Published: November 29, 2009 10:56 pm      

Coal industry official responds to actor

BLUEFIELD — There’s nothing new about pressure in the coal industry. Coal was formed under pressure hundreds of millions of years ago. For more than a century, coal operators are under constant pressure to make underground mining conditions safer for coal miners. In recent years, the coal industry has faced increasing pressure from a new coalition of 21st century environmentalists that oppose surface mining and coal-fired power generation.

The coal industry survived a period of strong, anti-surface mining public sentiment that emerged in the 1970s. The federal government passed new clean air and water laws as well as mine reclamation requirements to address environmental concerns raised by anti-strip mining groups. Present day opponents of surface mining and coal-fired energy gained momentum through sympathetic federal court rulings. The 2008 general election resulted in the ascendancy of a new administration that is revisiting domestic fossil fuel production and consumption regulations used by the prior administration.

West Virginia is located in the heart of the Appalachian region — a region that has become ground zero for the war between coal opponents and coal supporters. Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, is accustomed to fielding questions from a variety of media representatives, but he was surprised to hear from an editor with “Playboy” magazine in late September, and even more surprised when he found out that his written response was published in the letters to the editor section of the December 2009 edition of “Playboy.”

“About two months ago, I received a call from the editorial page editor of ‘Playboy’ magazine,” Raney said in a telephone interview last week. “He contacted us because the magazine had done an interview with Woody Harrelson. Mr. Harrelson had made some statements about surface mining, and to his credit, the guy from ‘Playboy’ wanted to give someone with knowledge of the coal industry the opportunity to respond to what Woody Harrelson said.

“I found his (Harrelson’s) comments to be inaccurate and an affront to our people,” Raney said. “I saw him as another one of the group of people who parachute in here and jump on the anti-coal band wagon. I don’t think they’re only against surface mining. I think they’re against the coal industry period and against our way of life.”

Harrelson’s remarks were published in the October 2009 edition of the magazine in a section called “Playboy Interview,” according to a copy of the interview posted on “Playboy.com.” Harrelson shared his views on many issues in the interview, but in his remarks concerning surface mining, Harrelson was quoted as saying that society needs to change its mind-set. “To me the most egregious of all man’s activities, after these stupid [expletive deleted] oil wars, is mountaintop removal. Talk about corporate greed! Mining companies used to drill to find a vein and then extract. Now? They freaking blow the top off the mountain!

“The biggest machines you’ve ever seen then come along, dig up the earth and pull it out,” Harrelson was quoted as saying in the “Playboy Interview.” “Glorious mountains go from this [makes the sign of a mountain peak] to that [makes the sign of flat land]. And everything around — the streams, the soil — gets loaded with all kinds of toxic chemicals and metals and nasty [expletive deleted].

“This is particularly in Appalachia,” Harrelson was quoted as stating. “Hundreds of mountains have been removed, and thousands of small communities are affected. It’s an atrocity, and nobody’s doing anything about it.”

In his written response to “Playboy,” Raney complimented Harrelson on his acting skills, but added: “He seems not to understand the issues surrounding mining in Appalachia,” Raney wrote. “Like Harrelson, coal miners love the environment. That’s evident in the care we take to restore the land. Much like building a road, a shopping center or a home, surface mining requires us to move the earth. But when the job is complete, we restore the site to its approximate original state.

“In fact, we recently won acclaim from the UN for using our sites to reintroduce the near extinct American chestnut,” according to Raney’s letter to “Playboy.” “We also create land that can be developed, and little economic growth would be possible in Appalachia without it. In September, for example, we presented Mingo County with a paving-ready former mine site to build an industrial park and airport, saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.”

Harrelson was born in Texas, but spent his teen years growing up in Lebanon, Ohio, a city in southwestern Ohio, located between Dayton and Cincinnati. Although that isn’t Ohio coal country, many people in Ohio joined the 1970-era opposition to large surface coal mining operations in eastern Ohio. There was also strong anti-surface mining movement at the same time in central and western Kentucky particularly around the Green River valley of Kentucky.

According to quotes attributed to Harrelson on the “Internet Movie Data Base,” Harrelson said he became interested in the environment when he wrote a paper in seventh grade concerning the loss of species.

Raney was born and raised in the Wyoming County coalfields near Mullens, but his family moved to Princeton where he graduated from high school.

— Bill Archer is a member of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph editorial staff. E-mail: barcher@bdtonline.com