Category: Coal Slurry

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Beauty vs. The Beast

by Cat Dees 

We gathered in the mid-morning:  four mountaintop removal activists venturing out for a tour of the 2,000 acre permit request in Rock Creek proposed for blasting.   The haze had not yet burned off as we took the Jeep and headed up Rock Creek toward the top of the mountain.  We passed homes both great and small, some with gardens, chickens, dogs, chain link fences, and residents mowing and weed eating.  Soon the homes became farther apart and we rounded the corner at Workman’s Creek.

Stopping frequently for photographs, we navigated the bumpy, rock-and-boulder-strewn dirt roads — quite a difference from the freshly paved county road that lead up into the residential neighborhood and then ended abruptly.  The hardwoods were full and lush and flowers bloomed wherever the light hit the forest floor.  Finally, we began to see gas pipes along the dirt road along with several pumping stations.  And, when we stopped at a peak, we could see across the valley toward Kayford Mountain.

No sooner had we exited the Jeep when Ed said, “Look there!”  He pointed to the right side of the view of the  strip mine operation where a white cloud ascended from the ground operation.  The haze was still making things fuzzy, but the cloud was clear enough to make out.

We didn’t hear a boom.  And it was much too early for the afternoon blast signifying explosive mountaintop removal, blowing chunks of coal, dust, heavy metals, toxic compounds, sequestered carbon, and everything else within the blast site skyward to rain down on the community — both human and wild.

The evidence of Big Coal’s extraction appears in stark contrast to the green, lush mountains:  absent ridges, valleys, or contour, these are massive scars on the stumps of mountains, ugly, uninhabitable, unthinkable.  Just for coal?  So much destruction for $100 per ton?

The beauty, the biological diversity, the recreational opportunities, the very soul of Appalachia are all crumbling away.

These photographs depict what is still beautiful and intact, as well as what is being destroyed on a daily basis on the last mountains standing.  See what we see and share what we know about the devastating effect of mountaintop removal.  Pay particular attention to the blight upon these once thriving mountains and learn more about how you can help Climate Ground Zero end mountaintop removal.

Beauty

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The Beast

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Cat Dees, Rock Creek

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Witnessing the Subversion of Democracy in West Virginia

Rahall tells constituents that 90% of the work he does is “symbolic”


Subversion of Democracy – Images by antrim caskey

As a resident of the Coal River Valley in Raleigh County, West Virginia, I sat in a meeting with a handful of Appalachian Ambassadors at Congressman Nick Joe Rahall’s office on July 13, 2011 in Washington, DC. It was stunning to see the 18th-term Congressman stare in silence — his only real reply — as Bo Webb, Maria Gunnoe and Vernon Haltom described the horror and the heartbreak of living with the long-term effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. Armed with the latest Hendryx report, which cites the connection between increased chance of birth defects in newborns with living near mountaintop removal operations, these Power-Hillbillies put this latest evidence in front of a distracted Rahall and announced their demand for an immediate moratorium on mountaintop removal. Rahall had nothing to say other than trying to pass the buck, first to, Alpha Natural Resources (Massey Energy’s new name), then Office of Surface Mining (OSM). What we witnessed in Representative Nick Joe Rahall’s office is what Bobby Kennedy Jr calls the “subversion of democracy in the state of West Virginia,” and we stared back in silence, in anticipation, as Rep. Rahall, stone dead in the eyes, the dome of the Capitol filling the large window behind him, said nothing to us West Virginians demanding to be represented.

This is what the subversion of democracy looks like in West Virginia, where sprawling corporations have woven their money-hungry tentacles all throughout the Appalachians in search and removal of coal, seizing more that 550 mountaintops and 5000 miles of headwater streams; annihilating hundreds of mountain hamlets, so many treasures, spurned with contempt. All of the normal paths to correct injustices like Massey’s chronic corporate nuisances, like the courts and regulatory agencies, have been compromised beyond belief. Instead, West Virginians face a state Supreme Court where the Chief Justice Brent Benjamin was elected with 3 million dollars of help from the local coal company, Massey Energy.


Kucinich to Coal River Mountain – Images by antrim caskey
Finally, it was Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio who heard us during the House Oversight Committee hearing where Rep. Kucinich proposed a visit to see the atrocities he’s been hearing so much about, especially in the brilliant new documentary, The Last Mountain. Kucinich repeatedly demanded that he “wants to view specific sites in the Coal River Valley.” We anticipate Congressman Kucinich’s visit and we would welcome Congressional investigations into the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. It is imperative that you act on this issue.

Where does your energy come from? Check here.

Antrim Caskey
Rock Creek, WV