Photos – Climate Ground Zero

May 31, 2014

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

The Beast

Cat Dees, Rock Creek

April 21, 2011

Dragline Wins a RFK

Rock Creek, WV — The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights announced the winners of its 43rd Annual Journalism Awards today. Independent photojournalist Laura Antrim Caskey, creator of Dragline, a photographic exposé of mountaintop removal coal mining and the grassroots campaign to end, it has been awarded the prize in Domestic Photography.

” This year’s winning journalists, in eight professional and three student categories, covered a broad array of substantial topics, including the trials of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, the lives of Afghan women, the impact of war on soldiers, the coal industry in West Virginia, and rape at American universities…The awards were established by journalists who covered Robert Kennedy’s historic presidential campaign in 1968. They recognize journalists whose work has focused on human rights, social justice, and the power of individuals to make a difference – issues that defined the life and work of Robert F. Kennedy. Award recipients identify cases of injustice, and examine its causes, conditions, and remedies, ” reads the press release in part.

Caskey has been reporting on the human and environmental costs of mountaintop removal coal mining since May 2005. Currently she is based in Rock Creek, WV in the Coal River Valley, since moving from Brooklyn, NY in 2008.

March 1, 2011

24 Jobs

[singlepic id=68 w=300 float=right template=caption]Pigeonroost Hollow, W.Va. — The coal industry is always talking about jobs as if that is the only important issue in Appalachia. For the sake of these jobs, we must sacrifice the mountains and streams, and we must poison the air and water, and destroy the local communities? What is the true cost of these jobs and what is the real impact of these jobs on Appalachian communities and the Appalachian environment?

On January 13, 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the Clean Water Act Section 404 “dredge-and-fill permit” for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The Spruce No. 1 Mine would have been the largest mountaintop removal (MTR) mine in US history. Predictably, the coal industry decried the loss of the 250 jobs the mine would have provided over its 15-year lifespan. The EPA, they claimed, had declared war on coal, and war on West Virginia’s economy.

[singlepic id=70 w=280 float=left]

The Spruce No. 1 Mine has been the most contested coal mine in US history. It would impact 3,113 acres of Appalachian hardwood forests, create five massive valley fills, permanently burying six miles of mountain headwater streams under hundreds of feet of toxic mine spoils, and directly impact another ten miles of streams, all to mine 44 million tons of coal. The Spruce No. 1 Mine has been in operation since 2007, and currently employs 24 people or about a tenth of the total proposed workforce, and has an annual production of about 600,000 tons of coal.

To put this in perspective, last year the US burned about 965 million tons of coal to make electricity; at this rate the Spruce mine would provide less than one month’s worth of electricity for the nation over its entire 15-year lifespan.

Environmental groups have opposed the Spruce No. 1 Mine since it was first proposed as an extension of Arch Coal’s Dal-Tex Mine in 1997. The original plan would have buried more than 10 miles of stream in the Pigeonroost Hollow area near the town of Blair, West Virginia. In Bragg v. Robertson the EPA joined the West Virginia Highland Conservancy and other environmental groups in challenging the legality of the 404 permits. In 1999, U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II agreed with the plaintiffs, and after making a personal visit to the mine site and walking the creeks, Haden issued an order blocking the Army Corps from issuing any more 404 permits.

[singlepic id=69 w=275 float=right]

Judge Haden’s decision was immediately attacked by the coal industry and West Virginia’s political leaders and they appealed to the Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals where Haden’s injunction was stayed and the case was remanded back to the US District Court. Arch Coal agreed to delay opening the Spruce No. 1 Mine until the courts could decide on the legality of the 404 permits.

After more legal wrangling, the Army Corps issued the 404 valley fill permits for a scaled down version of 2,300 acres on January 22, 2007. The permits authorized the discharge of fill material into over seven miles of creeks, and the company began mining in Seng Camp Creek, including construction of one valley fill, and has expanded every year since opening.
Continue reading “24 Jobs”