PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Coalfield Justice Day of Action
by David Pike Wednesday July 02, 2003 at 09:43 PM
fivetimes1@hotmail.com (email address validated)

Groups in three states rally simultaneously for coalfield justice

Monday, June 23, saw rallies of mountaintop removal mining opponents in Lexington, Kentucky, Pittsburgh, PA, and Charleston, West Virginia in a “Coalfield Justice Day of Action.”

Four people were arrested at the Lexington rally when they hung banners reading "Stop Mountaintop Removal" and "King Coal is Killing Kentucky" over one of the cities busiest streets. William Gorz and Kent Mettle of Western North Carolina along with Joshua Martin of Indiana were charged with disorderly conduct while allegedly assisting in hanging the banners. Corrie DeJong of Tennessee was himself extracted by the Fire Department off the walkway where the banners hung and charged with trespassing.

The approximately 100 rally attendees continued the protest using a solar-powered PA, drums, street theater, and by marching to the headquarters of Kentucky Utilities Co. Two of the arrestees were released later that evening while the other two refused to cooperate with the police retina scan in the booking process and were held overnight. Scanning arrestees' eye's retina for biometric identification purposes is apparently 'routine' in some parts of Kentucky.

In Pittsburgh, the object of citizens' anger was CONSOL Mining. Around 50 people joined Brandon Hudock who had been fasting outside CONSOL headquarters since the Friday before. And in Charleston another 100 people met in front of the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) to demand an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. Their rally was livened by music, street theater, poetry, and puppets as well as supported by a banner hanging team from the wider Appalachian region. This long banner was hung from the top deck of a nearby parking garage and read "Mountaintop Removal Destroys Our Heritage." Protesters called further for the firing of OSM head Jeff Jarrett who is responsible for the agency's reportedly highly lax enforcement of existing mining laws.

The history of mountaintop removal mining is heavy with preventable loss of life and health. It is a style of strip mining whereby the entire top of a mountain is clearcut, burned, and blasted apart to expose thin seams of coal. The huge amounts of debris are dumped into adjacent valleys burying the streams and all associated habitats. Large holding pools for the toxic slurry from the coal washing process are built with earthen dams -- often directly uphill from neighboring towns. Remediation of an exhausted mine usually consists of leveling the remainder of the hill with the filled valley and seeding it all with grass leaving a poor quality meadow or, in at least one case, a golf course.

Of negative effects from this mining, recent low points include: 14 deaths in the past two years associated with the huge, regularly overloaded, coal hauling trucks; the Martin County, Kentucky coal slurry spill of 2000 in which approx. 250 million gallons were released -- called one of the worst environmental disasters in southeast US history; and the flooding in southern West Virginia July of 2001 found to have been strongly exacerbated by mountaintop removal which destroyed 1,500 homes and killed 6 people.

Moreover, mountaintop removal involves gradual degradations such as rising asthma rates from chemical pollution and massive amounts of dust alongside traumatic stress for those living near the blasting zones. Watersheds become contaminated with heavy metals and other toxins while property values in neighboring towns plummet. All these factors have pushed people en mass from their homes creating literal ghost towns amid blasted woodlands over and over again.

Some residents hold on tenaciously to family land and some of them become activists in this growing movement. Just a week before this Day of Action, citizens in Eastern Tennessee attended a public meeting in Campbell County to question and challenge officials on a proposed 2100 acre “cross ridge mining” operation – “cross ridge mining” being a new version of mountaintop removal. Companies want to use this method in new areas as, in power utility giant Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) words, “recent developments in the coal market have made the formerly proposed mining operation more economically attractive.” Public awareness of these plans is spreading as well. The tri-state Day of Action -- drawing people from a wide section of Appalachia and sponsored by 19 different organizations -- is evidence of this. One of these groups, Coal River Mountain Watch, has even received international attention this spring when their group’s director, a coalminer’s daughter, Julia Bond, won the Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. The Goldman Prize, dubbed the “Nobel Prize for the Environment,” is the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists given annually to individuals from each of six regions of the globe.

Carolyn Johnson, staff director of Citizens Coal Council on Julia Bond,” [She] is lifting up a region of the US often forgotten by the rest of the country.” Julia Bond, like many others, had her life torn down by a coal company after six generations in her former town. She is rising back up with other coalfield natives and allies from beyond because, in her words,”When powerful people pursue profits at the expense of human rights and our environment, they have failed us as leaders. Responsible citizens must step forward, not just to point the way, but to lead the way to a better world.”

Sources: AP, http://www.ohvec.org, Tennessee Indymedia<http://www.tnimc.org>, Lexington Herald-Leader

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