I didn’t have a top-of-mind awareness of coal ( well, Blue Coal sponsored “The Shadow” on radio and the movie “Brassed Off’ on the closing of the Grimley mine in Yorkshire was great if you were an old brass player) until I saw an ad campaign about coal as the clean fuel – somewhat the model of “Pork, the Other White Meat”. And I just received an email with a draft of an article from Peter Britton ‘56 the other day (unlike Rechtal Turgidley jr., there is a chance Peter may be found in the alum register and even remembered by Frank U. and Henry B.) on coal which I take the liberty of sharing with this energy- conscious, windmill-aware ephblog family.

Houses Burn, People Die
by Peter Britton

Years ago when I heard “West Virginia” I would think coal, hillbillies and bluegrass music, mystery, mountains and moonshine, Daniel Boone, Homer Hickam and basketball’s Jerry West. Not anymore. Now I think mountaintop removal, period. MTR is the horrifying destruction of 300-million-year- old hills to get black gold in the cheapest, fastest way. It’s the ravaging of nature’s finest ecosystem; the near-genocide of the people who live there; and the big industries that consistently trample hope. You must fly low over the area to grasp what is happening: total devastation of some 500 mountains.

Seven years ago I’d driven through West Virginia to check out Cabin Creek, the home of the hoops’ legend. Having done so my map indicated a road south to the town of Dorothy and hence to Nashville. I’d heard of MTR and would keep an eye out for it. Then came education at Kayford Mountain. The road I followed back then—now it’s gone—turned to dirt, began climbing and became treacherous. Through the foliage came sounds of construction—I thought—and glimpses of rocks and hillsides stripped bare. But I got through to Dorothy and thought, Could this be MTR? More like razing. I learned more and researched much. Scattered mentions kept that memory alive. In 2005 I called a Mountaineer lawyer. He put me on to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) which sent me to a remarkable woman whose homeplace in Bob White was under siege.

This family lives at the foot of a hollow across a stream and a railroad track. One-hundred- car coal trains pass a half dozen times a day. Up the hollow, ANFO blasts send dust and flyrock onto her property. A mountaintop in view slowly disappears. Occasional floods of blackwater wash out her stream. Poison her water. Deplete her land. She told me her story, of her Cherokee ancestor fleeing the Trail of Tears in the 1830s to hide in a West Virginia hollow. Of her grandfather who mined coal underground and built the house she lives in. Of her father, who died in an ATV accident back up the hollow because of a trail aborted by mountain top coal operators. And she told me of the constant fear and dread that hovers over all these little coal towns south of Charleston. Fear of losing ones’ limbs or lungs or life in the mines. Fear of disease from air or water. And dread of the same fate that befell Buffalo Creek, just over the mountains, and Aberfan, far away in Wales. The dread of uncontrollable blackwater floods. Together, 269 people—many of them children—died in these tragedies because of ill-conceived and poorly managed coal-mining ways. She also caused me to recall my part in all of this.

In 1992 I was researching a story on “clean coal,” the oxymoron today’s White House loves. Everyone knows coal is flat-out filthy. But it does provide electricity for Boswash, its main customer. And contributes heavily to the spectre of global warming I went to the United Nations to scope out the world situation. An interview with Earth Summit Secretary-General Maurice Strong, a Canadian energy man, left me with one quote ringing in my ears. “The Cold War is over; the coal wars are just beginning.” A long-time journalist, I had to write. Strong’s statement becomes clear in West Virginia and its growing practice of MTR (also thriving in neighboring states). The horrible concept is well described on the Internet at sites such as ohvec.org, wvhighlands.org and crmw.org. and multiple links.

The end result of this MTR devastation is chaos and death: chaos for a way of life, death to anyone or anything in the way—bears, fish, trees, flora, streams—and sometimes, people. But this is big business, and it runs the state. The only hope for the future is the law. And there’s the rub. But because of the sneakiness of the Bush administration and because of Cheney’s secret energy meeting—and because of our enabling greed—the die is cast: coal is the centerpiece and our immediate future. To keep it burning, laws are ignored, laws are changed, laws are broken.

Case in point: The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act and agencies concerned with the environment are inconvenient for coal operators. Bush had one related law changed a few years ago. Now he would change another, letting MTR operators dump directly onto hollow’s streams, obliterating them. And they would become the environment’s protectors. Maria has become a coal community organizer and recently a spokesperson for the lawsuit to stop the operation behind her hollow. Coal-originated floods had washed out her bridge; those responsible called it an “act of God.” But the plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order against the Callisto Surface Mine. And Maria became the scapegoat for the 39 laid-off workers, labeled by their bosses an “anti-coal activist.” She’s not. Since October, overt threats—“sometimes houses just catch on fire and people die in them”—have caused her to hire guards for her house and kids. Now, she’s building a fence around her property. She wears a bulletproof vest doing housework. She’s buying a trained guard dog. The FBI is investigating the threats. And Maria continues to fight.

The Coal Wars have, indeed, begun. ( NB Please ask permission of the author to use any of the materials, Also comments appreciated! )

Peter Britton
c/o dick@swart.org (who will pass them on to the peripatetic Peter)