Archive for July, 2009
Dialogue on Cook Mountain Begins
Friday, July 31st, 2009posted by antrim
Marvin White inspects the largest of three Cook family cemeteries on Cook Mountain, Thursday, July 30, 2009. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Dialogue on Cook Mountain Begins
by Antrim Caskey
James Creek, WV – A community service project to clear the access road from James Creek up Cook Mountain to three historic Cook family cemeteries spurred an open dialogue between Horizon Resources, LLC coal workers, the Cook family, community activists and Randall White of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department.
The mountain road that has been used for more than two hundred years to access the grave of William Chapman “Chap” Cook, a Union soldier fighting for freedom with a state that seceded from Virginia to take a stand against slavery — an ancestor the Cooks and families throughout Boone County revere for his bravery.
Sheriff White told the group on Cook Mountain yesterday how he has routinely checked in on Chap’s grave over the years, “I stop by to check on it to make sure no on has messed with it…someone might dig him up to get the gold buttons off his uniform!”
Danny Cook, a direct descendant of the Civil War veteran Chap Cook, discovered a series of road blocks on the road connecting Chap’s grave to two other Cook cemeteries about three weeks ago. The community of James Creek immediately responded to what they saw as a violation of West Virginia law that governs access to family cemeteries in close proximity to coal mining operations.
As news of the blocked road spread through the community, reporters and activists began to visit the site and see for themselves how close Horizon Resources coal mining operations were to the Cook cemeteries. Reports on this website elicited a lot of comments, some less savory than others.
Those who have visited Larry Gibson’s family cemeteries on Kayford Mountain, about an hour south of the state capital Charleston, where Stover cemetery is an island surrounded by miles of moonscape and accessible only through the mine site, can imagine the situation on Cook Mountain. Though on Cook Mountain, the moonscape left by mountaintop removal sprawls from only one side of the mountain ridge tip, where the cemeteries stand. The community worries that the blocked access roads — the Lindytown access road is impassable without a 4-wheel drive vehicle, a skilled driver and the physical ability to scramble over a series of five twelve-foot high roadblocks on foot to reach Chap’s grave — signal that the mining company planned to take the whole ridge and swallow up three historic cemeteries.
In fact, less than two weeks ago, Danny Cook said he spoke to Jeff Sammons, superintendent of the Horizon operation, about the cemeteries and Sammons said that he was not aware of any cemeteries.
But yesterday, we spoke with Jeff Sammons, about one hundred yards from the main Cook cemetery which holds about 27 graves. Clearly, Sammons is aware of the cemeteries now. He complained that “not until we got close did they say anything, but as soon as we got close, Danny Cook and them are screaming about this!”
Perhaps that is the point, the cemetery is directly adjacent to a mountaintop removal blasting zone. This distresses family members.
From the Overlook: Day 5. July 30, 2009. Horizon Resources cotinues to blast away at Cook Mountain, less than two hundred yards from one of three Cook family cemeteries on Cook Mountain, Boone County, WV. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Sammons swore, “We have no intentions of taking out that cemetery or pushing it over the hill…We’re not Massey! We don’t do that!”
Marvin White, who has kin in the cemeteries on Cook Mountain, remains deeply skeptical, swearing he doesn’t believe a word that mine operator says.
Working it out through the family: Randall White, a deputy sheriff with the Boone County Sheriff Dept, explains to his cousin, Marvin White, that he's not going to let anything happen to the Cook cemeteries. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
When White’s cousin Randall White, from the Boone County Sheriff department, showed up, Marvin grilled him with questions and secured details of a proposed arrangement to help secure the cemeteries. Randall White vehemently swore that, “Nothing is going to happen to these cemeteries! I live here! I’ve lived here all my life, I’m not going to let anything happen to these cemeteries.”
When he first arrived, the sheriff told a young man helping to drag a pile of sapplings from the road that he was trespassing. White began to mutter about an injunction and $10,000 dollar fines. But when his cousin Marvin White spoke up, the conversation became friendly and open. And it was agreed to that no one was trespassing — Sheriff White understood that the road clearing was a service project dedicated to the Cook family and their historic cemeteries on their homeland.
The volunteers agreed to leave their work as requested by the Sheriff. It was a unique opportunity for dialogue that no one missed.
Randall White promised Marvin White and Danny Cook and the 14 or so people who had come to clear the access road that he’d have deputies stationed at the cemetery road at night and men during the day as well, to make sure the cemeteries were safe.
The second order of business decided upon was to make a measurement and marking of the protective buffer zone around the cemeteries. Randall White, Danny Cook, Marvin White will meet on Saturday, August 1, to mark the boundaries together. Randall White thought he could have his deputies on Cook Mountain in a security rotation as early as Friday evening.
All parties peacefully departed from the conversation. The volunteers who had worked from mid-day to about 5pm clearing three of the 5 muddy roadblocks using shovels, pitch forks, hoes and their hands, walked back towards Chap’s grave, which stands isolated on a spur of the main road, and gathered around the 4-wheel drive vehicles ready to head back down the mountain.
Danny Cook stood before the group in the evening sun that was streaming through the undisturbed forest with tears in his eyes and thanked them for their day of service for Cook Mountain, for the Cook family.
Danny Cook thanks the volunteers on Cook Mountain. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Come Visit Donnywood
Friday, July 31st, 2009posted by antrim
Come Visit Donnywood
by Mike Roselle
West Virginia, Wild and Wonderful: Coal River Mountain photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
We read that West Virginia strip miners are now boycotting the State of Tennessee in retaliation for Senator Lamar Alexander’s support for new federal legislation that would ban mountain top removal. Some angry miners have canceled planned vacations at Dollywood. Now do they really want to piss off Dolly Parton? I sure wouldn’t.
All of this got me thinking about how to respond to this. One the hand, it shows just how much hostility can be visited on some one who has come out against mountain top removal, especially when it’s someone who has been a long time supporter of the coal industry as the Republican Senator from Tennessee. But clearly, this plan has backfired, as this story has been reported in the New York Time, the Washington Posts and many other major news outlets.
Most people don’t realize that we still allow strip mining, and that in clear violation of the Federal Clean Water Act companies like Massey Energy routinely blow off the tops of mountains and dump them into the creeks and store the toxic waste and sludge behind dams that would be illegal even for your household garbage. I wonder what Massey Energy’s CEO Don Blankinship, the largest producer of Appalachian coal, thinks about all of this. Usually he prefers to keep a low profile, not wanting to bring any attention to how he gets the coal and how he runs the state of West Virginia with an iron fist.
Some environmentalists have responded by urging tourists to visit Tennessee and show support for the State’s position on banning mountain top removal. I think this is a good idea, but I might even have a better one. How about visiting the coal fields of West Virginia as an eco tourist? What better way to show your support for the mountains is there then to visit them before they are blown up? This would be better than a boycott of West Virginia tourism, and after all, it’s not the tourists who are blowing up the mountains. They could come by Larry Gibson’s place and see the strip mine that used to be Kayford Mountain. Larry has had thousands of visitors come up and sign his registration book. You could also drop by the Whitesville office of Coal River Mountain Watch and talk to visit Judy Bonds or Lorelei Scarborough or one of the many other local residents who are standing up to Big Coal. I’m serious about this.
Once you see mountain top removal up close and personal I’ll guarantee you that you’ll never see West Virginia, electricity or coal in the same way again. I’d even wager that you will do what most people do when confronting this horror for the first time; you shake your fist at those machines that are destroying the future of West Virginia, and any hope of addressing the climate change crisis.
Coal state senators are dooming any chance of addressing the cause of climate change because the coal industry will never let a bill pass that does not satisfy their insatiable appetite for more coal and bigger profits. If we want to end the century long rule of coal in Appalachia, we will have to confront the biggest companies in the mountains where they operate.
We will need to let the people of West Virginia know that we stand with them in their efforts to save their communities and the world’s oldest and most biologically diverse temperate ecosystem. We need to show the corrupt West Virginia politicians that the whole world is watching them as they ignore the laws of the United States of America and their responsibilities to future generations.
By visiting West Virginia you can not only learn about the history of this forgotten region, you can make some of your own. You can help to create a new future for a region that is threatened with extinction. And you can still hike in the forest, run a wild river and maybe even catch a fish.
What are you waiting for?
State Journal: Kitts Declares War
Thursday, July 30th, 2009posted by antrim
Coal Counties Endure New Generation of Mine Wars Posted Thursday, July 30, 2009 ; 06:00 AM
West Virginia’s southern coal fields are caught in a tug-of-war between jobs and the environment. Story by Mike Ruben
Excerpts from today’s story in the State Journal:
“We are in a war,”
O. Eugene Kitts,a senior vice president with the International Coal Group, commented during a recent appearance on “Decision Makers,” a statewide public affairs television program.
“I believe that mining is going to survive this attack,” he continued.
“I think when the public is informed and their political representatives are informed that this assault on surface mining is based on such a strenuous type of basis, that we will prevail in this battle.
We are in a war, and that war will continue….”
Coal Counties Endure New Generation of Mine Wars
Posted Thursday, July 30, 2009 ; 06:00 AM
West Virginia’s southern coal fields are caught in a tug-of-war between jobs and the environment.
Story by Mike Ruben
Mine wars now carry a different connotation around southern West Virginia in the new millennium.
“We’re under siege,” Mingo County coal executive James “Buck” Harless of International Industries recently said regarding the actions of the Obama administration. “There’s a mass movement against coal.”
Read the rest of the story here
Standing Up for Their Heritage
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009posted by antrim
At the grave of William Chapman "Chap" Cook, who served as a Union soldier in the West Virginia Cavalry on Sunday, July 26, several members of the Cook family and their friends made a trip up to the family cemetery, which is threatened by Horizon Resources surface mine operation on Cook Mountain. The families are determined to protect their ancestors. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Since Monday, July 20, 2009, I have made four reporting trips to Cook Mountain in Boone County, WV, where a mountaintop removal coal operation has advanced to within several hundred feet of the largest of three Cook family cemeteries located on Cook Mountain. The three separate burial sites hold the departed dating back to William Chapman “Chap” Cook, a Union soldier with the West Virginia Cavalry. About 75 yards from the largest cemetery, where approximately 27 men, women and children are buried, there is an overlook where the coal extraction machines operate directly below. Below is a series of 4 images made over eight days from this overlook to illustrate the rapid pace by which Horizon Resources, LLC is moving to remove “a fist full of coal” just several hundred feet from Cook family graves.
JULY 20 2009
From the Overlook: Day 1: JULY 20, 2009
JULY 23, 2009
From the Overlook: Day 2
JULY 26, 2009
From the overlook: Day 3
JULY 28, 2009
From the Overlook: Day 4
The blasting is getting closer and closer to the cemeteries. Yesterday, the overlook area was covered with a thick, grey, gritty dust. It piled up in the crevices of the leaves in the trees, it lay on Cook Mountain Road, less than 75 yards from the largest cemetery, and it extended in a grey shroud down the mountain, through the trees. A drilling rig had moved around the mountain, closer to the cemetery, and was busy drilling blast holes. Had you been standing on that road, walking towards your family cemetery when that blast went off, you’d be covered in the silica and diesel laden dust.
Rock dust from a mountaintop removal blast on Cook Mountain covered the trees and forest with a thick gritty dust. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
The road the Cook family and friends have traveled over the years is barely navigable by 4-wheel drive, whether traveling from the James Creek or the Lindytown side of Cook Mountain.
From Lindytown: About half way up the Lindytown side of Cook Mountain, a washout gulley is blocking access to three Cook family cemeteries on Cook Mountain in Boone County, WV. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Blast Rock? After Marvin tore up his vehicle in trying to navigate the Lindytown road to Cook cemetery, we took off on foot and hiked almost a mile to reach the graves. Marvin pointed out a piece of rock on the road that he thought was blown there by a blast on the Horizon Resources mountaintop removal mine site. Twenty minutes later, we noticed that the hum and roar of the machines had died down and then ceased. Moments after that, we heard a deep loud blast. We heard no warning signals. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
If you and your vehicle make it up the winding, slippery, rutted road – you’ll have to travel over 5 mud and rock roadblock mounds over the course of one mile to reach two of the Cook cemeteries. If you travel from Lindytown, you’ll have to cross those same road blocks to access Chap’s grave site
Al Jazeera English: People and Power: Battle for Coal River Mountain
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009posted by antrim
Watch the latest international report on the battle for Coal River Mountain:
And Part II
VIDEO: Journey Up Cook Mountain
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009posted by antrim
When Danny Cook attempted to visit his family cemetery on Cook Mountain in late June, he found the access roads blocked off by five to six steep, man made berms surrounded by four foot trenches and in some cases, water. The Cook Mountain mine site, operated by Horizon Resources LLC, is several hundred feet away and advancing in the direction of the Civil War-era cemetery and the family’s ancestral land. On the dirt road that runs alongside the gravesite, Horizon Resources LLC has drilled holes to measure coal seam depth. The Cooks, many of whom still live in James Creek Hollow down below, do not own mineral rights to Cook Mountain, and are unsure of their surface rights. Horizon, which is jointly owned by Massey Energy and the International Coal Group, is free to blast away the bones of the dead, exposing a thin strip of coal that will be mined and quickly burned.
The following video shows the family visiting the site and talking about Cook Mountain history and the oncoming devastation:
Boone County Courts Attempt to Stifle Dissent with Intimidation
Friday, July 24th, 2009posted by deaexmachina
MADISON, W.Va.–Two activists arrested on May 23 at a protest on Kayford Mountain are facing up to eighteen months in prison, while five others were fined $1,844 each. They were all charged with conspiracy and criminal trespass.
After being denied a plea agreement, five of the defendants pleaded no contest and received a sentence from the magistrate. They were fined $1,000 for conspiracy, $500 for criminal trespass and $318.50 in court fees. In addition, the defendants were charged a $25 “arrest fee,” which covers the costs of the Boone County Sheriff Department doing its job.
“We were more or less backed into a corner at the hearing. Slow processing in the magistrate’s office meant almost no one had been able to speak with their public defender prior to the hearing, and three of us didn’t even have one because of poor scheduling by the public defender’s office,” said Kim Kirkbride, “With better legal services, we wouldn’t have had to accept this ridiculous fine.”
Mathew Louis-Rosenberg and Glen Scott David Collins, the defendants taking their trials to jury, intend to plead necessity, arguing that their action was crucial in preventing the greater crime of mountaintop removal.
“The miner who threatened to kill a 3 year old boy on Kayford Mountain walks free, while peaceful protesters are facing significant jail time,” commented Louis-Rosenberg, “From the recent Supreme Court decision allowing a second silo even closer to Marsh Fork Elementary School to the small county court we were in, it seems that the judicial system in West Virginia is more concerned with protecting coal companies than people.”
In the May 23 protest, the activists locked themselves to a five-story rock truck and displayed a banner saying “Never Again” for four hours before being removed by Boone County sheriffs and state police.
Visit the Mountain Justice website to donate to the legal fund and help the Kayford activists pay their fines and court fees.
NYT: West Virginia Coal Miners’ Group Urges Tennessee Boycott
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009posted by antrim
West Virginia Coal Miners’ Group Urges Tennessee Boycott
Published: July 20, 2009
ATLANTA — Coal miners and their employers in West Virginia are encouraging a boycott of travel to Tennessee in retaliation for Senator Lamar Alexander’s support of a federal ban on a type of mining known as mountaintop removal.
The idea for the boycott surfaced after a large group of opponents from West Virginia attended a Congressional committee hearing in late June on a bill that would forbid the pollution of streams with debris from surface mining techniques like mountaintop removal, said David Moss, director of governmental affairs for the Kentucky Coal Association.
Mr. Alexander of Tennessee is the only Republican to co-sponsor the bill, the Appalachia Restoration Act, and an official from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation testified in its favor.
In response, two mining companies canceled their annual company picnics at Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s amusement park in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, according to a letter from Richard K. Phillips, an executive of Coal-Mac in West Virginia. A mining equipment company in Kentucky urged its employees not to visit Tennessee. A miner support organization, Citizens for Coal, chimed in. The letter was first reported by West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
In his letter to several chambers of commerce in Tennessee, Mr. Phillips, the Coal-Mac executive, said 80 percent of Coal-Mac’s 300 employees traveled to Tennessee monthly, and that the cancellation of two company picnics would cost Tennessee more than 3,000 visitors.
“If you want our industry’s business, we suggest you let your representatives know that the industry they are trying to destroy is a major source of your tourism money,” he wrote.
Coal mining is a relatively small industry in Tennessee, generating $67 million compared with tourism’s $14.2 billion. Mr. Alexander brushed off the boycott, saying, “Every year, millions of tourists come to Tennessee and spend millions of dollars to see our scenic mountaintops, not to see mountains whose tops have been blown off and dumped into streams.”
As concern over the polluting effects of mountaintop removal has mounted, miners feel cornered, said Mr. Moss, of the coal industry group, adding that thousands of jobs are at stake.
“This has become such a hotbed issue that people are getting very worried,” he said. “There was real angst over Senator Alexander when he first sponsored the bill.”
Still, one company, TECO Coal, backed away from its initial support of the boycott, issuing a statement that read, “We regret our previous action, which was an emotional response that doesn’t benefit our 1,200 employees, the eastern Kentucky communities we support, the environment we work to protect or our neighbors in Tennessee.”
Civil War era cemetery under direct threat from Horizon Resources MTR site
Monday, July 20th, 2009posted by antrim
The main Cook Cemetery has 27 headstones, the oldest dating back to 1820. The cemetery has two additional sites. Currently Horizon Resources is operating a mountaintop removal coal mine site less than three hundred yards away. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Cook Cemetery To Be Swallowed By Coal?
James Creek, WV –The emails started rolling into my e-mail box Sunday afternoon. Cook Cemetery up James Creek in Boone County–just over the other side of Bolt Mountain from the Coal River Valley along Route 85 which winds along Pond Fork — was in the midst of being swallowed up. At least six road blocks made of fallen trees and mud had been pushed by bulldozers up Cook Mountain Road, the only access to these three Cook family cemeteries. Three separate cemeteries contain one, twenty-seven, and two graves, in total, 29 lives buried on the top of Cook Mountain.
I met up with Marvin White, a 57 year old retired underground Union miner. White led me up to the site. “I worked 25 years at Eastern Associated. But I am completely against this, what is going on here,” he told me, as we walked along deeply rutted muddy roads to the graves. White said he must have kin up in these cemeteries, ” the Whites married with the Cook family years and years ago,” he said.
Over about a one mile walk along the ridge, we climbed up and over the machine-made mud berms across the road — at a few of them, two foot wide, four feet deep trenches had been dug down the slope on either side of the road. “That’s so four wheelers can’t pass,” White told me.
The last of six man made berms blocking Cook Mountain Road and access to three separate Cook family cemetery sites which holds a grave of Civil War soldier, William Chapman Cook. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
A great clamor and hissing of machines rushed up the mountainside from the north. We now stood about seventy-five yards from the largest of the three Cook family cemeteries. Turning left, about fifty feet north, we came upon what can be locally described as another “Hell’s Gate,” a term used by Larry Gibson and all those that make that trek to the border of Gibson family land and Patriot Coal’s massive mountaintop removal site on Kayford Mountain. White and I stood on the edge of a certain kind of Hell…
Directly beneath us, about 500 feet below, we saw machines and men filling holes with fertilizer, preparing for a blast; end-loaders dumping coal into waiting trucks; a line of swiftly moving Yukes–the bulldozers with wheels 24 feet high–cruising towards the latest blast site to retrieve loads of crumbled mountaintop. An active mountaintop removal mine site buzzed away, just below a cemetery.
Horizon Resources is operating a mountaintop removal coal site less than three hundred yards from the Cook family cemetery on Cook Mountain, WV. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Directly above and behind us, about 300 yards maximum, we can see the edge of the road at the cemetery. From the rate the trucks are moving on this mine site, there will be a blast here Tuesday afternoon.
Detail from Cook family cemetery. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
White told me that he keeps an eye out around here and listens to the radio waves. Last year, White heard the workers talking about a blast ready to go, near a cemetery. ” I heard them one day bragging. It about made me sick. They was talking about this blast they laid–and it was a big one–and they said, ‘hey, What are those people down there gonna think about that! Gonna be ghosts coming out of that ground!”
William Chapman “Chap” Cook was born on 14 December, 1840. He served three years in the Civil War and served with the First Company of the West Virginia Calvary. Cook is buried alone on Cook Mountain. The headstone is in excellent condition; a border of rock covered by soft moss encloses his grave and now, so does a chain link fence. “Otherwise, people won’t know there’s a grave here!,” said White.
Does Cook, a Civil War veteran, deserve a place to rest or does Horizon Resources have the right to push his grave into a valley while no one is looking?
White told me how he knew these woods like the back of his hand. He told me how there’s a huge sludge pond at the head of Jarrells Branch, near where he lives. Then he told me a story. He told me about some bear tracks he once saw. Tracks that walked towards the sludge pond. White described the pond’s edge to be about 4 feet of thick gooey tar.
“You could see the bear tracks walkin in…he didn’t know any better… You could see his steps going deeper and deeper and then, you couldn’t see anything at all. I looked everywhere, all around, for tell of that bear. I believe he sunk, that bear drowned in that coal pond.”
Link to Permit for Cook Mountain surface mine site