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Forwarded from Appalachian Treasures
Mountaintop Removal
Check out the powerful editorial against mountaintop removal (below) that ran in the Winston-Salem Journal Sunday, August 7th. This editorial is a reminder that even though you may not live in the coalfields, a letter to your local newspaper is an effective tool to educate others about the destructive practices of mountaintop removal mining. Please take a moment to write a letter to your newspaper about mountaintop removal and the devastation this type of mining causes to the land and people of the southern mountains.
When you write your letter, don't forget to mention that citizens in every community can help the residents of the coalfields by writing a letter to their US Representative asking them to support the Clean Water Protection Act. For help writing a letter to the editor, or for suggested talking points, please contact Appalachian Voices, 877-APP-VOICE, or click here: http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=38920841&u=357749
To support the Appalachian Treasures project and the campaign to end mountaintop removal, click here: http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=38920841&u=357750
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Winston Salem-Journal
Sunday, August 7, 2005
View From Above
A harsh reminder of the price we pay for our way of life
By Linda Brinson
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
For years, my parents had a cabin on a mountain overlooking the Mayo River in Rockingham County. From the deck of the cabin, we could see the valley where the mill town of Avalon once stood, with the railroad track paralleling the river.
>From that vantage point, we amused ourselves by counting the cars on the trains that rumbled below. Sometimes several rolled past over the course of a lazy afternoon, with long strings of hopper cars - 88, 89, 90, 91 ...
Often, nearly every one of those train cars was filled with coal, heading from the mountains of West Virginia to Duke Power's Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County.
Having lived almost in the shadow of the steam station's smokestacks for many years, I've used my share of the electricity it generates. I've also been uncomfortably aware of the dirty stain of pollution those stacks spread across the sky as they burned vast quantities of coal so that I could run my television and dishwasher. Before recent cleanup efforts, the Belews Creek steam station earned various dubious distinctions as one of the worst air polluters in the state and the nation.
But I'd never given much thought to the starting point of those trains' journey, the coalfields of Appalachia. I'd driven through West Virginia many times. I'd spent a few nights there. I'd even toured the historic Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, where visitors go into the tunnels 1,500 feet below a city park to see what coal mining was like at the beginning of the 20th century.
Until I took a ride with Susan Lapis, however, I had little idea how nasty a turn coal mining in the Appalachians has taken at the beginning of the 21st century.
Taking a ride with Lapis meant climbing into the front passenger seat of her little Cessna. Harvard Ayers, an anthropologist at Appalachian State University who works with the environmental group Appalachian Voices, had suggested several years ago that I fly with him over the mountains to get a bird's-eye perspective on the toll air pollution is taking on trees. Lately, he and Appalachian Voices are working with community groups in Appalachia to try to stop the practice of stripping away mountain peaks to get at the coal beneath them.
This summer, our schedules and the weather finally meshed, and I found myself one fine morning at the Wilkes County airport, about to take my first flight in a small private airplane.
Lapis is a volunteer pilot with SouthWings, an environmental group (motto: "Conservation Through Education') with headquarters in Asheville. SouthWings arranges volunteers to fly politicians, journalists and others over locales in the Southeast so that they can see what is happening to our forests, watersheds and mountains.
It didn't take long to reach Mount Rogers in Virginia, where we could see ranks of dead trees, including hardwoods. Then the plane turned toward West Virginia. Lapis, who has advanced degrees in chemistry, has also learned a lot about the geology and social history of the region. She described the Cumberland Plateau as we approached.
And then the ugly wound of a mountaintop-removal coal mine came into view. The mines are so enormous that virtually the only way to see them in context is from above. Lapis gave a running commentary on what we were seeing, and Ayers chimed in from the Cessna's backseat.
Clouds of dust rose where heavy equipment scraped away trees and top soil to lay bare one mountain's rock. Later, explosives would be used to blast away masses of rock to expose the seams of coal below. At some former mountains, we saw monstrous machines called draglines that scoop away the blasted rock. As much as 800 or 1,000 feet of what was once a mountain peak is dumped into narrow valleys, often burying streams and threatening watersheds. Some of these mines cover thousands of acres and more than one mountain. To call them strip mines is gross understatement.
We saw noxious-looking ponds, containing slurry left over from washing coal - laced with heavy metals. Occasionally, a dam will break and flood the area below. This summer, activists have been protesting because they fear that a large slurry dam above Marsh Fork Elementary School in West Virginia might fail.
"Most of the people here live in the 'hollers,' " Lapis said. "They are subject to anything that happens above them." Increasingly, residents complain about the effects of the mountaintop-removal mining: coal dust, blasting, damage to watersheds, the threat of floods, decreased property values and the destruction of the area's natural beauty.
We flew over a "reclaimed" spent coal mine, a flat, barren expanse with a few scraggly trees. "There will never be a forest there again," Ayers said. "There is not enough soil."
Pushing mountaintops into valleys allows the companies to mine coal more cheaply, efficiently and quickly, employing fewer miners. As national media have focused more attention on the practice, the industry has argued that it's good for the country because it ensures a steady supply of cheap coal.
She is not, Lapis said, an impractical environmental idealist. She knows that we need electricity. "But there are more responsible ways to mine coal," she said, "and we need to be doing a lot more to develop alternative sources of energy."
The image of the vast wastelands in West Virginia lingers in my mind when I flip on my electronic devices. And when I drive by and look up at the little mountain from whose heights we used to count the coal cars rumbling from Appalachia.
Brinson is the Journal's editorial page editor. She can be reached at lbrinson@wsjournal.com
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=38920841&u=357751!opinion!article&s=1037645509163
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