Published: April 19, 2008 10:45 pm         

Mountaintop removal — unnecessary threat to communities

Opinion

When 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.