see it for myself, and we added "MTR coal mine" to the list of destinations for our North Carolina vacation, just three weeks away.

But it's not easy to get to the MTR mines in Appalachia. And when you do get there, it's almost impossible to find a land perch from which to view the vast devastation. The best views are from the air, via airplane or satellite image.

One Person Can Make an Enormous Difference

Larry Gibson doesn't have an airplane. He doesn't even have electricity or running water, but he clings fiercely to one of the best views of mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia and to the 50-acre haven that his family has owned for 200 years. He founded the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation (www.mountainkeeper.org) to protect it and other threatened Appalachian Mountains.

Gibson invited us to come and see MTR for ourselves. He invited us to his perch atop Kayford Mountain, 45 minutes southeast of Charleston. We would be "touring" with student groups from Notre Dame University and the University of North Carolina, on October 19, 2006, at the height of fall color, if we were lucky, which we were.

Actually, Gibson did more than merely "invite." He urged us to come and look, called us back several times, offered names and numbers, recited statistics, gave us detailed directions, and then, when he came down with the flu and couldn't walk the land himself, he connected us with his cousin Ronnie Workman who, like Gibson, is an unlikely but impassioned environmentalist.

The next time I hear, "One person can't make a difference," I will open fire with Larry Gibson anecdotes.

In the past year, Gibson and other Appalachian Mountain loyalists have spoken from the pages of National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Orion, The New York Times and in an AP story picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Houston Chronicler, the L.A. Times, FOX news, ABC News, and other publishers. Then Bill Moyers discussed MTR in a recent PBS program "Is God Green?"

How to Decapitate a Mountain

The commercial mountaintop removal coal mining operation is completed in six easy steps:

1. Clear
2. Blast
3. Dig
4. Dump
5. Process
6. Reclaim

AV provides a complete explanation with photographs, charts, and diagrams, of every lamentable step at their web site: ilovemountains.org. You can even overlay Hobet Mine, at 12,000 acres one of the largest MTR sites, atop a map of St. Louis - or any other major city - to get some sense of scale. Gibson notes that Hobet would completely cover Washington, D.C. Please visit the site: www.ilovemountains.org.

What follows is my abridged, subjective narrative of the MTR coal mining process, gleaned from conversations with Gibson, Workman and other mountain advocates, plus print and electronic media.

Clear and Blast

Coal mining companies explode and then scrape off entire mountaintops to expose thin seams of coal. The blasts create cracks in the walls and foundations of homes miles away. "Fly rock" the size of minivans lands on roads and in citizens' property, including in 2004 the bed of a sleeping, three-year-old child.

Dig

Once the coal is exposed, behemoth machines called draglines dig it out. Twenty-two stories high, with a bucket large enough to hold 24 compact cars, one dragline costs as much as $100 million and does the work of hundreds of human coal miners.

Dump

Hardwood trees, a thin and fragile layer of topsoil, and ancient stone - collectively and euphemistically termed "overburden" - are burned or dumped into neighboring valleys - rivers, streams, creeks, plant and animal species be damned - thus creating stony plateaus, which the mining companies tout as prime building property in a region with little flat land.

Unfortunately, the "valley fills," as they are called, are unstable, since organic matter such as trees, buried illegally, will decompose in a few years and create voids, into which the rocks above will fall.

The entire time we stood at the edge of Gibson's land, gaping into the vast mine, enormous bulldozers pushed dirt and rock and more dirt and rock over an edge into a depression below, never ceasing, while enormous dump trucks with tires that Gibson said are 11 feet tall and four feet wide, hauled out coal and more coal. According to Gibson, the mining company drills holes, fires explosives, pushes rock with eight bulldozers at a time, digs coal, and trucks it out of Kayford 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "We were one of the shorter mountains before they started mining," he said. "Now we're the tallest."

"You just don't realize the scope of this thing. We used to have to look up 45 degrees to see the sky," Workman remembered. At that moment, we were all peering down about 45 degrees to level, scraped rock that stretched miles into the distance.

Process

Next, the coal is washed and treated, creating as a by-product "coal slurry" or "sludge," which consists of water laced with coal dust, clay, arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, nickel, copper, and chromium. The mining companies store this sludge in open "ponds" - a euphemism if ever I heard one. In Rock Creek, West Virginia, one such impoundment holding three billion gallons of coal slurry sits behind an earthen dam, uphill from an elementary school.

The mining companies also inject the sludge into abandoned underground mine shafts, from which it leaches into the surrounding water supply, as has happened in Rawl and nearby towns. AV's MTR Program Coordinator Benjamin Burrell said, "It seems like every time I talk to my friends in Rawl, Lick Creek, and Merrimec, they say they've attended funerals for one or two of their neighbors that week."

Reclaim

The final step, reclamation - yet another euphemism - occurs when the mining companies supposedly stabilize and re-vegetate the exhausted mining sites. But state agencies are generous with their waivers, and thousands of abandoned acres have never been reclaimed.

Standing at the edge of the family cemetery, Workman pointed to the few scattered, scrubby pines and locusts struggling on the stone plain below and the sparse patches of green and brown grass. "This is their prize. They keep it up 'cause they know Larry brings a lot of people up here. That bright green stuff is where they just sprayed again. 'Hydro grass.' That stuff would grow on the side of your truck. The chemicals last two months, then it all dies. They spray again."

Without vegetation to absorb rainfall, devastating floods in areas with no history of flooding sweep away family gardens, vehicles, buildings, and people. Hall reported, "I talked to a mother who, if it's raining, even if it's just barely sprinkling, she puts her kids to bed in their clothes - their shoes, too - in case it floods and they have to run for their lives in the middle of the night."

What Can You Do?

MTR is a disaster, creating ever larger, irreversible disasters in one of the oldest and loveliest mountain ranges on earth.

We could brainstorm a long list of reactions and possible remedies. One of the most important- after conserving energy to reduce our voracious demand for coal-is to urge your U.S. Representatives to co-sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act (HR2719).

The original intent of this act was to prevent our nation's waterways from being used for "waste disposal." Initially, mining debris was considered to be just that - "waste." But in 2002, the Secretary of the Army redefined it as "fill material." Since then, mining companies have dumped millions of tons of toxic sludge and other industrial material into mountain streams.

U.S. Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) introduced a bill that re-establishes the original intent of the Clean Water Act: to protect our waterways, not give industry permission to pollute and bury them. As of early November, 2006, the bill had 74 co-sponsors. Write to your representatives-maybe those in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, too.

You Need to See MTR for Yourself

In the January/February 2006 issue of Orion magazine, Gibson talked about how people come to his place to see, but they don't really see. "The fight in Appalachia is not just mine. We all own Appalachia," Gibson said. Even if it's just on Google Earth, please take a look.