By Taylor Kuykendall
Register-Herald Reporter
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“The uncertainty is what gets you,” a West Virginia coalfields citizen says in an upcoming program that again puts the state’s mountaintop removal battle in the spotlight.
“Battle for Blair Mountain: Working in America” will air Aug. 14 at 8 p.m. and a rough cut provided to The Register-Herald focuses on the impact of mountaintop removal on West Virginia communities, jobs and the surrounding environment.
James and Linda Dials, of Sharples, are featured prominently in the hour-long special featuring CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.
“The way it is in southern West Virginia, it’s the coalfields,” James Dials says in the opening of the program. “It’s what we’ve done for a hundred years.”
James, a lifetime West Virginia resident and 30-year coal miner, paints the fight as one pitting jobs versus the environment. He and his wife say they have never been concerned about the environmental effects of coal despite living near mine sites for decades.
“Coal means we’re going to have a job, coal means we’re going to be able to support our family, to stay where we’re at,” Linda Dials said. “We’re going to be able to retire someday.”
O’Brien’s exploration hits most of the usual points of the mountaintop removal debate. The Environmental Protection Agency versus West Virginia politicians, health and environment versus jobs and economic development and other common points of disagreement were explored.
The piece follows the recent developments of the Spruce No. 1 mine, one of the largest permits proposed in West Virginia. The permit was eventually revoked, and the emotional community response was documented by the CNN team.
O’Brien also explores another common argument — surface mining versus deep mining. Surface mining is more efficient and profitable, but deep mining provides more jobs and is less environmentally disruptive.
Billy Smutko, son and grandson of a miner, says man can coexist with deep mining. The troubles of West Virginia, he tells CNN, are from surface mining or “mountaintop removal.”
“That’s when it all began,” Smutko says. “When the mountaintop removal started, that’s when the communities started disappearing.”
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, often attacked by state officials for running what they call a “job killing agency,” also talks with O’Brien.
“They need to understand that yeah, you can mine coal and give jobs to people, but you can’t do it at the expense of their lives, their health, their water, their air — that’s too much,” Jackson says.
