Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal (2 page)

The difference between local and national coverage continued in November 1965 when a frail, sixty-one-year-old woman named Ollie Combs—widely known as “the Widow Combs”—
was arrested after she lay down in front of bulldozers to stop mining on her Knott County, Kentucky, farm. The news made the front page of the
New York Times
and was picked up off the wire and printed in large papers across the country.
Courier-Journal
photographer Bill Strode (who was also arrested that day) won a Pulitzer Prize for news photography for his series on strip mining, which included pictures of Combs's arrest. The pictures shocked America. However, many newspapers throughout the region failed to report the incident or buried it well inside their pages.

In some ways, this situation has not changed much today: regional newspapers fail to report many of the protests, assemblies, and community hearings about mountaintop removal. The Internet, however, has greatly changed the way Americans get their news. As more people have turned to the Internet as their primary news source in recent years, newspaper circulation has declined dramatically. Due in part to the twenty-four-hour news cycle that cable news and the Internet have helped to create, there is such a wealth of information available to consumers nowadays that they are unable to process it all. In addition, newspapers, which are increasingly owned by large media conglomerates, no longer carry the political clout they once did.

Despite the widespread national coverage that mountaintop removal has received, the media still have not embraced this environmental issue enough to make it part of the national consciousness. The term “mountaintop removal” has yet to become a household phrase in America the way it has in Appalachia. Perhaps politics has something to do with it. Project Censored, a media watchdog organization, ranked the issue as the tenth most censored story of 2006.
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But we believe that this censorship—or lack of interest—has more to do with class, with an increasing national prejudice against rural areas and the people who live there. Appalachia is openly referred to as “flyover country” by many in the United States, and this is surely one of the reasons that this issue is being ignored by
the citizens of an otherwise caring nation. Today's culture puts little stock in a rural place like Appalachia, a place people think of as consisting entirely of “rags” when what they are really interested in are the “riches.” Perhaps it is this lack of national interest that causes many national publications to do large spreads on the issue and then move on, failing to sustain their coverage of the continued fight against mountaintop removal.

Not many people know about the Martin County, Kentucky, sludge spill, when 300 million gallons of sludge—an oozing mess of black coal waste—were dumped into waterways, roads, and homes.
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The Exxon-Valdez spill, by contrast, involved 10.8 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound off the shore of Alaska. Though it involved a tiny fraction of the number of gallons dumped in Martin County, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill became worldwide news.
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Why else do so few people know about the three-year-old child who was killed in southwest Virginia when a boulder dislodged from a mine site crashed into his family's trailer and crushed him in his own bed? Despite the fact that those seeking to increase awareness of any issue are aided by having a memorable image to present to the public, those fighting mountaintop removal have refused to use the child's name and likeness in protests or rallies so as not to exploit his memory. Still, the media have mostly ignored his tragic story. If this child had come from a more affluent community, we believe that the incident would have been more widely publicized, and would likely have sparked national outrage.

Even fewer people are aware of the ongoing protests against mountaintop removal throughout the region. Many arrests resulting from these protests are not widely reported. In 2003, four people were arrested in Kentucky for unfurling banners that opposed the practice. Two years later, nine people were arrested while protesting the destruction of Zeb Mountain in Tennessee. March 2007 saw thirteen arrested in Charleston, West Virginia, while protesting a sludge pond that services a mountaintop removal site just above Marsh Fork Elementary School, which
keeps a single school bus parked in front of the building for a potential emergency evacuation.
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In August that same year, five demonstrators were arrested in Asheville, North Carolina, for protesting outside the Bank of America, which has loaned nearly $1 billion to Massey Energy and Arch Coal, two of the largest mining companies in the nation.
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June 2008 brought the arrest of twelve more in Virginia who were protesting the building of the Dominion power plant, which would increase pollution and the use of coal mined as the result of mountaintop removal. These are only a few examples; numerous other protests and arrests have occurred in the region.

Given these events, it is clear that people are sick and tired of putting up with whatever the coal industry and the government dishes out. They're also tired of not being heard, which means that their voices are bound to become louder and louder. These are not people who can be silenced.

Something's rising in the mountains of Appalachia: the voices of the people.

As we have educated ourselves on the topic of mountaintop removal, what has struck us the most are the individual stories of those affected by it. We have included in this book those whose stories have affected us the most. We believe that their stories perfectly illustrate the complexities of this subject. Mountaintop removal is not by any means just an environmental problem. It also has political, social, ethical, economic, and—most of all—cultural ramifications.

We have assembled twelve very different witnesses against mountaintop removal who have one great thing in common: they are speaking out for what they believe in with passion, intelligence, and wit. They are stepping out on a limb to voice their opinion. They are fighting to make Appalachia a better place for themselves, for their children, for their neighbors, and, especially, for generations to come.

These twelve have different backgrounds, classes, and occupations. They range in age from a man of twenty-three to a woman
in her mid-eighties. They represent many professions and activities: nurse-practitioner, social worker, singer, college student, writer, miner, mine-inspector, and politician. Some of the people in this book are just starting to speak up. As they have learned more and become more concerned about mountaintop removal, despite being quiet by nature, they feel the need to make their worries known. Some of them feel a moral obligation to speak out. Others have been so affected by the ravages of mountaintop removal that their survival depends on standing up for themselves. Some are working alone, others are organizing their communities. Some have worked on the issue with the nation's most important environmental and political leaders.

All are Appalachians, a fact that is very important to us.

Poet and activist Don West once wrote: “If we native mountaineers can now determine to organize and save ourselves, save our mountains from the spoilers who tear them down, pollute our streams, and leave grotesque areas of ugliness, there is hope…It is time that we hill folk should understand and appreciate our heritage, stand up like those who were our ancestors, develop our own self-identity. It is time to realize that nobody from the outside is ever going to save us from bad conditions unless we make our own stand. We must learn to organize again, speak, plan, and act for ourselves.”
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Although West wrote these words over forty years ago, they could not ring truer today. The fight against mountaintop removal can only be won when the majority of Appalachians are willing to rise up and say, “No.” Our interview subjects are speaking out, and with this book we intend to give them the opportunity to share their stories with a wider audience. By enabling them to tell their stories, we hope to encourage other Appalachians to speak out, too.

One of the main reasons we have featured only Appalachians in this book is that despite the widespread public outcry by so many of the region's residents, there are still many others who have failed to come out against mountaintop removal. Many Appalachians find it difficult to oppose this practice because of the
coal industry's long history of convincing people that to protest any form of mining is to oppose an industry that has long been a major supplier of jobs within the region. This is not unlike the convoluted and confining definition of patriotism that more and more people seem to have adopted. In today's political climate, those who speak against war are often branded as unpatriotic or against those in the military. In a similar fashion, some Appalachians tend to believe that speaking out against any form of mining is biting the hand that feeds them.

Coal has long been a major employer in Appalachia, a region that is not economically diverse. Perhaps those in charge of the coal industry believe that making residents dependent on them will assure its continuation. Maybe politicians and those in power believe that keeping people under their control means convincing them that they have no other alternatives. Perhaps the environmental devastation caused in part by mining has kept other forms of economic growth, such as tourism and sustainable resources, from developing in the region, thus allowing it to remain the coal industry's private playground.

Over and over, the coal associations of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Virginia remind people that coal provides jobs for the region. However, the coal associations conveniently, purposefully, and wisely choose to
not
remind people of the many mining jobs lost to the mechanization crucial to mountaintop removal. In this context, it is worth noting that the counties that produce the most coal in Appalachia are often the poorest. Take, for example, Boone County, West Virginia's biggest coal producer, whose county seal boasts “Where coal was discovered in 1742” and which hosts the annual Coal Festival. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the median income for a household in the county was $25,669, as compared to the national average of $50,200. The county produces an average of about thirty-three million tons of coal a year. In 2000, the average price of coal per short ton was $16.78.
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That means that coal produced in Boone County was worth about $5.5 billion in the same year that the median
income for a family in the county was half of the national average. In addition, the price of coal has risen sharply over the past decade, while median incomes have not. In 2008, a short ton of coal sold for up to $140 per ton, an 823 percent increase. Appalachians certainly have not seen a similar hike in their incomes.
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Yet the coal industry paints a different picture, which it feeds to Appalachians—and all Americans—in television commercials, on billboards and bumper stickers, at the workplace, and in the schools.

We believe that one reason we mountaineers so easily believe the coal industry has to do with manners. Appalachians have always been polite by nature. As John Gaventa observed, “the mountaineers were more interested in maintaining community harmony” when approached to sell or lease land to the coal companies in the early to mid-twentieth century.
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This attitude persists even today, causing neighbors to become upset with those who speak out. Those who rock the boat are often criticized as being ungrateful—until the rocks from mountaintop removal sites rain down on the critics' own homes.

In short, the people you will meet in these pages have all taken a chance in speaking out. They're running the risk of being shunned or rejected by neighbors, friends, and family members. But they press on. They believe that courage is contagious.

Thus, our interview subjects are all Appalachians and they're all fighting back. These were our two main criteria for inclusion here. However, as this book took shape, we realized that these activists have two other things in common.

First, they all work quietly and efficiently, not seeking any kind of limelight or personal validation. In most cases their activism and dedication are either underrated or unnoticed.

Secondly, they all not only know how to speak up, but also have a natural instinct for storytelling, making this book a testament to the strong and beautiful oral tradition in Appalachia as well as a document of the fight against mountaintop removal.

The people you will meet here are storytellers. They all speak
of stories as a force that sustains them, just as the tradition of storytelling sustains the entire Appalachian culture. All of them know that one way to fight back is to tell a story in your own voice, in your own words. Environmental devastation can take much from even a strong culture like that of Appalachia, but the last thing to be taken from these mountains will be the stories, because they are the lifeblood of their people.

We did not choose the twelve individuals for this book because we agreed with everything they had to say. On the contrary, we wanted to interview people who might have different views on the coal companies, their communities, and the government than we did. Mountaintop removal is such a complex issue that it is almost impossible for two people to agree on every aspect of the problem. However, we all agree on one thing: that this mining practice is deplorable and must be stopped.

In fact, however, Appalachians are used to deplorable activity. And despite their natural politeness and civility, they are used to fighting back. Appalachians were born of social protest.

After being ordered by the British Crown to abandon their settlement in the Appalachian Mountains in 1772, a group of pioneers met and decided instead to lease the land from the Cherokee Indians. The founding of the Watauga Association skirted the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which banned any settlement or purchase of land west of the Appalachians, and thus became the first American declaration of independence. Three years later, Mecklenburg County in North Carolina passed the first Resolution of Separation from Great Britain.
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