In similar fashion as the Raleigh County Commission, the Jan. 8 Register-Herald editorial either chose to ignore the true purpose of the Coal River Mountain wind campaign or missed the point completely.

For the past 10 months, the wind campaign has pursued the development of a utility-scale wind farm on Coal River Mountain in the west end of Raleigh County as an economically viable alternative to a 6,450-acre mountaintop removal mining site proposed by Massey Energy.

In January, aided by a recent Downstream Strategies study showing that wind is the better economic land use option for Coal River Mountain, Coal River Mountain Watch asked the commission to stand behind wind power on this one mountain, and that the county take a hard look at the potential for developing a local wind industry, given that such an industry would provide greater and more stable jobs and tax revenue to the county and its citizens.

This request is not a request to “pit one industry against the other.” It is a request to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of two plans for the development of Coal River Mountain and make the best choice for the people of Raleigh County. This is what “working together” really means. It means mining the coal underground and preserving the ridges for wind development if it has been shown, as it has on Coal River Mountain, that wind is a viable and better option.

Available data show that Raleigh County has less than 20 years of recoverable coal left, that mining jobs have declined by 1,600 since 1983 and that county-level coal production peaked in 1997. For Coal River Mountain, the annual tax revenues with wind would exceed those from the proposed mountaintop removal mining by $1.7 million per year, which is more than the county received from all coal severance taxes in the entire year leading up to last quarter.

The county did receive $700,000 in coal severance taxes in the final quarter of 2008. Less than half of that was from surface mining, however, and it’s not likely that the record production and severance tax revenues achieved last quarter will be repeated. The only reason those levels occurred was because coal prices skyrocketed last year, but the price of that coal has since dropped by 50 percent. Demand for coal is dropping as the nation’s economy worsens, as manufacturing shuts down across the country and as citizens have begun conserving energy in order to save money.

In light of these facts, it is incumbent upon the commission to do the right thing and oppose mountaintop removal on Coal River Mountain. That is their duty to all citizens residing in the county.

With coal production in the county facing a steep decline in the near future, is it really in the best interest of the county not to begin looking at alternative sources of jobs and economic revenue?

If a wind industry could, as the study by Downstream Strategies shows, create more jobs than all coal mining in the county, and if wind farms generate 50 times more tax revenue for the county than mountaintop removal, what is the real argument for opposing wind power for Coal River Mountain by supporting mountaintop removal so strongly? How is wind development, at least for this one mountain, not the obvious choice?

This is what the Coal River Mountain wind campaign is all about: preserving the existing wind resources, creating new industries and diversifying the economy so that when bust cycles occur, and when the coal has run out, there will still be jobs and tax revenue related to an existing wind industry. Mountaintop removal is destroying this opportunity, and it is time for the leaders of Raleigh County to stop hiding behind the false mantra of pitting new industries against coal. If that is the way they make decisions affecting the county economy, then there is no hope for any new industry to grow here until the coal is gone because any economic opportunity — such as the one proposed by the Coal River Mountain wind campaign — will be seen as opposing coal.

If we wait until the coal is gone to let new industries in, and if the county lacks the courage to oppose mountaintop removal even on one single mountain, what will be left?

Wind could be a boom for Raleigh County for a long time to come, and the time is now for our leaders to realize that and act accordingly.

— Rory McIlmoil is a resident of Rock Creek and a member of Coal River Mountain Watch.