Mountain Holler
CRMW's Editorial on Mountaintop Removal in The Register Herald 4-19-08
Mountaintop removal — unnecessary threat to communities
By Janice Nease, Judy Bonds and Vernon HaltomWhen
the Friends of Coal (West Virginia Coal Association) takes select media
personalities on well choreographed flyovers of carefully manicured
show sites, they are careful to avoid the real impact of mountaintop
removal on communities. While the FOC’s computer-generated bug
commercials tell West Virginians that valley fills only affect bugs and
the bugs like it, real people deal with the permanent threats these
abominations pose to their lives, homes and property.
The FOC
will not show you the many mountaintop removal sites in close proximity
to homes and communities. The people did not decide to live next to a
mountaintop removal site; instead, the coal companies decided to put
mountaintop removal sites next to people’s homes. A wise journalist
would do well to examine the Department of Environmental Protection’s
complaint log.
Keep in mind that several people now consider it
a waste of time to complain or report dust, blasting or water
violations to an agency that is unwilling or incapable of fulfilling
its duties. According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Explosives
Yearbook, available from the Institute of Makers of Explosives, West
Virginia used 530,000 metric tons of explosives in 2006, up from
previous years. This is the equivalent explosive force of 31
Hiroshima-style atomic bombs in a year. To claim that this level of
destruction has “little impact on the general populace” is both
ludicrous and insulting.
The FOC’s propaganda machine works
hard to convince the general public and policymakers that no one lives
near mountaintop removal sites, or that, if anyone did, they wouldn’t
really matter. Our population density or income is too low to qualify
us for importance. By dehumanizing those of us who live here, the coal
industry makes its crimes seem more tolerable to city dwellers. By
repeating the claims that a low percentage of the land area is affected
by mountaintop removal, the media propagate the impression that the
people who live here are an acceptable sacrifice for others’ extreme
comfort.
Over 16 percent of the Coal River Valley has been
permitted for this destruction, and the number grows. However, these
percentages mean nothing when it’s in your back yard. Why must the
children at Marsh Fork Elementary endure coal dust, rock dust and
blasting in their learning environment, while other children do not?
Those
of us who live near valley fills know them as vast, unstable, eroded
piles of rubble that bury real streams and threaten real homes. Federal
studies confirm that they significantly alter stream chemistry. At a
time when much of the nation faces a water shortage, the coal industry
in Appalachia is depleting, polluting and burying this most precious of
resources. Federal studies also confirm that deforestation and removal
of vegetation increase runoff rather than controlling it.
How
does the coal industry convince their escorted tourists that
mountaintop removal sites are both “very remote” and needed to “better
the region?” The FOC will not tell you that the handful of mountaintop
removal sites they cite as examples of “economic development” is pretty
much the whole list. They will not tell you that strip malls, rather
than bringing money into the region, support their operations with
local folks’ hard-earned dollars and that the profits go out of state
or out of the country. Buying shoes made in China sends local money to,
you guessed it, China. The other 95 percent of mountaintop removal area
has no development at all. Good journalists will look beyond the green
façade of “reclamation” to find and report reality.
West
Virginia media outlets tend to give the FOC the last word and downplay
or completely ignore real facts that contradict the FOC’s rosy
propaganda. For example, they intentionally ignore the National Academy
of Sciences 2007 report that says, “It is not possible to confirm the
often-quoted assertion that there is a sufficient supply of coal for
the next 250 years.” In Appalachia, coal will likely run out before
today’s babies graduate from high school.
According to a 2000
report by the US Geological Survey, “Sufficient high-quality, thick,
bituminous resources remain in (Appalachian Basin) coal beds and coal
zones to last for the next one to two decades at current production.”
Other studies confirm this estimate.
West Virginia has been
waiting for over a century for coal’s promise of economic prosperity to
materialize. The most economically distressed counties in Appalachian
just happen to be among the highest coal producers. Coal has had its
chance to prove itself as something other than an oppressive,
exploitive industry and failed miserably. It’s time we learned our
lesson. Rather than building more coal plants and putting taxpayers’
money into schemes intended to prop up a dying industry, we should
prepare now so that our children will have something to replace the
crumbling “pillar” of West Virginia’s economy. Instead of blaming
"environmentalists" for rising electric bills, the media should focus
on the real costs of coal and the real solutions. In truth, mountaintop
removal is unnecessary for either electricity production or energy
independence. Jobs are just a costly byproduct the industry would
rather avoid.
The FOC, facilitated by the media, denies the
viability of renewable energy resources. However, according to an
article in Scientific American, “A massive switch from coal, oil,
natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply
69 percent of the U.S.’ electricity and 35 percent of its total energy
by 2050.” A WVU Tech professor told the WV Public Energy Authority that
90 percent of the U.S. electricity demand could be supplied by
concentrated solar power plants. The wind energy industry has been
growing at more than 25 percent a year, but West Virginia drags its
feet developing this vast resource. Instead, our “leaders” prefer to
decimate the mountains and eliminate the wind potential that a high
peak provides.
While the coal industry claims that renewable
energy sources cannot provide electricity on cloudy or still days, the
truth is that energy storage technologies exist and even better ones
are being developed. This is where research and development money
should go, instead of trying to find ways to make coal something it can
never be. There is simply no such thing as “clean, carbon-neutral
coal.” In Spanish, that’s carbon-neutral carbon, an oxymoron if there
ever was one.
West Virginia would be wise to invest in the green
energy revolution before we are left in the coal dust. Instead, we have
editors repeating the coal industry’s mantra of “environmentalists want
to take your job and ruin the economy.”
Groups such as Coal
River Mountain Watch promote green jobs, a prosperous and sustainable
economy, and permanent energy sources that will not ruin our region.
However, we do not have millions of dollars available for investment,
and West Virginia’s politicians are too beholden to coal to incubate a
clean energy economy. None of us think for a minute that coal burning
and mining will go away overnight, but we absolutely must transition
quickly to renewable energy and energy efficiency. We want our
descendants to have comfortable lives and abundant energy, but that
energy cannot be forever provided by limited supplies of coal.
The
high-paying green jobs to be had in developing, manufacturing,
installing and servicing renewable energy components will more than
compensate for the coal industry’s economic contribution. They will
provide the same number of spin-off jobs as mining jobs do. These jobs
will be permanent, as opposed to the temporary jobs of leveling
mountains and filling streams. The sun and wind were here long before
coal was formed and will be here long after it is gone.
The
issue of mountaintop removal is not about what is pretty and what is
ugly. It is really about what is safe, healthy, sustainable and
prosperous for the people. Mountaintop removal is quite the opposite of
all these desirable traits in an industry. Those who defend the
practice in an attempt to influence the courts should consider that
illegal activities that provide jobs are still illegal activities, and
the fact that the coal industry has not been held accountable does not
make their activities right or legal. And those who “have been
struggling all these months, trying to gain perspective” should not
give up and form a one-sided opinion simply because the Friends of Coal
have handed them a “fact” book.
By the way, this was written on a cloudy day on a computer powered by the sun.
— Janice Nease, Judy Bonds and Vernon Haltom are co-directors of Coal River Mountain Watch.