In a throwback to 19th century backroom deal making, University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. and several members of the UKY Board of Trustees refused to consider any formal student statements this week during their meeting to barter away the name of a Wildcat basketball dorm for Big Coal donations, and then fled to a back room as students made their testimonies.

But the game ain't over yet.

The scandalous Trustees may have voted 16-3 to approve rebuilding and renaming the beloved Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge as the Wildcat Coal Lodge, but the public relations nightmare has just begun.

Rachel Maddow pilloried the scam on her program this week, with a knock-out interview with the brilliant Nation sports reporter Dave Zirin:

According to university reports, the nebulous Wildcat Coal Lodge still has to pass through the Council on Postsecondary Education and the legislature's Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee.

In truth, the $7 million of dirty coal money promised for the Wildcat coffers is a pittance compared to the coal industry welfare subsidies that the state of Kentucky hands out every year. According to a recent MACED report, Kentucky taxpayers annually donate $115 million to the coal industry in infrastructure and research costs -- this doesn't even include the billions of dollars in massive external costs to the health care industry and the environment.

In the meantime, student, faculty and alumni outrage at the administrative bungling of this growing scandal continues, while the potential university violations, and the egregious backgrounds of the Big Coal pushers continue to pile up.

Rallied by Alliance Coal baron Joe Craft, the so-called "Difference Makers" behind this bizarre push to drag the legendary Wildcat basketball team into the muck as a mascot of Big Coal include some of the most outspoken supporters of the controversial process that has devastated the economies and well-being of historic eastern Kentucky communities and wiped out hundreds of miles of streams and hundreds of lush mountains in the state.

Difference Makers include Charles Baird, Chairman of Coal Operators and Associates, an outfit that has repeatedly supported mountaintop removal, and erroneously claimed in a memo to the EPA [PDF] that mountaintop removal provided "immeasurable economic and social benefits to one of the poorest regions of the United States" and resulted in no significant water pollution.

In truth, eastern Kentucky's coal counties have lost over 60 percent of their coal mining jobs in the last generation due to mountaintop removal operations and mechanization, while poverty and unemployment have soared.

Hundreds of miles of streams have been jammed with mining waste; in 2000, over 300 million gallons of toxic coal sludge leaked into Martin County [PDF], an accident 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster, devastating aquatic life and watersheds for miles.

Another Difference Maker is Joy Mining, whose sister company, P&H Mining Equipment, makes the massive draglines used in strip mining and mountaintop removal operations.

According to some observers, the trustees dirty coal scheme of creating a Wildcat Coal Lodge, in a designated LEED-certified building, is also in clear violation of the UKY policy on naming university property:

Naming new University structures, properties, or portions thereof, e.g., playing fields, rooms, and plazas, (hereafter "property") and changing the names of existing property, whether on the main campus or elsewhere, is of interest to the entire University community. An appropriate name accounts for present and possible future uses of the property, and reflects functions performed and interests served by the property.

When some other name seems more appropriate than a functionally descriptive one, the nominations should demonstrate that the remarkable associations of that name, either with the history of the University or the nation or with the advancement of knowledge and learning, and guarantee that it will remain memorable long beyond the lifetime of those who propose the name. Nominations whose claims are parochial, of recent date and untested by the passage of time, or based on personal enthusiasm should be avoided.

It is appropriate to express the esteem and appreciation the University holds for one who has brought honor to the institution by personal accomplishments, or who has given significantly of personal time and money, by giving the person's name to a University property. Wherever possible, however, the person's name should be given to a property related to some activity appropriate to that person's field of interest or endeavor.

As outraged students, faculty and alumni shift to a full court press against the administration's misguided pander to dirty coal, here are some statements from university advocates ignored by the trustees:

Hopefully, by the end of this academic year I'll have three degrees from the University of Kentucky, including the highest in my field. My whole family's from Eastern Kentucky and they've always been proud that I'm part of the UK tradition. It's disappointing to see that tradition sold off like this to the most insidious polluters and wreckers of community in our state. I lived for several years in Cynthiana, Ky., and saw Joe B. Hall at gas stations and community events. It was good to know that local people could do something great -- something heroic. That's why his name was honored. Coal is choking our state to death and, rather than listen to the student body, the staff, and the faculty, the Board of Trustees has chosen to degrade a wonderful tradition and to trammel the dreams of Kentuckians.

-Brandon Absher, current UK student and Kentucky Mountain Justice organizer

Eastern Kentucky youth have to work extremely hard to get themselves out of the coal fields and make opportunities for themselves, often ending up at state universities like EKU, as I did, and UK. It is demoralizing for these youth to watch coal that has impoverished and sickened their families for generations be burned on their campus and touted on "academic" structures.

- Tanya Turner of Pineville, Ky., Eastern Kentucky University alum, Kentucky Mountain Justice organizer, and descendant of Kentucky coal miners.

President Lee Todd has given some hope in the last few years by creating the President's Sustainability Advisory Committee and Student Sustainability Council in order to transition UK to a more sustainable future, but with every decision he makes like this one, it becomes all the more evident that he has no regard for this campus initiative. How are our professor's suppose to present information in an unbiased way, when UK has made its position clear.

-Julia Lou Lepping, Native Kentuckian, UK Alum and active organizer with Kentucky Mountain Justice.

Naming a new LEED-certified campus building the "Wildcat Coal Lounge" is a bad move for this university. It is an egregious case of industrial product placement in a public institution. It is an insult to Kentucky basketball fans who remember Joe B. Hall as a great coach worthy of remembering. It is a step backward for a University whose goal is to move forward to Top 20 status. Finally this decision ignores the industry's history of exploitation that has enriched coal corporations and corrupt politicians and impoverished Appalachia's communities and devastated its ecosystems. This decision is unacceptable, but sadly it is just business as usual in Kentucky. We must raise our voices in opposition.

-Martin Mudd, UK physics graduate student and Kentucky Mountain Justice organizer

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

UPDATE: Every American -- including the Army Corps of Engineers -- must watch this powerful new 20-minute film by Chad Stevens on the real costs and consequences of mountaintop removal mining: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining.

Now, the good news: on behalf of their children's future, coalfield residents and miners calmly came together in the Coal River Valley last night, as the Raleigh County School Board announced its intention to formally request funds for a new Marsh Elementary School, which currently sits near a toxic coal dust silo and downslope of a 2.8 billion gallon coal sludge impoundment and mountaintop removal operation.

"The main agenda item at last night's Raleigh County School Board hearing was one that has been long awaited," said Bo Webb, a local resident and Vietnam veteran. "Five years ago a campaign led by a few local concerned citizens began with the goal of obtaining a new school for the children and staff of Marsh Fork Elementary. Thanks to so many people this campaign grew into a movement that spread across America. Last night was the culmination of thousands of people's support from across our great land as the school board voted to formally request funds to construct a new school."

If only Big Coal and their supporters could have put the future of the region's children first at another meeting last night. Despite recent studies [PDF] that prove that mountaintop removal and coal mining have devastated the Appalachian economies and health, cost the coal states more in services than tax revenues, and holds back [PDF] sustainable development for the future, Big Coal continues to threaten coal mining communities with impending doom if they consider any alternatives.

While their profits continue to soar amid job losses, Big Coal let loose the hounds of chaos and hatred at last night's Army Corps of Engineers public hearing in West Virginia on mountaintop removal permits.

In the process, Big Coal Gone Wild also raised a new question: given their increasingly inflammatory and distorted propaganda, should certain Big Coal instigators be investigated by the Department of Justice and FBI for sowing the seeds of potential hate crimes?

It begs the question: What's it going to take to get the Obama administration and West Virginia state officials to publicly denounced the violent rhetoric by Big Coal hacks and mountaintop removal operators?

Busing in a huge, nearly uncontrollable gathering in West Virginia, (the hearings in Kentucky and Tennessee were raucous, though without problems), Big Coal Gone Wild did its best to turn these important Army Corps of Engineers public hearings on the specifics of following the laws for mountaintop removal permits into a shouting match and general mayhem. On the heels of a violent summer in the coalfields, last night's shouting match capped a week of bizarre but dangerous comments by Big Coal operators.

Consider these nuggets from this week:

Big Coal supporters called the EPA a "modern day Gestapo."

Big Coal supporters referred to nonviolent Gandhian protesters as suicide bombers.

Big Coal is running ads of besieged coalfield residents as masked "bandits."

Big Coal supporters held a sign that declared, "hang a tree hugger, save a miner," in a Wall Street Journal article lsat week.

Here's a report on last night's hearing in Charleston, W. Va., from Chuck Nelson, a retired coal miner in West Virginia:

There were about 10 of us, who were the last group leaving from inside. We were waiting to give our comments, when word was brought back in, what was happening outside. As we talked with each of our groups inside, things just kept getting more crazy. We decided to leave then as a group, to proceed to make our departure. Insults were hurled at us as we were leaving, with a bunch of thugs following. Once in the lobby, I went directly to a Charleston city officer, and requested an escort to our vehicles, with an angry group outside the doors. The officer told me, that we should have known, what was going to happen when we came there. He did escort us to the front doors, and told Ben, as we were leaving, you are on your own. We made our way outside, only to be met with more insults, that followed us practically all the way to our vehicles. We made calls on our phones, and tried to make sure everyone was all right. I think everyone finally did. I too, wondered where the state troopers were, not one was ever visible. I wonder, how in the world can the Army Corp make a decision on an important permit, when they can't even conduct a proper, and peaceful hearing.

Vernon Haltom, from the Coal River Mountain Watch nonprofit, added:

I went to the Charleston, W. Va., hearing hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but was unable to get in and give comments because the place was full. This was after enduring a gauntlet of coal cult thugs hurling every insult imaginable at me and the people who came with me to see and listen. Although a few other people and I were in line and had filled out the registration forms to give comments, the Charleston police made us go out of the building where we were surrounded by more thugs pushing against us, threatening our lives, and again hurling insults. Our group included an 80-year-old woman enduring 300-pound thugs screaming obscenities within three feet of her ears. After 15 minutes or so of this shameful display, the Charleston police required us to leave. Because it was easier to control a group of six or seven peaceful people than a mob of hundreds of violence prone thugs, and because the police did not want any of us or the police to get hurt, they escorted us off the premises. Essentially, police inability to control the mob resulted in our inability to give verbal comments. While the building was full, we were prepared to enter once a few people left, but the police removed us from our place in line and removed us from the premises while the insult-hurlers were allowed to stay.

Our friends inside the hearing were able to give comments, but were drowned out by the mob. When they complained to the hearing moderators, they were told the clock was ticking. When they left, the police refused to escort the last small group to their vehicles, forcing them to run the gauntlet without protection. The police said, "You all knew what you were getting into; you're on your own," or a similar reply when asked for escort to cars. The TV news channels didn't show this side of the night, and no one from the pro-mountain side appeared on TV. Instead, the TV news interviewed coal supporters and implied there was no one from our side giving testimony. From one of the hearings, I don't know which one, one of the Corps of Engineers people said, "This is democracy working," or something like that. This was not democracy working. It was a mob intimidating both the Charleston police and the U.S. Army, as well as the peaceful citizens who came to give comments to protect their homes, live, and communities.

At the Pikeville, Ky. meeting, coal miner Carl Shoupe reported:

As a third generation underground coal miner who is totally disabled from a roof fall accident, who has watched his father, grandfather, and father-in-law die from the dreadful disease of Black Lung, the Army Corps meeting was status quo. It is a proven fact the coal industry is historically anti-regulation and against any law that creates safety for coal miners or environmental issues that would cost them in terms of money. No where did the elected politicians or coal owners speak about cleaning up the environmental impact of coal. They only spoke about the economics or frankly, "how much money it would cost to mine the coal correctly."

You're never going to make everyone happy, but if we are going to continue our consumptive practices, we need to make some decisions. Coal has been very much a part of my past, but in the last 10 years (mountain top removal of coal) has done more damage to the environment than deep coal mining did in the previous 100 years. If those young coal miners who climbed on those buses and received their days pay only knew what "participatory democracy" was, they would be calling the United Mine Workers Labor Union, sign a union card, and after signing a union card get rid of every politician that spoke or even was there last night in Pikeville. History remembers people who embrace change, not those who resist it.

Eastern Kentucky coalfield resident Mickey McCoy reported:

"God bless the coal and miners and to Hell with the tree huggers!" shouted an elected official from an Eastern Kentucky coal producing county while addressing an estimated 3,800 people, mostly mine workers, their families and related industry representatives, in attendance at the Army Corps public hearing in Pikeville, Ky. last night. By the time the meeting wound down sometime after midnight earlier cat calls, insults, and bursts of applause had ended and only a couple of hundred folk were in attendance to hear the last of those giving testimony. Scores began to file out once the Corps started to receive thanks at the microphones from members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and other environmentally minded individuals who praised the possible elimination of the rubber-stamping of mining permits under NWP21.

As McCoy told a congressional briefing in Washington, D.C. last month: It's time to end the bombing of Appalachia and bring peace and justice to the coalfields:

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

For a joyously peaceful week, residents beneath Massey Energy's Edwight mountaintop-removal site in the Pettry Bottom community in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia have received a reprieve from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica-dust showers, and potential flooding--thanks to tree-sitter Nick Stocks, who voluntarily came down at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. The seventh day into the protest, Stocks and fellow tree-sitter Laura Steepleton endured all-night sleep-deprivation tactics from Massey security guards, including the firing up of chainsaws last night. 

UPDATE, September 1, 10am EST:  According to Climate Ground Zero, both protesters "have been charged with trespassing, obstruction and littering, and their bail has been set at $25,000 each.  For the past five days, they endured psychological torture, verbal assault and threats."

A direct report from Rock Creek, West Virginia has been filed by Rainforest Action Network:http://understory.ran.org/2009/09/01/where-in-the-world/

UPDATE, Aug. 31, 5:00 p.m. EST: According to Climate Ground Zero, the State Police have confirmed that Laura Steepleton also descended the tree and has been arrested.

Stocks stated, “To this day the DEP [West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection] has acted as a thin, weak delegate for Big Coal in West Virginia. They have circumvented, sidestepped, dismissed, and lied to communities and individuals who look to them for protections that ought to assure healthy children, safe drinking water, and a continued existence in the valley. To this day, they have not done their job to even the slightest degree. When the government fails in its obligation to protect its people and communities are made unsafe and unlivable, it is the responsibility of all concerned people to turn attention to that failure and do all in their capacity to ensure the safety of the community. If the DEP doesn't do it, we must do it ourselves, and we will go beyond. We will stop the devastation of this mountain and protect the communities below. We will end mountaintop removal.

The security guards' actions with lights and air horns are making the situation less safe, Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice volunteer Charles Suggs said. “Depriving sleep from people who have to maintain safety systems to prevent a fatal fall endangers their lives."

Filmmaker Jordan Freeman has released an incredible aerial video of the massive Edwight mountaintop-removal site, the nearby coal-sludge impoundment, and the protesters nuzzled into the lush Appalachian forests.

As part of a growing national campaign to stop mountaintop removal, the protesters have drawn attention to the West Virginia DEP's lack of enforcement of mining laws, and the deleterious impact of the mountaintop-removal blasting, silica dust, and fly rock on the health of the local residents, their watersheds, and deciduous forests. Just last Friday, fly rock and boulders from a strip-mine site slammed into a home in eastern Kentucky.

For updates on the action or to support the defense fund, visit Climate Ground Zero or Mountain Justice. Also find out more about the West Virginia DEP's negligence.

Here's more of Jordan's film work on the recently released documentary Coal Country:

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

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.)

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Learning how to count to 350

In the wake of last month's approval of 42 of 48 mountaintop removal and mining permits as "environmentally responsible," the EPA, Department of Interior and Council on Environmental Quality today announced "unprecedented steps to reduce environmental impacts of mountaintop coal mining."

Not mountaintop removal, mind you.

In the accompanying press release, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson declared: “Getting this right is important to coalfield communities that count on a livable environment, both during mining and after coal companies move to other sites.”

Here are the responses from those very coalfield residents and communities in Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio, along with an interview with Judy Bonds, the Goldman Prize winner with the Coal River Mountain Watch, and Teri Blanton, an activist in the eastern Kentucky coalfields.

Teri Blanton, Kentucky: "I would say today's annnouncement is encouraging but we will have to wait and see if this is going to be good or bad. I would also like to add that we welcome them to come to Appalachia and hear from the communities being impacted by this method of mining. MTR is just a symptom of a much bigger problem this industry has worked outside of the law for over 100 years. Engineers who have been disgusted with the industry and that have joined our cause have said repeatedly that if there was a new regulation the industry would not work to abide by it but rather how to get around it. This has to stop. The penalties need to be significant to the point that it is not cheaper for them to pay a violation rather than to abide by the laws. But they also need to be aware that the industry plays head games with their few employees telling them anytime there is a law to protect human health and the environment in the coal fields that we are trying to take their jobs. I think these agencies need to be aware of these head games, especially when the coal miners come in numbers to protest any regulations. The workers are desperate because of the lack of opportunities for employment and are used as pawns for the industry."

Cindy Rank, West Virginia Highlands: "Well, listening in on the press conference right now, all I can say is 'been there, done that...' Could have played a tape of conversations and discussions from 1998.... Now I suppose it's a matter of watching, following, etc...to see if there's any greater resolve and/or backbone to actually DO something with any of the good intentions that if they exist were fairly well hidden during the call."

Judy Bonds, Coal River Mountain Watch: "The Obama administration's announcement is pure political subterfuge. Scrutiny is another term for "smoke and mirrors." Obama's new motto is "Yes we can--blow up Appalachia." How will Obama fix the problems that the residents must deal with? I am truly disappointed in President Obama's bait and switch campaign lies. Obama says he wants to protect streams but a mountaintop removal permit is filling in streams. I challenge President Obama to bring his family and come to West Virginia and live near the blasting and breathe poison air and drink poison water that we mountaineers are forced to live with."

Paul Ryder, Ohio Citizens: "Obviously, the Washington Post wrote this editorial at the prompting of the White House. This means the Obama Administration is concerned about the political heat they are taking on this issue. That's also the reason for the big reform announcement coming later today that they are really, really, really going to scrutinize mountaintop removal coal mining applications before they rubber-stamp them. This is becoming a pattern. On March 24, the U.S. EPA said it would insist on reviewing such applications, and then a few weeks later, approved the overwhelming majority of them. On April 26, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar held a press conference to announce a major mountaintop removal reform. Before the press conference was over, he had admitted that it would have no effect on mountaintop removal operations. These maneuvers by the Obama Administration are fooling no one."

And from Rainforest Action Network, which will be sponsoring a number of actions in the Appalachia coalfields this summer:

The administration is pledging better oversight of mountain top removal mines but providing few specifics about how its oversight will change this destructive practice. This is a step in the right direction at a time when we need leaps.  

Rigorous enforcement of existing laws is of course needed and would be a welcome change, but does not in itself represent the true change that we need to transition immediately away from the destructive practice of mountaintop removal.

The Administration’s new plan does nothing to address the fact that nearly all mountaintop mining disposes of excess rock and debris in "valley fills” that bury hundreds of miles of streams, contaminate drinking water and wreck ecosystems.

Why is the Administration allowing massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, a fraction of all the coal we use? This just doesn’t pan out in the cost-benefit analysis. 

Mountaintop removal, the world's worst strip mining, is unacceptable.  Period. We don’t believe that MTR can be made “kinder and gentler”. Blowing the tops off of mountain ranges to harvest dirty coal harms the people and places of Appalachia, destroys the economic potential of the Appalachian region for clean energy opportunities and furthers the burning of climate killing coal. 

This is not a practice that needs to be reformed. It is a practice that needs to be abolished.

Q: Why are you concerned with today's announcement?

TB: We have been trying to address mtr for more than 30 years in all the regulatory agencies want to do is knobble around the edges without really addressing the problem. I think mtr is about as barbaric a practice as I have ever seen and I do not see how it could be permitted at all.

Q: Do you agreed with the CEQ that certain existing laws can be strengthened to adequately enforce mountaintop removal?

TB: No, I do not think it should be permitted at all. The whole premise of SMCRA is that they are supposed to restore the landscape to what it was before mining with mtr it is clear they can’t. How do you replace the oldest mountains on earth? How do you restore one of the most diverse hardwood forest on earth? The practice should be stopped. to quote my Dear Friend Wendell Berry “how can you regulate an abomination”?

Q: Do you feel high level officials from the CEQ, EPA, or Department of Interior have made enough of an effort to visit and investigate mountaintop removal sites?

TB: I have personally guided hundreds of people to the eastern Kentucky coal fields and I have never seen anyone from any of those agencies, even though we have invited them. If they are touring mtr sites at all they certainly are not seeing what we the people think they should see or visited and talked to any of the impacted communities.

Q: Do you feel the views and voices of coalfield residences affected by mountaintop removal have been heard in Washington, DC?

TB: If they have been heard no one seems to be really acting on anything that we have asked for. We are saying the same things and carrying the same signs that our people before us were saying 40 years ago that brought about SMCRA. Unfortunately little has changed only gotten worse.

Q: Anything else to add?

TB: The Appalachian Mountains are a jewel to the United States and should be protected as such. Government officials from the coal fields all the way up to Washington DC have turned their backs on the people of Appalachia. It is time that this hideous crime against the culture and lives of my people be ended.

Q: Why are you concerned with today's announcement?

JB: I am very concerned because I live in a coal extraction area and I see the devastating effects that strip mining has on the land and the people. We are living in a war zone and it seems like the Obama administration is aiding in the destruction of our homes and lives.

Q: Do you agreed with the CEQ that certain existing laws can be strengthened to adequately enforce mountaintop removal?

JB: N. I have an intimate relationship with the coal industry and in my experience the government has allowed the industry to poison us. Strip mining in steep slopes should be abolished and the evidence and science are there to support the devastating effects on mountaineers and mountains.

Q: Do you feel high level officials from the CEQ, EPA, or Department of Interior have made enough of an effort to visit and investigate mountaintop removal sites?

JB: No. We as citizens have invited high level officials to come and talk with affected citizens and let us take them on tour. As of yet--the actual citizens have not had the opportunity to meet with high level officials. Only the corrupt elected officials and the coal barons have had access to high level officials. A request from coal field residents in the middle of March for Lisa Jackson to meet with affected citizens has gone unanswered and has been ignored.

Q: Do you feel the views and voices of coalfield residences affected by mountaintop removal have been heard in Washington, D.C.?

JB. No. I think we are being ignored because we are considered to be poor, ignorant people.

Q: Anything else to add?

JB: We feel betrayed by America's leaders. We have been used and abused and this is NOT just an environmental issue--it is a human rights issue as well. We feel as if we are living in a war zone and we are tired of it. Strip mining and mountaintop removal in Appalachia are the best examples of the hypocritical behavior of politicians in America. We will not shut up and they will go down in history as villians. This will be Obama's abomination. I urge Obama to revisit this issue and actually visit and talk with affected citizens.

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Climate change is a global problem—but as of yet, there’s no global solution. That’s why mayors across the U.S. are taking action, from building green to organizing bike rides, from redeveloping downtowns to cutting emissions. Here are just a few of the municipal leaders who have worked to take our collective future into their own hands.

Bloomberg unveils his grand Plan.PlanNYC 20301. Michael Bloomberg, New York City.
Pop.: 8.2 million
Call New York the accidental eco-city: cram millions of people onto an island, and you’ve got to figure out how to build up, not out. Throw a big park in the middle, and voila: you’ve got an anti-sprawl city that values open space. During his tenure, Bloomberg has made the most of that happy accident, creating an ambitious 127-point initiative called PlanNYC 2030 that encompasses everything from reclaiming waterfronts to repairing electrical grids to reducing traffic congestion. (OK, that last one hasn’t gone so well.) A year after unveiling the plan in 2007, the city had launched a full 93 percent of its components.

Nickels at a climate rally with King County exec Ron Sims, since tapped to head HUD.Oran Viriyincy 2. Greg Nickels, Seattle.
Pop.: 594,000
In some ways, Greg Nickels became synonymous with the phrase “green mayor” after spearheading the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2005. Since then, more than 900 of Nickels’ fellow mayors have come on board, Republican and Democrat alike, from all 50 states. No stranger to eco-ideas at home, Nickels—who has led the Emerald City since 2002—has also been instrumental in bringing light rail to the area, pushing to increase investments in open space, and launching an ongoing series of “clean and green” community-service events. He’s up for reelection this year, and one challenger says he hasn’t done enough on the environment. Only in Seattle.

Newsom uses a white hanky to demonstrate clean diesel emissions. Seriously!MTC3. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco.
Pop.: 765,000
Another mack daddy of sustainability, Newsom is almost too green to believe. Since he took office in 2004, the city has reduced government emissions to below 1990 levels, launched the nation’s largest solar incentive program, banned plastic bags, and introduced ambitious green building and green jobs programs. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, city leaders hope to increase wind power by the Bay, including underwater turbines at the Golden Gate Bridge. Speaking at a conference of green IT entrepreneurs this spring, Newsom—who also recently confirmed his 2010 gubernatorial ambitions—offered up his city as guinea pig: “If you have an idea, let me know. We are a laboratory for innovation.”

Malloy in a glamorous mayoral moment.Will Merydith/flickr4. Ed Malloy, Fairfield, Iowa.
Pop.: 9,650
In November, the city fathers in this liberal southeastern Iowa outpost unanimously adopted a Green Strategic Plan. Their vote was more than ceremonial: they also secured a state-funded grant to hire a sustainability coordinator, inventory their greenhouse gases, and create educational materials for residents. The new plan envisions everything from conserving energy to supporting local farms. Malloy, who’s been mayor since 2001 and heads up a local oil company, says the environment-economy connection is clear. He hopes Fairfield’s ideas will catch on: “We want to create a model community, a virtual template that other small towns can adopt to create the same results.”

What a difference a Daley makes.www.drugabuse.gov5. Richard Daley, Chicago.
Pop.: 2.8 million
Since announcing his intention to make Chicago the country’s greenest metropolis, Daley has made great strides. Green roofs cover or are planned for 3 million square feet, topping everything from City Hall to a McDonald’s. Redevelopment and landscaping have revitalized gathering places across the city, from prominent landmarks like Grant Park to neighborhood playgrounds. And the Windy City is committed to increasing its use of renewable energy (though a recent revelation showed things lagging in that area). Chicago is even bidding to host the 2016 Olympics—a bid that hinges on the event being the greenest Olympics in history.

Franklin, my dear, she does give a damn.City of Atlanta6. Shirley Franklin, Atlanta.
Pop.: 519,000
Often held up as the poster child for sprawl, Atlanta boasts more green than meets the eye—and Franklin is to thank for much of the recent progress. Mayor since 2002, she has attacked infrastructure and intangibles with the same gusto, from overhauling the city’s sewer systems to creating a Climate Action Plan. The city is building a public-transit BeltLine, is tops in LEED-certified buildings, and has implemented practices in City Hall that led to a 20 percent decrease in energy usage. A comprehensive private-sector group called Sustainable Atlanta is developing recommendations for further actions, and all eyes are on the future. “We are building a green, sustainable city,” Franklin says. “We do this for our children, and we do this because it is the right thing to do.”

Planner, politico, father, grandfather.RalphBecker.com7. Ralph Becker, Salt Lake City.
Pop.: 179,000
Building on the groundbreaking work of predecessor (and official Grist crush) Rocky Anderson, Becker—who took office in 2008—has already made ripples in the eco-community. Upon taking the helm, Becker introduced his Blueprint for a Green City, in which he pledged to improve public transit, expand greenways, create neighborhood centers to promote walkability, and improve air and water quality. And the former urban planner isn’t just talking the talk; among other concrete steps, the city is piloting hybrid police cars and has undertaken an overhaul of its city code to make sustainability easier for all residents to achieve.

Don’t mess with Jerramiah.Byron Smith/Jersey Journal8. Jerramiah Healy, Jersey City.
Pop.: 242,000
He’s a rough and tumble guy running a historically rough and tumble city. But that just goes to show that green can be pursued anywhere, by anyone. Healy was recently given a Green Leadership Award by the state U.S. Green Building Council chapter. During his five-year tenure, he has held polluters accountable, opposed a controversial reservoir development scheme, and redeveloped brownfields. Up for reelection this month, Healy recently introduced ordinances that would require city departments to pursue LEED certification and green purchasing, and is reportedly considering a ban on plastic bags.

Manny being Manny.City of Miami9. Manuel Diaz, Miami.
Pop.: 410,000
Though some critics have dubbed him “Concrete Manny” due to his love of development, Diaz is paving the way for sustainability in Miami. An early signatory to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, he created Miami’s first sustainability department and a community-wide Green Commission. He has pushed green building, led an energy-retrofit of City Hall that included solar-panel installation, and is converting the city’s fleet to more efficient vehicles. Late last year Diaz launched Bike Miami Days, and this spring the city hosted a week of events leading up to Earth Hour. “We’re on the front line of global climate change here,” Diaz told Newsweek in 2007. “The water level doesn’t have to rise too much for us to be riding around Miami in canoes.”

Walker? I’d rather bike.Robert the Noid/flickr10. Elaine Walker, Bowling Green, Ky.
Pop.: 53,000
This TV producer-turned-politician has her hands full, from increasing affordable housing to contending with the crash of Big Auto, but green is on her radar screen. Transportation issues loom large in this western Kentucky city, and Walker has worked with local bike-advocacy groups (even creating a Mayor’s Bike Ride) and launched a Rethinking Transportation Choices task force. A signatory to the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, she is a proponent of green building and downtown redevelopment. “There’s too much of a perception that going green is a little bit out there and idealistic,” she has said. “It’s not idealistic—it’s vital.”

Cicilline envisions a model future.Cicilline.com11. David Cicilline, Providence, R.I.
Pop.: 175,000
In late March, this native son signed an order requiring all new municipal buildings to be LEED-certified, saying such a move would help create jobs and boost the economy. It was the first step in a 30-point plan called Operation Opportunity that seeks to help this mid-sized New England city rise from the doldrums; other steps include doubling the recycling rate, creating a green jobs training corps, and finalizing site plans for wind turbines. Cicilline, at the wheel since 2003, has also named walkability and sustainable leadership among his goals for the city.

Get your Phil.Tom Story/ASU12. Phil Gordon, Phoenix.
Pop.: 1.6 million
The long-time Phoenician made a splash in March when he unveiled a 17-point sustainability plan for the desert megalopolis he’s run since 2004. During his tenure, Gordon has already overseen eco-upgrades ranging from LED traffic lights to LNG buses, as well as bringing light rail to the city. The new plan aims to make Phoenix the first carbon-neutral city in America, through green job training, building retrofits, and a massive investment in solar energy. It’s making Phoenix hot in a whole new way.

Coleman (left) and Rybak do their thing.Lou Michaels13. Christopher Coleman, St. Paul.
Pop.: 274,000
14. R. T. Rybak, Minneapolis.
Pop.: 377,000
The Twin Cities are in the hands of two progressive mayors intent on doubling the metro region’s eco-efforts. Coleman and Rybak, elected in 2005 and 2001 respectively, have both made sustainability a priority—Minneapolis, for instance, doles out climate change grants to neighborhood organizations, while St. Paul created its own hybrid car-sharing program. Together, the two leaders have created an annual sustainability report and a green manufacturing initiative, and they’re bringing bike-sharing to town. It’s all part of an effort, they say, to make theirs the most livable cities in the country.

Dixson, far left, leads the groundbreaking of Greensburg’s first eco-home.Greensburg GreenTown15. Bob Dixson, Greensburg, Kansas.
Pop.: 850
Talk about inheriting someone else’s problem: Bob Dixson became mayor of Greensburg in 2008, exactly a year after it was devastated by a tornado. But Greensburg has rallied, and the former postmaster is now overseeing the town’s much publicized green rebuilding effort (which has also been documented for TV). Learning as he goes, Dixson has become an eco-evangelist of sorts, traveling the nation to talk up renewable energy, green building, community spirit, and the common sense behind green. “In rural America,” he told Smithsonian magazine earlier this year, “we were always taught that if you take care of the land, the land will care of you.”

Related Links:

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Grist has comments turned off as we transition to a new website. If you have feedback on this post or anything else, let me know: droberts at grist dot org.

• One of my favorite bright green ideas: objects as a service, sometimes called "product service systems," a fascinating and potentially revolutionary idea desperately in search of a better name.

• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's semi-secret memo on the company's environmental efforts. Meh.

• The Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center has an interesting report on "Large Blackouts in North America: Historical trends and policy implications." No, really, it's interesting!

• Steve Beshear, governor of Kentucky, is kicking off a Clean Energy Corps Pilot Program, a public-private partnership that will work to do energy efficiency retrofits in low-income households -- eventually, if all goes well, to expand the program to 10,000 households across the state. Kick ass.

• An outfit called Show@ has a fascinating series of interactive maps -- you can see maps based on crops, energy, environment, and minerals (and numerous subcategories therein). Here's a map of the U.S. sized proportionately to the prevalence of coal-fired power -- it tells you everything you need to know about the politics of carbon policy:

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Freeing the grid

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

University of Kentucky dorm renamed Wildcat Coal Lodge despite student protests

Should the Department of Justice investigate Big Coal bedlam?

Rogue 9/11 ad isn’t from WWF—and its science is bogus

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Are you thinking what we're thinking? Yep: It's time for a green college roundup! Maine's College of the Atlantic has made good on its pledge to be a carbon-neutral campus, say school officials. "As far as we know, [COA is] the first in the world to make the commitment, and as far as we know, the first to do it," says David Hales, president of the 300-student college, which offers one major: human ecology. Meanwhile, Oregon's Portland State University plans to hire as many as 10 professors with expertise in sustainability to teach subjects from economics to biology to art. Michigan's Walsh College has green-built an extension to its campus, and Northern Kentucky University has launched a campus-wide campaign to reduce fossil fuels. We give 'em all a gold star.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Allen Johnson.

As its not-at-all euphemistic name would indicate, mountaintop-removal mining makes no effort to disguise its impact. Coal-mining companies brazenly invade Appalachian communities, blow the tops off mountains, send massive coal trucks careening up and down narrow roads, spew coal dust into the air and mining waste into the water, and terrorize residents who resist. Landscapes are ruined forever -- where the mountains are leveled, no biologically diverse forest will grow, no healthy industry will take root. Yet the nightmarish practice goes virtually unnoticed by those outside West Virginia and Kentucky.

Rather than leaving their fate in the hands of mainstream environmentalists, Appalachians are organizing themselves. Exhibit A: Christians for the Mountains, a group of environmental activists reaching out to their fellow citizens via church pulpits. The head of the organization, Rev. Allen Johnson, spoke with me by phone about his frustrations with some evangelical leaders, the scriptural basis for caring for the earth, and why science will eventually triumph.

What is your organization, and what are you trying to do?

I had been involved with the religious campaign for forest conservation for a number of years, advocating for national forests and wilderness. But sometimes when you have a national scope, it's hard to get a handle on local things. Some of the issues in Appalachia needed to be addressed with more of a local focus, so we convened a group of environmental activists who were religious people. The consensus was, let's have an organization focused on reaching out to churches. So we went with Christians for the Mountains, and put together a tool kit -- a DVD on mountaintop removal.

I've gotten some criticism: "Why aren't you interfaith?" We are willing to work interfaith, but if we can speak out of the thrust of who we are, our values, theology, and scripture, we have more impact. If other organizations or religions want to work with us, we'll work within a partnership.

Do you think Christianity has something unique to offer in this fight? Why not just People for Mountains?

We believe that God made this planet, that God loves the earth, God loves creation, God loves humanity, and that even though God gives us freedom to spin our destiny, God doesn't want it to be trashed. God can open hearts and change people's minds and attitudes. There's an element of hope, I guess.

I love the outdoors. I have a biology degree, and I was going to be a naturalist. But still, the reason I'm involved with this is that I'm a Christian. That's the driving force for me. God loves me, and therefore I want to give that to others, and to the world.

What would you say to someone from a mining company who said, "I'm a Christian too, and God says we have dominion over the earth -- I'm just exercising it"?

We have a tremendous privilege to be here on this earth and have dominion, but that also implies responsibility. My wife and I had dominion over our children. We made the rules in the household. But our role as parents was not to exploit our children. We sacrificed ourselves -- our needs, our time, our energy -- to raise those children up. We gave of ourselves so that they might grow up. That is dominion, and it's the same dominion here on earth.

We point to Psalm 24:1: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. And everything in it." We say, this is God's property. He's saying, you can use it, and it will feed you and take care of your needs. But I'd like you to take care of it, because I have a covenant with future generations. I made these plants and animals, and they have their space too. You can carve out a space for yourself, but leave some room for the others.

Conservative Christians in the South are typically Republican. But most of the people behind lax mining regulations are also Republicans. How does that tension resolve itself?

It's a tough one. I worked with the Evangelical Environmental Network, one of the four partners in the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, back in '93, '94. I had a lot of hope back then. If you could just get the evangelicals to turn around on these issues ... But it didn't seem to be happening until these last two years.

The average guy in the pews is listening to the radio or TV preachers -- the Jerry Falwells, the [Pat] Robertsons, the James Kennedys, the [James] Dobsons, the [Chuck] Colsons, on and on. They have this individualist, American, do-what-you-want, frontier mentality. These guys are largely in league with the financial people -- the Council for National Policy, if you've heard of that.

They don't want to talk about the Sermon on the Mount. They don't talk about Jesus' teachings. They talk about Jesus is going to get you to heaven, but they don't talk about how you follow him. Jesus says as clearly as can be, you cannot serve God and Mammon simultaneously. Mammon is the pursuit of wealth and money and power.

How can we have a covenant with future generations when we destroy land permanently, which is what's going on with mountaintop removal? West Virginia has an abundance of fresh water, and we're going to ruin that by pumping this garbage [mining waste] in the groundwater.

How significant is the current evangelical green turn going to be?

I don't think it's down into the pews yet. What it's going to take is leadership, and right now the preachers, the Colsons and Dobsons, are a couple of generations older. The younger generation, the ones in their 20s and 30s, are getting their information from other guys, and pretty consistently they're coming out for environmental advocacy.

The thing is, to wait another generation for this to take shape ... global climate change can't wait that long. That issue is the key one. That's the one rattling the Council for National Policy preachers, because they're tied to the fossil-fuel folks so closely. They're false prophets. They're leading people astray. They could change things around -- all they'd have to do is say it: Global climate change is real, folks, we've got to do something about it. We talk about being pro-life on abortion. We've gotta be pro-life on the environment.

Even though I'm being harsh, I want to believe. This is what prayer is -- God moves in people's hearts. People do change.

The evangelicals will make more difference than the mainline protestants right now, because that's then going to shift politics, it's going to shift Karl Rove and Bush. It's going to rattle them. They're going to have to respond.

Evangelicals seem to be thawing out on the environmental question, but not on environmentalists. The pagan stereotypes still have a hold. Do you see any movement on that?

I think the younger generation is already, but they don't have a lot of power. Go to Creation Fest, one of these huge Christian rock festivals. You've got people with purple hair and piercings and tattoos. They're more open to environmentalists.

As far as embracing environmentalists ... for a while there I started getting criticism. It's a bad buzzword. It puts people off. Use "conservationist" or something like that. Instead of environmentalism, use "creation care."

You know, I've been waiting for this time, and in the last couple years things are moving. I don't know how fast it will break through, and there will be efforts to turn it back. But the Colsons and Dobsons cannot counter the science. They cannot come up with theology to turn it back. You've got to take care of this planet. You can't say otherwise. It won't fly.

Related Links:

Blowing up our clean energy future

The True Impact of Coal Mining

University of Kentucky dorm renamed Wildcat Coal Lodge despite student protests

With feds asleep at the wheel, states sue to protect air and water

Frustrated by federal inaction, states and localities are increasingly suing companies and even each other in attempts to curb air and water pollution. Oklahoma, for instance, has filed suit against eight companies that operate chicken farms in neighboring Arkansas, charging that farm pollution is damaging a tourist-attracting lake. Kentucky is weighing whether or not to sue Virginia over a strip-mining operation that could pollute a fish-filled Kentucky reservoir that lures in tens of thousands of visitors a year. With Congress and the Bushies having dropped the ball on pollution enforcement, state attorneys general are stepping up. "It's more than a trend, it's an ideological decision that's been made by the Bush administration," says New York Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Eliot Spitzer, who's taken the lead in many an environmental lawsuit. "Into that void we have stepped in to enforce the law."

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Missing Mountains, Wind
Publications,
220 pgs., 2005.

In August of 2002, Amanda Moore, a lawyer for the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, took on what she thought was a cut-and-dried legal matter for Granville Lee Burke, a resident of Chopping Branch Hollow in eastern Kentucky. Earlier that year, a flood that wreaked havoc throughout the hollow had severely damaged Burke's house and toolshed. Like almost everyone in the hollow, Burke blamed Premier Elkhorn Coal Company for the flood. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the company had conducted mountaintop-removal mining, blasting the tops off of ridges and dumping the unwanted tons of rock and dirt toward the headwaters of Chopping Branch Creek, leaving a 500-foot valley fill towering above the hollow. Below was a pond designed to catch the water coming off of the huge treeless fill -- a design that failed in the flood.

The following is Moore's account of battling the company to reimburse Burke for his $2,000 home; it's excerpted from an essay in the book Missing Mountains: We Went to the Mountaintop but It Wasn't There, a collection of writings by 35 Kentuckians fighting against mountaintop-removal mining.

Perversely, I was excited to learn that Premier Elkhorn Coal Company had violated the law. Surface mining operations may not encroach within 300 feet of an occupied dwelling; Granville Lee Burke's house sat just below the company's sediment pond, within that forbidden radius. Finally, here was an open-and-shut case, one that would require no technical experts to win. We would simply notify the state agency that the company was violating the law, and then sit back and let it do its enforcement work. Case closed, problem solved.

I was therefore a bit surprised when the agency responded to my letter with a copy of a waiver of the 300-foot requirement that had been signed in May of 1996 by Burke's father, Granville Sr., who lived right next door to his son. When I showed the waiver to Granville Sr., he recognized it -- but he told me it was a paper the company had given him after it had asked to lease his garden plot and he had refused. "They told me I was just signing something saying I understood that they wouldn't be mining on my property," he said.

Unwittingly or not, Granville Sr. had waived his right to the 300-foot protection. But his son, Granville Lee, had not, and I sent another letter to the agency pointing this out and again requesting immediate enforcement action. Recognizing the potential confusion of having two Granville Burkes owning property side-by-side, I sent the agency a copy of the 1995 deed showing when Granville Sr. and his wife Debra had sold Granville Lee his house, which the parents had lived in before moving next door. I also sent the agency a map of the hollow with both of the Burke properties marked on it. Surely, I thought, this will get things moving.

Weeks passed. Nothing happened. By mid-October, I was irritated. I called the agency to speak with the person reviewing Granville Lee's complaint to inquire about its status. The reply: "We don't think Granville Lee really lives in his house, and as you know, the regulation requires that the dwelling be 'occupied.'"

I was dumbfounded. "Why in the world," I asked, working hard to keep my voice from getting shrill, "would you not believe that Granville Lee lives in the house that he owns?"

"Well, for starters, there's no telephone line there," said the agency representative. "Any time someone wants to call him, they have to reach him by calling his parents' house. And he also shares a post office box with his parents. Plus, the company guys say that when they dug the pond, the house appeared to be uninhabitable. Basically, there's just no indication that he lives on his own in that house."

Again, I did my best not to raise my voice, even though my blood pressure was beginning to thump in my ears. I calmly informed him that the Burkes were far from wealthy and that they shared a telephone line for financial reasons. I then explained to him that the houses in Chopping Branch were mere feet apart and that sharing a phone with a relative next door was hardly unreasonable. "Besides," I said, "why would Granville Lee have bought the house if he didn't intend to live in it?"

The agency employee snorted. "Look, I've bought and sold lots of houses that I never lived in." He went on, "And anyway, what took him so long to complain about this? That pond has been there for years."

This time my voice did get a little louder, my tone a little hotter. "Because he didn't know until a couple of months ago that the law, at least in theory, provided him with protection to keep the mining at least 300 feet from his house. He's not a lawyer, you know. He doesn't have the surface mine laws committed to memory."

"Well, let's face it, Ms. Moore," he responded, "your clients aren't exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer."

The conversation ended there.

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

This article was originally published in Orion Magazine.

Not since the glaciers pushed toward these ridgelines a million years ago have the Appalachian Mountains been as threatened as they are today. But the coal-extraction process decimating this landscape, known as mountaintop removal, has generated little press beyond the region.

A mountaintop no more.

Photo: Vivian Stockman/SouthWings.

The problem, in many ways, is one of perspective. From interstates and lowlands, where most communities are clustered, one simply doesn't see what is happening up there. Only from the air can you fully grasp the magnitude of the devastation. If you were to board, say, a small prop plane at Zeb Mountain, Tenn., and follow the spine of the Appalachian Mountains up through Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, you would be struck not by the beauty of a densely forested range older than the Himalayas, but rather by inescapable images of ecological violence. Near Pine Mountain, Ky., you'd see an unfolding series of staggered green hills quickly give way to a wide expanse of gray plateaus pocked with dark craters and huge black ponds filled with a toxic byproduct called coal slurry. The desolation stretches like a long scar up the Kentucky-Virginia line, before eating its way across southern West Virginia.

Central Appalachia provides much of the country's coal, second only to Wyoming's Powder River Basin. In the United States, 100 tons of coal are extracted every two seconds. Around 70 percent of that coal comes from strip mines, and over the last 20 years, an increasing amount comes from mountaintop-removal sites.

In the name of corporate expedience, coal companies have turned from excavation to simply blasting away the tops of the mountains. To achieve this, they use the same mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel that Timothy McVeigh employed to level the Murrow Building in Oklahoma City -- except each detonation is 10 times as powerful, and thousands of blasts go off each day across central Appalachia. Hundreds of feet of forest, topsoil, and sandstone -- the coal industry calls all of this "overburden" -- are unearthed so bulldozers and front-end loaders can more easily extract the thin seams of rich, bituminous coal that stretch in horizontal layers throughout these mountains. Almost everything that isn't coal is pushed down into the valleys below. As a result, 6,700 "valley fills" were approved in central Appalachia between 1985 and 2001. The U.S. EPA estimates that over 700 miles of healthy streams have been completely buried by mountaintop removal and thousands more have been damaged. Where there once flowed a highly braided system of headwater streams, now a vast circuitry of haul roads winds through the rubble. From the air, it looks like someone had tried to plot a highway system on the moon.

Seven floods have inundated the town of Bob White, W.Va., since mountaintop-removal mining started in 2000.

Photo: Antrim Caskey.

Serious coal mining has been going on in Appalachia since the turn of the 20th century. But from the time World War II veterans climbed down from tanks and up onto bulldozers, the extractive industries in America have grown more mechanized and more destructive. Ironically, here in Kentucky where I live, coal-related employment has dropped 60 percent in the last 15 years; it takes very few people to run a strip mine operation, with giant machines doing most of the clear-cutting, excavating, loading, and bulldozing of rubble. And all strip mining -- from the most basic truck mine to mountaintop removal -- results in deforestation, flooding, mudslides, and the fouling of headwater streams.

Alongside this ecological devastation lies an even more ominous human dimension: an Eastern Kentucky University study found that children in Letcher County, Ky., suffer from an alarmingly high rate of nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath -- symptoms of something called blue baby syndrome -- that can all be traced back to sedimentation and dissolved minerals that have drained from mine sites into nearby streams. Long-term effects may include liver, kidney, and spleen failure, bone damage, and cancers of the digestive tract.

Erica Urias, who lives on Island Creek in Grapevine, Ky., told me she has to bathe her 2-year-old daughter in contaminated water because of the mining around her home. In McRoberts, Ky., the problem is flooding. In 1998, Tampa Energy Company (TECO) started blasting along the ridgetops above McRoberts. Homes shook and foundations cracked. Then TECO sheared off all of the vegetation at the head of Chopping Block Hollow and replaced it with the compacted rubble of a valley fill. In a region prone to flash floods, nothing was left to hold back the rain; this once-forested watershed had been turned into an enormous funnel. In 2002, three so-called hundred-year floods happened in 10 days. Between the blasting and the flooding, the people of McRoberts have been nearly flushed out of their homes.

Related Stories

Consider the story of Debra and Granville Burke. First the blasting above their house wrecked its foundation. Then the floods came. Four times, they wiped out the Burkes' garden, which the family depended on to get through the winter. Finally, on Christmas morning 2002, Debra Burke took her life. In a letter published in a local paper, her husband wrote: "She left eight letters describing how she loved us all but that our burdens were just getting too much to bear. She had begged for TECO to at least replace our garden, but they just turned their back on her. I look back now and think of all the things I wish I had done differently so that she might still be with us, but mostly I wish that TECO had never started mining above our home."

In the language of economics, Debra Burke's death was an externality -- a cost that simply isn't factored into the price Americans pay for coal. And that is precisely the problem. Last year, American power plants burned over a billion tons of coal, accounting for over 50 percent of this country's electricity use. In Kentucky, 80 percent of the harvested coal is sold and shipped to 22 other states. Yet it is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy -- through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks. Why should large cities like Phoenix and Detroit get the coal but be held accountable for none of the environmental consequences of its extraction? And why is a Tampa-based energy company -- or Peabody Coal in St. Louis, or Massey Energy in Richmond, Va. -- allowed to destroy communities throughout Appalachia? As my friend and teacher the late Guy Davenport once wrote, "Distance negates responsibility."

The specific injustice that had drawn together a group of activists calling themselves the Mountain Justice Summer movement was the violent death of 3-year-old Jeremy Davidson. At 2:30 in the morning on Aug. 30, 2004, a bulldozer, operating without a permit above the Davidsons' home, dislodged a thousand-pound boulder from a mountaintop-removal site in the town of Appalachia, Va. The boulder rolled 200 feet down the mountain before it crushed to death the sleeping child.

But Davidson's death is hardly an isolated incident. In West Virginia, 14 people drowned in the last three years because of floods and mudslides caused by mountaintop removal, and in Kentucky, 50 people have been killed and over 500 injured in the last five years by coal trucks, almost all of which were illegally overloaded.

What's left of Kayford Mountain, W.Va.

Photo: Antrim Caskey.

On the third of July, I drove across 10,000 acres of boulder-strewn wasteland that used to be Kayford Mountain, W.Va. -- one of the most hideous mountaintop-removal sites I've seen. But right in the middle of the destruction, rising like a last gasp, is a small knoll of untouched forest. Larry Gibson's family has lived on Kayford Mountain for 200 years. And most of his relatives are buried in the family cemetery, where almost every day Gibson has to clear away debris known as "flyrock" from the nearby blasting.

Last year, Kenneth Cane, the great-grandson of Crazy Horse, came to this cemetery. Surrounded by Gibson and his kin, Cane led a prayer vigil. Then he turned to Gibson, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, "How does it feel to lose your land?"

"What was I going to say to him?" Gibson asked me, sitting at the kitchen table of his small, two-room cabin beneath a single, solar-powered fluorescent bulb. Certainly an Oglala Lakota heir would know something about having mountains stolen away by people in search of valuable minerals.

A short, muscular man, Gibson is easily given to emotion when he starts talking about his home place -- both what remains of it and what has been destroyed. Forty seams of coal lie beneath his 50 acres. Gibson could be a millionaire many times over, but because he refuses to sell, he has been shot at and run off his own road. One of his dogs was shot and another hanged. A month after my visit, someone sabotaged his solar panels. In 2000, Gibson walked out onto his porch one day to find two men dressed in camouflage, approaching with gas cans. They backed away and drove off, but not before they set fire to an empty cabin that belongs to one of Gibson's cousins. This much at least can be said for the West Virginia coal industry: it has perfected the art of intimidation.

Gibson knows he isn't safe. "This land is worth $450 million," he told me, "so what kind of chances do I have?" But he hasn't backed down. He travels the country telling his story and has been arrested repeatedly for various acts of civil disobedience. When Gibson talks to student groups, he asks them, "What do you hold so dear that you don't have a price on it? And when somebody comes to take it, what will you do? For me, it's this mountain and the memories I had here as a kid. It was a hard life, but here I was equal to everybody. I didn't know I was poor until I went to the city and people told me I was. Here I was rich."

A coal silo looms behind Marsh Fork Elementary School.

Photo: Antrim Caskey.

Just down the mountain from Gibson's home, in the town of Rock Creek, stands the Marsh Fork Elementary School. Back in 2004, Ed Wiley, a 47-year-old West Virginian who spent years working on strip mines, was called by the school to come pick up his granddaughter Kayla because she was sick. "She had a real bad color to her," Wiley told me. The next day the school called again because Kayla was ill, and the day after that. Wiley started flipping through the sign-out book and found that 15 to 20 students went home sick every day because of asthma problems, severe headaches, blisters in their mouths, constant runny noses, and nausea. In May 2005, when Mountain Justice volunteers started going door-to-door in an effort to identify citizens' concerns and possibly locate cancer clusters, West Virginia activist Bo Webb found that 80 percent of parents said their children came home from school with a variety of illnesses. The school, a small brick building, sits almost directly beneath a Massey Energy subsidiary's processing plant where coal is washed and stored. Coal dust settles like pollen over the playground. Nearly 3 billion gallons of coal slurry, which contains extremely high levels of mercury, cadmium, and nickel, are stored behind a 385-foot-high earthen dam right above the school.

In 1972, a similar coal impoundment dam collapsed at Buffalo Creek, W.Va., killing 125 people. Two hundred and eighty children attend the Marsh Fork Elementary School. It is unnerving to imagine what damage a minor earthquake, a heavy flash flood, or a structural failure might do to this small community. And according to documents that longtime activist Julia Bonds obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the pond is leaking into the creek and groundwater around the school. Students often cannot drink from the water fountains. And when they return from recess, their tennis shoes are covered with black coal dust.

Massey responded to complaints about the plant by applying for a permit to enlarge it, with a new silo to be built even closer to the school. It was this callousness that led to the first major Mountain Justice direct action on the last day of May 2005. About a hundred out-of-state activists, alongside another hundred local citizens, gathered at the school and marched next door to the Massey plant.

Inez Gallimore, an 82-year-old woman whose granddaughter attended the elementary school, walked up to the security guard and asked for the plant superintendent to come down and accept a copy of the group's demands that Massey shut down the plant. When the superintendent refused, Gallimore sat down in the middle of the road, blocking trucks from entering or leaving the facility. When police came to arrest her, they had to help Gallimore to her feet, but not before TV cameras recorded her calling Massey Energy a "terrorist organization."

Activists protest peacefully outside a coal-processing plant in West Virginia.

Photo: Antrim Caskey.

Three other protesters took the woman's place and were arrested. Three more followed.

In the end, the media coverage at the Marsh Fork rally prompted West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) to promise he would put together an investigative team to look into the citizens' concerns. But seven days after that promise, on June 30, Massey received its permit to expand the plant.

The history of resource exploitation in Appalachia, like the history of racial oppression in the South, follows a sinister logic -- keep people poor and scared so that they remain powerless. In the 19th century, mountain families were actually doing fairly well farming rich bottomlands. But populations grew, farms were subdivided, and then northern coal and steel companies started buying up much of the land, hungry for the resources that lay below. By the time the railroads reached headwater hollows like McRoberts, Ky., men had little choice but to sell their labor cheaply, live in company towns, and shop in overpriced company stores. "Though he might revert on occasion to his ancestral agriculture," wrote coal field historian Harry Caudill, "he would never again free himself from dependence upon his new overlords." In nearly every county across central Appalachia, King Coal had gained control of the economy, the local government, and the land.

In the decades that followed, less obvious tactics kept Harlan County one of the poorest places in Appalachia. Activist Teri Blanton, whose father and brother were Harlan County miners, has spent many years trying to understand the patterns of oppression that hold the Harlan County high-school graduation rate at 59 percent and the median household income at $18,665. "We were fueling the whole United States with coal," she said of the last hundred years in eastern Kentucky. "And yet our pay was lousy, our education was lousy, and they destroyed our environment. As long as you have a polluted community, no other industry is going to locate there. Did they keep us uneducated because it was easier to control us then? Did they keep other industries out because then they can keep our wages low? Was it all by design?"

Whether one detects motive or not, this much is clear: 41 years after Lyndon Johnson stood on a miner's porch in adjacent Martin County and announced his War on Poverty, the poverty rate in central and southern Appalachia stands at 30 percent, right where it did in 1964. What's more, maps generated by the Appalachian Regional Commission show that the poorest counties -- those colored deep red for "distressed" -- are those that have seen the most severe strip mining and the most intense mountaintop removal.

There is a galling irony in the fact that the 14th Amendment, which was designed to protect the civil liberties of recently freed African slaves, was later interpreted in such a way as to give corporations like Massey all of the rights of "legal persons," while requiring little of the accountability that we expect of individuals. Because coal companies are not individuals, they often operate without the moral compass that would prevent a person from contaminating a neighbor's well, poisoning the town's drinking water, or covering the local school with coal dust. This situation is compounded by federal officials who often appear more loyal to corporations than to citizens. Consider the case of Jack Spadaro, a whistle-blower who was forced out of his job at the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration precisely because he tried to do his job -- protecting the public from mining disasters.

When the Buffalo Creek dam in West Virginia broke in 1972, Spadaro, a young mining engineer at the time, was brought in to investigate. He found that the flood could have been prevented by better dam construction, and he spent the next 30 years of his career at MSHA investigating impoundment dams. So when a 300-million-gallon slurry pond collapsed in Martin County, Ky., in 2000, causing one of the worst environmental disasters this side of the Mississippi, Spadaro was again named to the investigating team. What he found was that Massey had known for 10 years that the pond was going to break. Spadaro wanted to charge Massey with criminal negligence.

There was only one problem. Elaine Chao, Spadaro's boss at the Department of Labor, is also Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's wife; and it is McConnell, more than anyone else in the Senate, who advocates that corporations are persons that, as such, can contribute as much money as they want to electoral campaigns. It turns out that Massey had donated $100,000 to a campaign committee headed by McConnell. Not surprisingly, Spadaro got nowhere with his charges. Instead, someone changed the lock on his office door and he was placed on administrative leave.

Spadaro's story seems to validate what many coal-field residents have been contending for years -- that the very agencies that should be regulating corporations are instead ignoring the law, breaking the law, and at times even rewriting the law in their favor, as when deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior (and former coal lobbyist) Steven Griles instructed his staff to rewrite a key provision of the Clean Water Act to reclassify all waste associated with strip mining as merely benign "fill material." A federal judge rejected that change, arguing that "only the United States Congress can rewrite the Act to allow fills with no purpose or use but the deposit of waste," but the change was upheld in 2003 by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court -- on which sat John Roberts, the recently appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court.

On July 8, I was standing in Richmond, Va.'s Monroe Park, next to a pretty girl with pierced lips and colorful yarn braided into her blond hair, as Mountain Justice activists prepared to march 10 blocks to the headquarters of Massey Energy to demand the closure of the prep plant behind Marsh Fork Elementary School.

Short, gray-haired Julia Bonds stepped to the mike and told the crowd, "I'm honored to be here with you. We're an endangered species, we hillbillies. Massey Energy is terrorizing us in Appalachia. Little old ladies in their 70s can't even sit on their porches. They have to cut their grass wearing respirators. That's how these people have to live. The coal companies are the real terrorists in America. And we're going to expose them for the murdering, lying thieves that they are."

With that, the marchers started down Franklin Ave., behind a long banner stretching across the street that read: INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM KILLS OUR LAND AND PEOPLE. They marched on past blooming crepe myrtle trees and exclusive clubs. Then they hung a right, and suddenly we were all standing in front of a granite-and-concrete monolith that had been cordoned off with yellow tape.

Don Blankenship is the CEO of Massey, a man that many feel has dubious access to the Bush administration. Records show that from 2000 to 2004, whenever MSHA Assistant Secretary David Lauriski weakened a mine safety standard, it usually followed a meeting with Blankenship.

The stated goal of the Richmond march was to get Blankenship to personally accept Mountain Justice's demand that Massey shut down the prep plant next to the Marsh Fork Elementary School. Of course, everyone knew that wasn't going to happen.

On April 9, 1963, snarling police dogs pinned a black protester to the ground on a Birmingham, Ala., street. The New York Times was there to report it. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were ecstatic. "We've got a movement, we've got a movement!" one member exclaimed. "They brought out the dogs." Without the arrests in Birmingham, and the press that followed, John Kennedy would not have pushed for the Civil Rights Act, and without daily attempts to register black voters in Selma, and the violence that followed, Lyndon Johnson would have dragged his feet for years on the Voting Rights Act. King and the SCLC knew they needed numbers and they needed confrontation. They needed Bull Connor's dogs and Selma sheriff James Clark's police batons coming down on the heads of older African Americans. They needed to call out, for all to see, the people who enforced brutal oppression every day in the South.

In their own way, Mountain Justice activists worked hard to expose the injustice spreading across the coal fields of Appalachia. Through nonviolent actions and demonstrations, they attempted to show the nation how coal companies break the law with a pathological consistency and operate with little regard for the human consequences of their actions. But on the national stage, Mountain Justice Summer couldn't compete with high gas prices and a foreign war, even though it is precisely that war over oil that is driving coal demands higher and laying mountains lower faster. That plus the fact that U.S. energy consumption increased 42 percent over the last 30 years. Urban affluence and this country's shortsighted energy policy are making Appalachia a poorer place -- poorer in beauty, poorer in health, poorer in resources, and poorer in spirit.

"This wouldn't go on in New England," Jack Spadaro told me last July, up at Larry Gibson's place. It wouldn't go on in California, nor Florida, nor along the East Coast. After the '60s, America and the mainstream media seemed to lose interest in the problems of Appalachia. Though the Martin County slurry pond disaster was 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, The New York Times ignored it for months. But the seeming invisibility of the people in Appalachia does not make their plight any less real.

That the civil-rights movement happened so recently in our country's history can seem dumbfounding, but not to the people who still live in the shadow of oppression. Those who live in the path of the coal industry -- beneath sheared-off mountains, amid unnatural, treeless landscapes, drinking poisoned water and breathing dirty air -- are fighting their own civil-rights battle. And, as in the past, justice may be slow coming to the mountains of Appalachia. But justice delayed could mean the ruin of a place that has sacrificed much for this nation, and has received next to nothing in return.

See the faces of the people fighting against mountaintop-removal mining.

You can read more about mountaintop-removal mining at OrionOnline.

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Toyota to build Camry hybrids at U.S. plant

Toyota announced plans yesterday to begin production of a new hybrid Camry model at a Kentucky plant, marking the Japanese automaker's first foray into hybrid production in North America. With Camry sales tops in the U.S. last year and the company's hybrid Prius selling used for higher than sticker price, Toyota sales exec Jim Press thinks combining the Camry with hybrid technology will be "like magic." The cars should start rolling off assembly lines late in 2006, with initial output expected to be about 48,000 vehicles a year. Toyota will be investing some $10 million in the Kentucky plant, mostly for equipment modifications and employee training, but the state's recently passed hybrid-friendly tax legislation will help recover some of the costs. Says Press, "Hopefully this will plant a seed, because the industry needs to go to [the hybrid] solution throughout all the products." Word.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science