Mountain Holler
Letters to the Editor of the Register Herald opposed to Dawn Dayton's "Mountaintop Mining" article
Our Readers Speak, Thursday, March 6, 2008
I
was stunned when I read Dawn Dayton’s recent piece in this newspaper
that glorified the coal industry and their so-called reclamation. While
she was riding around in the mining industry’s corporate helicopter
with the Coalcaine Heads, my house and property, and that of my
neighbors, was being blasted.
While we are forced to sit here
at the bottom of the mountain in apprehension of fly rock, rolling
boulders and mudslides, she has the nerve to write about the
reclamation mining companies do. Of course the Coalcaine heads only
took her to the pretty one they dressed up just for her and other
gullible media folks. Did they fly her over the mountain top removal
site above my home and Marsh Fork Elementary School? Of course not! If
flying over this mess doesn’t horrify you, nothing will.
I have
read coal-friendly writing before, but Dawn Dayton should receive the
coal industry equivalent to “The Pulitzer” for this piece. They should
call it “The Focker,” for the Friends of Coal. It should become an
annual award given to the media person that goes beyond the call of
duty to sub-humanize those of us that have lived in these mountains and
hollers for the past 200 years, but now stand in the way of the coal
industries annihilation of our state. Abraham Lincoln is turning over
in his grave after that piece of writing.
The coal industry can
continue to buy state judges and now perhaps some media types as well,
but they can’t, and won’t buy the American public. What is taking place
in southern West Virginia is a crime that cries for justice. It has
been hidden far too long. It is now being told all across this country
and America is listening. Justice will be served.
Bo Webb
Naoma
Dawn
Dayton’s editorial praising mountaintop removal is little more than a
reprint of the coal association’s “fact” book with Walker Machinery
comments tossed in for flavor. I take particular offense to her
statements, “As we traveled to see the reclaimed and working mines, we
saw few homes or other signs of civilization. The places we were shown
were very remote, meaning that the dust and noise from the operation
would have little impact on the general populace.” In other words, I’m
expendable because I live in the country. How many of us does it take
to qualify as “civilization” or “general populace”?
Roger Lilly,
Dayton’s tour guide, said in a WV Public Broadcasting interview that,
because our population density is low, “we have an obligation to the
greater good for the people” and “we have to provide electricity and
power for our urban brothers and sisters." This logic clearly condemns
us, our children, and our homes as acceptable sacrifices so New Yorkers
can live in wasteful luxury with Times Square lit up all night.
I’m
reminded of Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears a Who.” A world comes inches from
destruction because Horton’s neighbors deny its existence. The Whos
only save their world by shouting “We’re here!” in unison. To our cry
of “We’re here!” Dayton responds with “No you’re not, and it wouldn’t
matter if you were.”
Of course I don’t have room for a full
rebuttal of Dayton’s editorial; average citizens aren’t granted
unfettered access to the editorial page as coal barons are. But at the
very least, The Register-Herald owes its readers an investigative
article, based on researched facts and the opinions of people tired of
being sacrificed for Walker’s profits. Otherwise, Dayton’s editorial is
nothing more than a free ad for the coal association.
Vernon Haltom
Naoma
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Our Readers Speak — March 09, 2008
Editorial gave only one side of the story
Dawn
Dayton wrote in her March 1 editorial that she is “still not there” on
her perspective of mountaintop removal coal mining. That is because her
perspective was provided both literally and figuratively by Walker
Machinery, and has only one leg to stand on.
An editorial
shouldn’t simply transmit information from one source and call it good:
The media should mediate the message of special interest groups like
Walker Machinery. Walker would have us believe that all mining is
equal, and that an attack on mountaintop removal is an attack on all
mining. Dayton happily rubber-stamps this message with quotes from the
most heavily- invested industry sources.
Unfortunately, too many
perspectives about southern West Virginia are formed from the comfort
of a company helicopter. From on high, the world seems intact and
problem-free. Those of us down here on the ground have a better view of
the specific details that make and break individual lives.
Ole Bye
Mullens
Our Readers Speak - Sunday, March 16, 2008
Story shows view of coal association
Ms. Dayton’s take on mountaintop mining is nothing but a bunch of spoon-fed hogwash.
The article describes her guided tour of mountaintop removal sites by none other than Roger Lilly, a marketing manager of Walker Machinery, accompanied by a representative of the Friends of Coal.
Lilly is quoted as saying “unless you know where you’re going (as you travel through the state), you won’t see mountaintop mining.” Of course not. If everyone were able to plainly see the effects of MTR as they drove along the roads of West Virginia everyone in the state would be in an uproar, except those that profit from it.
Still, the appearance of MTR isn’t everything. What it looks like is nowhere near as bad as the effects you can’t see. Just like you can’t see those facts in Ms. Dayton’s article.
Ms. Dayton ponders, “Is mountaintop mining destroying all of our mountains?” As far as she can see her answer is no. Her “impression appears to be confirmed by information provided by the West Virginia Coal Association.”
This article is the equivalent of writing a story about union coal mining and getting a guided tour by Don Blankenship. Next time you want to write an article about MTR, why don’t you try interviewing people who do not have capital interest, investment, and/or stock in its future.
Mountaintop removal is one of many ways that coal is mined. It just happens to be the cheapest. The only reason it exists is because it is cost efficient for company profit margins. Stopping MTR would create jobs because they would have to hire more miners to deep mine. MTR uses a skeleton crew of men and machines to demolish the land in a place that happens to be one of the most biologically diverse places in the world.
News flash, people: Coal is not the only thing that “keeps the lights on.” Contrary to that opinion, there are plenty of other ways to generate energy, renewable energy, and create a sustainable economy. Watch the news. The whole world is talking about alternative energy sources.
Nick Regalado
Rock Creek
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Article on mountaintop removal was insulting
Dawn Dayton’s coal-friendly one-sided article about mountaintop removal was
insulting to those of us who live near these sites.
I’m an elderly coal miner’s widow. I live between mountain top removal strip
mine sites. From my window I watch and feel the evil machines and men blast
apart God’s mountain. Each daily blast has a plume of red or yellow smoke,
as if it came from the bowels of hell, and it is damaging our homes.
My home and my frail lungs are filled with coal dust and silica dust. Dayton
says this doesn’t affect us and thinks mountaintop removal is great. She
might want to buy my home and live below this destruction, or at the toe of
a valley fill. It also has a huge 2.8 billion-gallon sludge dam above it.
People in other communities have blast-damaged wells and sludge in their
wells. She can share their water.
From her coal company helicopter, how could she know if we residents are
affected? Maybe she should contact the parents of the 3-year-old that was
crushed to death in his sleep by the strip mine boulder crashing through his
home, and tell them that this didn’t affect them. She should go to the DEP
and read all the complaints that citizens have documented of the "effects."
She saw the coal company showcase sites. She should see what the average
site looks like. She has no idea what a real West Virginia mountain forest
looks like if she thinks their so-called reclamation is as beautiful. Does
she think the coal industry can do a better job "creating" than God did? Was
there ginseng, yellow root, or Black Cohosh growing on these sites, any
squirrels there?
Why doesn’t the coal industry show us every inch of every site? If she
thinks these sites are great, then she should move on a reclaimed site. Why
aren’t high dollar community developments flocking to build on these
reclaimed sites?
A famous NASA scientist recently said that mountaintop removal would go down
in American history as the worst human rights and environmental disaster
ever.
Sylvia Bradford
Naoma