Big coal demonizes its opponents



Like a lot of people, I like to read The Register-Herald while taking my lunch at work. When I saw Dan Page’s article in Tuesday’s “Our Readers Speak,” I almost choked on my sandwich. I could not just stand by and let someone slander the good people of West Virginia in such a way without retort.

One way that big coal has perfected its oppression of Appalachia is to demonize its opponents as crazy outsiders who are trying to destroy the economy of West Virginia and take people’s jobs away from them. By painting environmentalists with that broad brush, big coal can justify the atrocities they commit on a daily basis. Those atrocities include blowing up over 500 of the oldest and most beautiful mountains on earth, destroying water tables by dumping debris and coal slurry and coal ash into them, ignoring safety regulations (thereby, killing underground miners), destroying the unions so that the miners have no voice but the company’s. They cover up their atrocities with an army of lawyers, mountains of litigation, bought politicians and so-called journalists like Dan Page, who propagandizes for them as if he were on their payroll.

The real truth is that many of the environmentalists are your neighbors. They are native West Virginians who live and work (if they can) here every day. They are the underground miners who have been put out of work by surface mining. They are the people whose children’s health is threatened by bad water and slurry ponds. They are the people who have watched their communities turned into hellish pits by Mountain Top Removal, floods caused by clear-cutting forests and the poverty left when coal vacates the area. They are people who care about the environment we all have to live in. They want a world they will be proud to leave their children.

Most environmentalists, contrary to the opinion of Mr. Page, are very aware of the economic impact that coal has on Appalachia, and know that coal is not going to go away overnight. What they are asking for is for coal to practice some measure of responsibility in their mining practices while transitioning to other types of energy that do not destroy our environment and ruin our health. And make no mistake, we must make that transition. Not to do so means disaster not only for the environment, but also for the economy of West Virginia in the long run.

So Mr. Page, before you paint us all as young, out-of-state, liberal arts majors again, consider this. I am a 57-year-old native West Virginian originally from McDowell County. I briefly worked as a coal miner in my youth. My father was a coal miner. I am proud to be an environmentalist and will never bow down to the new coal thugs like you; and until coal learns to practice responsible mining, I will never be a “Friend of Coal.”



Ralph C. Payne

Prosperity