West Virginia, Kentucky miners boycott Tennessee over proposed mountaintop removal restrictions 3

A mountaintop removed for coal mining.There will be no more excursions to Dollywood for Roger Horton, a coal miner who lives in West Virginia—at least not until U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) drops legislation he’s sponsoring that would limit mountaintop removal mining.

Horton is the mastermind behind a tourism boycott involving miners in neighboring West Virginia and Kentucky, who say they refuse to spend any money in Tennessee as long as its Senator is threatening their jobs.

The Washington Post reports that Horton came up with the idea for the boycott while riding the bus home from a June 25 Senate committee hearing on the Appalachian Restoration Act, sponsored by Alexander and Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.). The law would prevent the dumping of toxic mining waste from mountaintop removal mining into headwater streams.

“It’s not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal,” Alexander said in his opening statement at that hearing. “Saving our mountaintops is important to me.”

That didn’t sit well with the miners, who fear their jobs are on the line. Horton is a truck driver who works at Guyan Mine, a mountaintop removal operation in Logan County, W.V. owned by Apogee Coal Co., a subsidiary of Missouri-based Patriot Coal. A member of the UMWA Local 5958, Horton also directs a lobby group called Citizens for Coal, which counts among its funders the Logan County Commission.

“I understand their feelings,” Alexander told the Associated Press. “But I have feelings, too. And my feelings are that millions of people come to Tennessee to see the beauty of the mountaintops and not to see mountains whose tops have been blown off with the waste dumped in our streams—which is all I am trying to stop.”

Members of Coal River Mountain Watch, a grassroots citizens’ group working to stop mountaintop removal, say they intend to visit Tennessee to counter the miners’ boycott.

The boycott comes amid heightening tensions in Appalachia’s mining communities. The West Virginia Council of Churches recently released a statement calling for peaceful dialogue in the coal fields and urging civic leaders, the coal industry and environmental groups to “desist in using inflammatory rhetoric, and to encourage an attitude of understanding toward those with whom one disagrees.”

Earlier this month, the premiere of a documentary film about mountaintop removal was canceled at a one West Virginia venue because of unspecified security concerns. In other recent incidents involving violence or the threat of it, a proponent of mountaintop removal was charged with assaulting an nonviolent protester, while supporters of a mountaintop removal mining company crashed a music festival and threatened mountaintop removal opponents.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Sue Sturgis is the editorial director of Facing South, the online magazine of the nonprofit Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C.

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  1. Cacaoatl's avatar

    Cacaoatl Posted 12:56 pm
    28 Jul 2009

    What's the point of working, when your work is poisoning the next generation? What's wrong with Horton? Is it impossible for him to think ahead or does he just refuse to do so? I know our country is going through rough times economically but sometimes it is necessary to look beyond the next pay check to the impact of one's work on the next generation. Or would he rather have his paycheck today and nothing for his children and grandchildren tomorrow? It's thick headed folks like Horton and the loggers of the Pacific Northwest who only think about the present who are holding the US back from real environmental progress. If Horton had any foresight, he wouldn't work to save coal mining, he would put his energy into creating better jobs for the people currently engaged in mining.I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of our major concerns is that NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.) the last auto factory in California is about to close. Like Horton and his coal mining, everyone involved is trying to save the plant. They are not thinking of what the closure could be...only that in the immediate future it is a problem. However, while it may be the end of the manufacture of gasoline powered cars in California, if our government and labor leaders work through it, it could be the birth of a new manufacturing base in California -- zero emissions vehicles. Of course they probably don't have the foresight.

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  2. featherfish81 Posted 2:21 pm
    28 Jul 2009

    That's all well and good, but how will that help the miners feed their kids?  I understand the problems, and I am completely against mountaintop removal mining.  But I can understand their perspective.  It's the only thing they know how to do.  Every policy has winners and losers.  I'm just not sure what the best way to compensate the losers is, if there even is one.

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  3. tmullins Posted 12:16 am
    30 Jul 2009

    Rick Boucher, Governor Kaine, The Wise County Board of Supervisor's are promoting tourism, if they ain't going to Tennessee, come on down to Wise County, Virginia - The Safest Place on Earth.  Enjoy our pristine lakes and streams for your fishing, boating and swimming pleasure, enjoy the scenic beauty from High Knob, it's a sight to behold.  We could use the business since for some reason there are less and less jobs here these days.  http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=138 

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