Published: March 29, 2006 10:17 pm      

Our Readers Speak -- Thursday, March 30, 2006

Coal, timber extraction affecting many in state

The Register-Herald’s thorough coverage of the ongoing flood litigation in Raleigh County Circuit Court is commendable. Your frequent, detailed reports will allow readers to be informed and aware of the magnitude of a very serious problem in southern West Virginia. I am hopeful that your reports may also provide a clue to our state officials that something has gone terribly wrong here in the southern coalfields.

It should be a matter of concern to all of us that so many individuals and communities — even entire watersheds — have been so severely impacted by environmentally unsound methods of coal and timber extraction, and yet everyone involved is denying responsibility. It’s no secret that mining and timber companies in southern West Virginia are rarely held accountable for irresponsible practices that damage another’s property. Now, corporate landowners who lease their land to those mine and timber companies are denying accountability as well.

One would hope that our elected leaders would be outraged by such injustice. Is it too much to hope that our representatives in Charleston might actually have some vision for our state’s future — at least enough to motivate a serious attempt to seek an effective solution to this growing, dangerous and destructive problem?

I can’t help wondering if their vision might become a little clearer if they listened as carefully to the residents of southern coalfield communities as they do to coal and timber industry lobbyists.

Maybe that’s expecting too much from the people in Charleston. After all, they still haven’t figured out that clear-cutting steep slopes and dumping mountaintops into adjacent valleys do indeed affect water runoff, and will contribute to rapid, severe flooding downstream. It doesn’t require an engineering degree to understand that — any third-grader knows it.

Unfortunately, corporate lawyers and West Virginia government officials don’t seem to get it.

Andrew C. Price

Pax







It’s about time to protect interests of the citizenry

The cancer center on Dry Hill Road is enlarging its parking lot. This is being done to accommodate all the new cancer patients when Massey Energy adds more manganese and mercury to the river flow.

I would like to see the statistics of the prevalence of cancer in southern West Virginia compared to the rest of the state. More particularly, I would like to see statistics of cancer victims on Coal River as compared to those of other areas of the state.

Maybe this conspiracy thing to depopulate southern West Virginia is for real. Move or die seems to be the message of the day.

Land companies are leasing land to coal companies with no questions asked; the coal companies are working furiously before the whole scheme blows up and are putting their poisons in the air, water and old worked-out mines. The Department of Environmental Protection is looking the other way while all of this is being done. Politicians are reaping profits galore from this shameful enterprise. Railroads are hauling the coal away from West Virginia and getting filthy rich while spreading their foul-smelling and dangerous diesel oil fumes; and we, the people, are getting the shaft.

Why is no one protecting the interests of the citizenry? Where are our representatives while the coal interests are perpetrating these hate crimes? Where are Byrd, Rockefeller and Rahall? Where are Weeks, Kiss, Susman, Thompson and Sumner? Where is anyone?

Richard A. Bradford

Edwight