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mountaintop removal
The Endless War on the Central Appalachian Mountains Continues
Instead of recognizing the century-old legacy of ruin in coal country, the Biden administration risks falling into the trap of outdated policies.
May 02, 2021
On Earth Day this year, as President Biden assembled world leaders to a climate summit to focus on a "clean energy future," retired coal miner Chuck Nelson hunkered down in the green hills of West Virginia, recovering from a recent stroke and with one remaining kidney, as thousands of tons of explosives from mountaintop removal strip mining operations detonated nearby with a toxic haze of coal dust.
Yes, Greta (Thunberg), we still blow up mountains in the United States to mine deadly coal.
While coal mining has decreased dramatically in recent years, state permits for reckless mountaintop removal operations by absentee corporations, which involve only small numbers of non-union heavy equipment operators and explosives, in contrast to labor-intensive underground mines, continue to be doled out in central Appalachia in a desperate attempt to shake down the region for a final coal tattoo.
In fact, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection celebrated Earth Day by rubber-stamping a new strip-mining permit for an out-of-state coal company, slated to destroy 1,085 acres of forested ridges and wreak havoc for neighboring communities for the next eight years, despite decades of protest by local citizens and reams of shocking health studies on heightened cancer, heart and birth defect rates associated with mountaintop removal mining dust.
The endless war on the central Appalachian mountains continues. Needlessly, we should add.
"Millions of acres of Appalachian mountains have been permanently destroyed, and thousands of miles of streams have been permanently buried," emailed Nelson, whose wife died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2019. "With a flow of permits being processed right now, thousands more acres are planned to be wiped away forever. As devastating as mountaintop removal mining is to our majestic mountains, and the people's health impacts, only 3% of it is for electrical demand -- only 3%. Mountaintop removal mining goes against everything we're fighting for in trying to deal with the climate crisis. These are criminal acts carried out by criminal enterprises."
Instead of recognizing the century-old legacy of ruin in coal country, from Appalachia to Alaska and 20-odd states and several First Nations in between -- including an enduring array of abandoned mines, dangerous coal slurry impoundments, fraudulent "reclamation" projects, polluted waterways, desperate black lung victims, and gutted and sick communities with few economic options -- the Biden administration risks falling into the trap of outdated policies.
Two days after Earth Day applause, the Department of Energy quietly awarded millions of dollars "to boost the economic potential of coal and power plant communities," and subsidize "critical mineral extraction from coal and associated waste streams," as well as widely debunked carbon capture and storage schemes.
Listen here: Advocates in coal country have been calling for a Green New Deal since 2008 -- and a coalfields regeneration fund for everyone in coal mining communities, not simply the out-of-state companies, and not just throwing out a few job training opportunities for the dwindling ranks of largely non-union miners.
If the Biden administration and Congress truly want to build back better, they should have passed the RECLAIM ACT years ago, simply to start the process of reclaiming and reinvesting in all mining regions. And they should now double down on the commitment and make the Appalachian region, like all extraction zones from the Illinois Basin to the Navajo Nation to the Powder River Basin, a showcase for a clean energy economy, not a backwoods of denial.
If the Biden administration and Congress want to end the war on Appalachia, they should simply pass the Appalachian Community Health Emergency (ACHE) Act, which calls for a moratorium on such devastating operations until a basic health study is completed.
This is one of the most shameless realities in regulation: One of the Trump administration's first acts was to cancel a long-term health study on the impacts of mountaintop removal mining.
The sad truth is that this humanitarian and environmental crisis has been a federally sanctioned disaster since Jimmy Carter begrudgingly signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, complaining that it would allow "the mining companies to cut off the tops of Appalachian mountains to reach entire seams of coal."
Let's repeat that phrase, "cut off the tops of Appalachian mountains" -- as in the tops of more than 500 mountains for over a half-century, literally clear-cutting deciduous forests and the region's ancient carbon sink, blowing ridges into oblivion with explosives and dumping the toxic remains and pulverized heavy metals in polluted streams, and ravaging the lives of citizens considered collateral damage, along with everything else in the way.
It doesn't have to be like this. Last month, Canadian government officials reversed their own 45-year policy for open-pit coal mining, admitting, "We didn't get this one right."
It's time for Biden and Congress to get this one right in Appalachia and all mining communities.
Just listen to Vernon Haltom, director of Coal River Mountain Watch, based in the frontline extraction zones of West Virginia, not in Washington, an organization that deserves as much support as possible:
With millions of Americans seriously ill or dead from the COVID pandemic, the stockholders and executives of Alpha Metallurgical Resources have no qualms about filling the air in Appalachian communities with carcinogenic blasting dust. Their enablers at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection have no qualms about rubber stamping new and renewed mountaintop removal permits, "just following the law" to sentence innocent people to death and misery. People like WVDEP permit supervisor Laura Claypool face no negative consequences for their actions, apparently not even remorse, but the people face the consequences of death. How do they sleep at night? It's not as if they don't know about the dozens of peer-reviewed health studies demonstrating that mountaintop removal is a deadly public health threat. No, they sleep soundly in the comfort of a steady job doing the coal barons' bidding. The WVDEP has made it personal by approving the death of friends and family like Judy Bonds, Larry Gibson and Joanne Webb, so they shouldn't be surprised if we make it personal about their cold, inhumane decisions. But since they've proven their incapacity for basic human decency, we need the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (ACHE) Act, H.R. 2073 in this U.S. Congress, to protect the people.
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Giving Middle Finger to Appalachian Communities, Trump Kills Study of Mountaintop Removal Health Impacts
Stopping the study "without warning or adequate reason is beyond heartless"
Aug 21, 2017
Outrage has followed the Trump administration's decision late last week to put the brakes on a study into the health impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining in Central Appalachia.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said Monday it received a letter from the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement ordering it to put a halt on its two-year project "largely as a result of the Department's changing budget situation."
"Trump has once again shown the people of Appalachia that we mean nothing to him." --Bill Price, Sierra Club"The OSM," as journalist Ken Ward Jr. writes at the West Virginia Gazette-Mail, "had committed more than $1 million to the study, which was launched last year after a request from officials from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the state Bureau for Public Health" in light of scientific research linking "mountaintop removal to increased risks of birth defects, cancer, and premature death among residents living near large-scale surface coal mines in Appalachia."
Bill Price, senior Appalachia organizing representative for Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, called it "infuriating that Trump would halt this study on the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining, research that people in Appalachia have been demanding for years. Trump has once again shown the people of Appalachia that we mean nothing to him. From his proposed budget cuts to the Appalachian Regional Commission, to pushing to take away healthcare from thousands of Appalachian people, to now stripping doctors and scientists of the ability to warn us about the health effects of mountaintop coal removal, Trump's showing that he's only been pretending to care about our communities."
"What did we ever do to him?" Price continued. "Everyone knows there are major health risks living near mountaintop removal coal mining sites, but communities living with daily health threats were counting on finally getting the full story from the professionals at the National Academies of Science. To take that away without warning or adequate reason is beyond heartless. It appears that the only people Trump cares about in Appalachia are coal executives, not the people who've lived and worked here for generations. People here trusted him, but he is proving he didn't deserve that trust."
Also denouncing the development is Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, who said the move was another sign of the administration's war on science and interest in doing the industry's bidding.
"Every time some reckless industry hurts working people, this administration is there to provide political cover," Grijalva said Monday.
"Mountaintop removal mining has been shown to cause lung cancer, heart disease, and other medical problems. Clearly this administration and the Republican Party are trying to stop the National Academy of Sciences from uncovering exactly how harmful this practice is. Stopping this study is a ploy to stop science in its tracks and keep the public in the dark about health risks as a favor to the mining industry, pure and simple," Grijalva said.
As Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, summarized dryly on Twitter: "Trump's great way of helping his West Virginia voters: Halt scientific study of how mountaintop removal coal mining makes them sick."
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Mountaintop Removal Never Ended: Coal River Mountaineers Fight On
Oct 19, 2016
Standing in solidarity with the water protectors on the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, Coal River Mountain residents already fending off seven square miles of devastating mountaintop removal mining permits are planning a protest on Monday at the Department of Environmental Protection in Charleston, West Virginia against pending permits for a possible expansion of operations by formerly bankrupt Alpha Natural Resources.
Yes, Virginia, in 2016 formerly bankrupt coal companies continue to blast away historic Coal River Mountain and adjacent communities.
Let's call it morally bankrupt.
And while the presidential campaigns trade "war on coal" slogans, no candidate and few reporters have made a single mention of one of the most egregious environmental crimes and civil rights violations in our lifetimes: The enduring health crisis of residents living amid the fallout of mountaintop removal operations.
Mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia has never ended -- despite decades of local campaigns and a historic petition last year of 200,000 signatures for a moratorium until the federal government could carry out a basic health assessment.
Sure, mining has declined, due to natural gas competition, but mountaintop removal mining has never ended--despite the documented health crisis and cancer link from millions of pounds of strip mining explosives, silica dust, and contamination of waterways from pulverized heavy metals.
And Coal River mountaineers living in the toxic ruins of the coal industry, with few resources, continue to fight harder and finish off the outlaw ranks of Big Coal, in the words of Goldman Prize recipient Judy Bonds, until they bring an end to this "war on Appalachia."
"From the mountains of Appalachia to the plains of Lakota country to the western ports and pipelines, from Black Mesa to the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, extreme extraction industries jeopardize the health, water, air, and land of local communities," said Vernon Haltom, with Coal River Mountain Watch. "It's all one water, one atmosphere, and one Earth on which we all depend and for which we all must fight."
"People need to stop saying mountaintop removal is over," said Goldman Prize recipient Maria Gunnoe, who lives under a mountaintop removal operation in West Virginia. "It is not over! We are seeing new permits weekly. We have educated thousands of people on mountaintop removal. Most of them have left and moved on and are now fighting other issues with more funding I don't understand why they didn't complete the job and end mountaintop removal."
Sure, there have been some glimmers of hope--after years of denial and hand-wringing as the coal industry openly carried out violation-ridden mines, the feds have agreed to conduct an independent assessment of existing research on the health impacts of mountaintop removal, but still allow mining to continue; the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
recently halted the devastating KD#2 mine near the Kanawha State Forest; and former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is serving a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/us/donald-blankenship-sentenced-to-a-year-in-prison-in-mine-safety-case.html">prison sentence for conspiring to violate mine safety measures.
But, here are four points to remember:
1) Mountaintop removal, like all strip mining, should have been abolished in 1971, as US Rep. Ken Hechler from West Virginia proposed to the Congress--not regulated, given the century-long rap sheet of an outlaw coal industry that has openly flaunted rules in a constant state of violation, exploited loopholes and a corrupt state and federal system that tolerates regulatory manslaughter.
2) Mountaintop removal is a human rights and civil rights issue, not just an environmental issue, which has resulted in forced removals, the desecration of churches and burial grounds, the poisoning of waterways and air, and the toxic contamination of pregnant mothers, child and the elderly.
""We didn't formally know in the 1990s what we know now," said Bob Kincaid, with Coal River Mountain Watch, "that mountaintop removal steals innocent lives. Any acceptance of the practice now carries with it a tolerance, an acquiescence to homicide."
3) Mountaintop removal has endured because our country still accepts the reality of "sacrifice zones," where the health of certain regions and people is considered as disposable as our natural resources.
Appalachia, like 25 other states that mine or have mined coal, will be living with the toxic fallout of coal mines and coal slurry for generations.
4) Mountaintop removal is a climate change issue. The refusal to address mountaintop removal over the last half century--and during President Obama's administration--despite the fact that it only provides 5% of our national coal production, reflects our denial to take the urgent action necessary to combat climate change. Recognizing the great carbon sink of the Appalachian mountains, the abolition of mountaintop removal would have offered such a chance to end a disastrous coal policy and make Appalachia the front-line showcase for our nation's clean energy agenda, not the backwoods of denial.
"Mountaintop removal is not an accident," said Bo Webb, a long-time activist in West Virginia, whose family lived under a mountaintop removal operations. "It is done with purpose knowing that water, air, and soil are all being poisoned and knowing that elevated rates of cancer, heart and lung disease, and birth defects in surrounding communities are directly attributed to this specific form of coal mining. It is time for President Obama to speak to the heartache of living near mountaintop removal. It is also time for the Sierra Club and other large organizations to fully support the ACHE Act and end mountaintop removal."
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