Last week, blasting began on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. This is a part of the country where dynamite routinely goes off—turning the region’s historic mountain ranges into dust for the tiny coal seams that lie beneath their surface.

But Coal River Mountain is special, or, rather, you can decide whether it becomes special. Right now, Coal River Mountain represents the best and worst our country has to offer. It is one of the most dangerous examples of blasting for dirty coal and one of the most profound examples of hope that exist in our country. It is a crossroads.

Coal River Mountain can be a wind farm that provides 85,000 households with electricity, creates 700 long-term green jobs, gives back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stands as a model for clean energy across coal country. Or, it can be a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.

Stretching across thousands of acres of diverse and pristine hardwood forests, Coal River Mountain is one of the last intact mountains in the vicinity. It is also home to some of the few remaining headwater streams that have not been polluted with heavy metal-laden mine waste. To local residents, the mountain is a last stand.

When blasting began on Coal River Mountain this week, explosives began going off less than 100 yards from the largest coal sludge impoundment in the country. To put this in perspective, we are talking about more than eight billion gallons of coal slurry held back by an earthen dam. Were the dam to fail, and it has happened in the past, hundreds of people would have less than five minutes to save their lives.

It’s unfathomable to think that there are people in Coal River Valley who went to sleep last night fearful that a tidal wave of toxic coal sludge could break down their door. Or, it should be.

But almost as hard to fathom is why any political leader paying attention would allow a coal company to obliterate intact mountain ranges, sacrifice precious drinking water or risk losing people to a tsunami of coal sludge, when the mountain could be a wind farm instead?

Coal River Mountain’s real economic worth isn’t underground, but up in the sky. It is for this reason that Coal River Mountain is a major test for our country’s climate and energy future. It’s not that we lack alternatives to fossil fuels. It’s that while our nation’s leaders debate which solutions to put in place and at what rate and by what time, the fossil fuel industry continues to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains. We are moving backwards even as we talk of a better future. But we don’t have to be.

In the last several months, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken some good steps to curb mountaintop removal mining, largely through strict oversight of mining permits. But now it’s time for leaps.

To save Coal River Mountain and preserve our nation’s clean energy potential, it’s critical that the Obama Administration, in particular the EPA, the Council for Environmental Quality and the Army Corps of Engineers, hear from all of us to counter the pressure that they are getting from coal lobbyists and coal industry-pocketed politicians. The Obama Administration can and will intervene if we decide that Coal River Mountain is where we draw a line in the sand.

Over the next two days, Credo Mobile, Sierra Club, NRDC, 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, Appalachian Voices and Rainforest Action Network among others have asked our supporters to contact those in the Obama Administration who have the power to immediately stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain and to protect our clean energy resources. With your help we can build the national outcry necessary for immediate action.

I was going to tell you that there are two important reasons to help save Coal River Mountain: because people are in danger, and because we are blowing up, literally dynamiting, one of our most promising sources of energy. But really, the most important reason for you to act is because you can. It is time stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.

To help save Coal River Mountain and protect our clean energy resources visit, www.savecoalrivermountain.org.

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Robert Byrd

Sen. Robert Byrd hated the climate bill that passed the House in June (more on that below), but he seems a little more open to the Kerry-Boxer bill being considered in the Senate.  As the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported just after the bill was introduced:

[Byrd] said he was encouraged by the greater focus on clean coal technology, but still concerned about the proposed bill.

“I will continue to work with my colleagues to strike a balance that treats West Virginia’s interests fairly as the legislative process moves forward,” Byrd said. “However, I will actively oppose any bill that would harm the workers, families, industries or our resource-based economy in West Virginia.”

Byrd said he was glad to see that Kerry and Boxer included provisions he and other senators recommended related to carbon capture and storage techniques.

“While this is an encouraging sign, we have a long way to go on this legislation,” Byrd said. “Many issues have yet to be addressed. There is still a tough road ahead.”

In August, Byrd and nine other Democrats wrote a letter to President Obama saying they wouldn’t support a climate bill that puts American businesses on an uneven playing field.  They called for a bill to include a tariff on goods imported into the U.S. from countries that don’t have binding targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. 

Here’s more on Byrd and climate, as written by Kate Sheppard on 21 July 2009:

Sen. Robert Byrd has been an adamant supporter of coal throughout his long tenure in the Senate. Coal is his No. 1 interest in climate legislation, and the major concessions made to the industry in the House climate bill weren’t enough to win him over. (Nor were they enough to win over West Virginia’s two Democratic representatives, Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan, who both voted against the bill.)

Byrd’s staff sent out an official statement from the senator shortly after the House passed the legislation. “I cannot support the House bill in its present form,” Byrd said in the statement. “I continue to believe that clean coal can be a ‘green’ energy. Those of us who understand coal’s great potential in our quest for energy independence must continue to work diligently in shaping a climate bill that will ensure access to affordable energy for West Virginians.”

Last year, Byrd was the only Democrat to vote against even starting debate on the Senate climate bill. He was not present for the main vote on the bill.

Track the debate and take action >>>

Do you know more about this senator’s stance on climate legislation?  Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

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Big News: In a historic move, Lisa Jackson's EPA threw down the gauntlet on mountaintop removal mining last Friday -- after they had just compromised on another massively destructive mountaintop removal operation. Is this the beginning of the end of the plunder of Appalachia -- or is the EPA moving sideways to regulate what its own science has called an irreversible violation of the Clean Water Act?

Within the backdrop of the EPA's extraordinary announcement to employ its veto authority at the largest mountaintop removal mine site in West Virginia, the coalfield uprising is moving on several fronts this week. Today, besieged coalfield residents in the Coal River Valley are delivering an urgent letter to West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to stop an impending mountaintop removal operation near a dangerous coal slurry impoundment in their communities that will destroy jobs and their homeland and an internationally acclaimed wind farm. Updates of the action at the governor's mansion will be posted at Climate Ground Zero.

Meanwhile, the Alliance for Appalachia and and other coalfield groups are also continuing to collect statements against the Army Corps' NWP 21 permit process and their chaotic hearings last week.

Charleston Gazette/Coal Tattoo journalist Ken Ward broke the news on the EPA on Friday: The EPA announced its historic intentions to "issue a public notice of a proposed determination to restrict or prohibit the discharge of dredged and/or fill material at the Spruce No. 1 Mine project site consistent with our authority under Section 404 (c) of the Clean Water Act and regulations 40 C.F.R. Part 231." In a line: For the first time in decades, the EPA is moving to invoke its veto power to stop a St. Louis, Mo.-owned Arch Coal mountaintop removal mining operation from unacceptable adverse impacts on the environment and water quality.

The EPA has concluded that the Army Corps of Engineers' plan to adjust the permit would still result in the destruction of seven miles of streams. So, why did the EPA accept a compromise at the St. Louis, Mo.-owned Patriot Coal's massive Hobet mountaintop removal mine, which would reportedly still allow half of the affected streams to be destroyed? In truth, Lisa Jackson and the EPA have recognized that thousands of miles of streams have been sullied and jammed with mining waste from mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia over the past three decades -- and the impacts are "immense and irreversible, and there are no scientifically credible plans for mitigating these impacts," according to Margaret Palmer's U.S. Senate hearing testimony last June.

West Virginia state environmental biologist Doug Wood has noted:

We now have clear evidence that in some streams that drain mountaintop coal quarry valley fills, the entire order Ephemeroptera (mayflies) has been extirpated, not just certain genera of this order ... The loss of an order of insects from a stream is taxonomically equivalent to the loss of all primates (including humans) from a given area. The loss of two insect orders is taxonomically equivalent to killing all primates and all rodents through toxic chemicals.

Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, W. Va. is not only the largest mountaintop removal site in West Virginia -- it has been the quintessential battleground for science and law-based mining policies over 10 years. So, is this the beginning of the end of the plunder of Appalachia ... or just more of regulating an abomination? A searing new collection of photos and essays -- Plundering Appalachia -- asks this question in one of the most gripping and informed books in years. Examining the cradle to the grave impacts of mountaintop removal mining, and coal in general, Plundering Appalachia shows the indisputable destruction of reckless mining on the local communities, the mountains and valleys, the watersheds, and the nation at large. Here's a video clip from the book:

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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:

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Want to take on Big Coal with a couple clicks on your keyboard?

A fantastic new project, SEEDS -- Sustainable Energy and Economic Diversification program -- is taking root in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, at ground zero in the mountaintop removal mining and coalfield uprising, and it needs your Grist-reading help: If you think Big Coal has maintained a stranglehold on the Appalachian coalfield economy for too long, go to the Brighter Planet Fund website and vote for this great project by Oct. 15.

As a blend of high tech and land-based folk ways, the SEEDS program draws on the historical experiences and community wherewithal from the Coal River Valley to explore possibilities for economic diversification and sustainable energy in the coalfields. Over the course of the next year, the project will interview community members, identify community-led entrepreneurial projects, select five projects to support, document their work on this website, and adapt the results as lesson plans for distribution in regional high schools and colleges.

By generating a discussion about economic alternatives, and presenting them in an educational format to a wide audience of young people, this project seeks to "reduce local economic dependency on fossil fuel extraction and help educate a new generation of sustainability and justice-minded Americans."

The project has been launched by Andrew Munn in West Virginia, with administrative support from the Coal River Mountain Watch -- one of the most dynamic and important citizens organizations working on the frontlines of coal and climate change in the world today.

In order to receive a $5,000 start-up grant, the SEEDS project needs your vote at the Brighter Planet website.

And why stop there?  After you vote, click over to the Coal River Mountain Watch website and see how you can donate and support their amazing work during this pivotal moment in the anti-mountaintop removal and coalfield justice movement.

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Many readers of the New York Times probably dropped their jaws in amazement at the lead story on Sunday: Seven-year-old Ryan Massey, of Prenter, West Virginia, smiled back with capped teeth, the enamel devoured by toxic tap water. His brother sported scabs and rashes, courtesy of the heavy metals--including lead, nickel--in their bath water.

If you think every American child should have the right to a glass of clean drinking water and a safe shower, then check out the accompanying slide show and video.

Thanks to Times reporter Charles Duhigg, the rest of the United States got a glimpse of daily life in the Saudi Arabia of coal--in the coalfields of Appalachia, where coal companies are "pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals--the same pollutants that flowed from residents' taps." And the coda: "But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws."

As part of the Times' gripping "Toxic Waters," series, Duhigg's portrait of the Clean Water Act violations in West Virginia--and the indifference of state agencies--blew the cover on one of the worst kept secrets in Appalachia: Coal slurry injected into abandoned mines and dumped into waterways has contaminated the watersheds of American citizens and their drinking water...and no government agency did anything about it for years until the community finally fought back.

"How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?" said Ryan's mother, Jennifer Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state's largest banks.

According to Duhigg's research in Prenter, "Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system."

That's just the beginning. As the Aurora Lights "Journey Up Coal River" has noted: "Unsurprisingly, the health problems in this community are also massive: from kidney and liver failure to Parkinson's-like neurological problems, common respiratory illnesses that last for years despite treatment, and many different cancers. On a single 300-yard stretch of road, five people were diagnosed with brain tumors and nearly every family has someone in and out of the hospital."

Last month, West Virginia Governor and coal peddler Joe Manchin made a much ballyhooed visit to Prenter, in the midst of legal battles, to announce a new water system for next year. In the meantime, as the Appalachian Voices pointed out, the real headline should have noted: "WV Town to go 8 More Months without Clean Drinking Water."

Mathew Louis-Rosenberg was not suprised by the NY Times article. The young activist took time from a busy day of lobbying in Charleston, West Virginia, to discuss his work on the Prenter Water Fund, and the impact of the Times investigative piece on the widely denounced West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

Biggers: When did you first go to Prenter, WV and why?

Louis-Rosenberg: I first went to Prenter in July, 2008. I was taken there by a man named Bobby Mitchell, a Charleston native who had already been organizing in Prenter for the better part of a year. I had been up to Larry Gibson's Mountain Keepers celebration and helped build an addition on to his house. After 3 visits up there, I decided to move to WV. Bobby was up there and I had met him the fall before at the Highlander Center's 75th Anniversary Celebration. He was just thrilled to have somebody to talk the science behind all this (my background is in math, science, and education) and I jumped on board organizing with Prenter.

Biggers: Why and how did the Prenter Water Fund get established?

Louis-Rosenberg: The idea for the Prenter Water Fund first got hatched in a living room in July, 2008. After months and months of trying every avenue anybody could think of to get emergency water for Prenter (we had asked the DEP, the governor, the county commission, all the local elected officials, the public utility and state emergency services) and being told everywhere we turned that there wasn't any money for emergency water, people were really really frustrated. Drawing on my experiences as a post-Katrina volunteer, I was convinced that we could raise the money and set up an emergency water distribution ourselves. Everyone was totally excited about the idea, and we had a meeting with community leaders in Prenter like Maria Lambert and Patty Sebok. Out of that meeting was launched the Prenter Water Fund, umbrella'ed under Coal River Mountain Watch. The next month we got a $10,000 emergency grant from the Paul and Vivian Olum Foundation and we were off to the races. The first water delivery was the day before Christmas and we have missed one yet.

Biggers: Do you think your work, along with other residents and advocates, helped to get the story out to a national audience?

Louis-Rosenberg: Absolutely. The one thing that I was disappointed about in the article was the lack of any mention of the tireless work of community leaders in Prenter and their allies to bring this story to light and win the many victories we have won on this issue. Nobody but nobody had heard of Prenter, WV until organizing began there in 2007. Now we are a household name around the State Capitol in Charleston. Many of the leaders and organizers in Prenter spent many hours on the phone with NY Times reporter telling their stories, providing information and connected him with other residents.

Biggers: Do you feel the New York Times article captured the enormity of the problem in Prenter?

Louis-Rosenberg: I think the article (despite a couple of small inaccuracies) did a great job bringing home just how desperate a situation Prenter is in. He perhaps could have stressed just how much of a life and death issue this really is (the cancer and death rates are astronomical).

Biggers: What impact do you think the Times piece will have on the WVDEP in addressing the water issue?

Louis-Rosenberg: I think the article has the potential to be a great weapon for us here in Charleston. I spent all day lobbying in the Capital today to line up sponsors for a bill to ban coal slurry. We took around copies of the NY Times article and boy did people's ears perk up when they found out about it. The DEP is such a completely failed agency NO! that's not strong enough. The DEP is so completely the lapdog of the coal industry that I don't expect this to change their ways. But now when we go to the legislature asking them to ban slurry, when we go to the EPA asking them to take over the DEP, we can say, "Look. The cat's out of the bag. Everyone knows what's going on here and you can step up and do something about it or be the people who fiddled while the coal companies poisoned the waters of this state and murdered communities like Prenter."

For more information, visit the Prenter Water Fund.

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How easy to be cynical on this Labor Day, and declare it a day that will live in infamy for coal miners and coalfield residents and green job advocates across the nation.

But thanks to United Mine workers like Terry Steele, and West Virginia military veterans like Chris Carey, and green job advocates like Van Jones and Eric Mathis in Mingo County, Labor Day remains a hopeful reminder of the resiliency and epic campaigns by coalfield residents for economic and environmental justice.

Less than 48 hours after a bizarre witch-hunt by right-wing Fox News commentator Glenn Beck brought down our nation's hardest-working and respected green jobs advocate, Van Jones, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship will host an equally bizarre Labor Day spectacle--or Don-A-Pullute-Za, as West Virginia Blue activists say--in the name of union-busted jobs and climate-change denial in Logan County, West Virginia.

Keep in mind: Verizon Wireless is not only a defiant sponsor of Massey's mountaintop removal-climate change-denying carnival, but now says Verizon Wireless didn't pull its ads on Glenn Beck as reported.

Coal miners--and coalfield residents around the country--have lost one of their greatest advocates in Van Jones; and coal miners, in the hands of Big Coal and Massey Energy's mountaintop removal operations, will continue to lose their jobs, livelihoods and communities.

Not for the first time. Eighty-year years ago this same weekend, brave World War I veterans and coal miners endured bombings by hired coal company thugs to march on and liberate the same Logan County residents in West VIrginia from the stranglehold of union-denying Big Coal. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War--and today it's hallowed ridges are once again threatened by destruction, mountaintop removal.

Does Fox News Sean Hannity or Ted Nugent, the speakers for today's Massey gathering, know the level of Big Coal ruthlessness that forced thousands of armed miners to march for union rights along the very roads they drove today? Do Hannity and Nugent know the despair and lack of economic development due to the same stranglehold of Big Coal on the coalfields today?

Heroic UMWA coal miner Terry Steele understands the importance of Blair Mountain, and the shared fate of coalfield residents. Yesterday, he wrote:

"What the UMWA had better realize is that some of its strongest union men are fighting with the environmentalists against MTR. These miners, like this writer, have lived and worked all their lives in W.Va. We have watched the deep mines close; MTR mines take our jobs, our land and our union. More recently, we watched the muddy flood waters pour off these sites, as it took roads and homes. Just a few MTR mines chained the union to the real enemy.

There are only two sides to this issue. On the right is Don standing at Logan, wrapped in the pretense of American freedom, with his bought judges, DEP agents and many misled souls. Don stands with promises of jobs and security. In one hand, is a new mining permit, and in the other is dynamite. In his heart and mind is power to put down the UMWA, the environmentalist, and to mine coal his way: nonunion, unregulated, any way he wants!"

In truth, despite Massey's anti-environmental rants and climate-change-denying manifestos, more jobs have been lost or subjected to the whims of the volatile energy market, super mechanization, including the often overlooked bane of longwall mining in the northern panhandle, and mountaintop removal than any environmental regulations.

Two brave security guards hired last week at a Massey Energy mountaintop removal site understand this reality. In the tradition of courageous Blair Mountain war veterans and Appalachian natives, Navy veteran Chris Carey and Patrick Curry walked off the Massey site last week after been offended by the brutal harassment and lawlessness of Massey thugs against two nonviolent tree-sitters, who sought to protect local coalfield residents from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica dust and mountain devastation.

In a rare interview, Carey and Curry delivered an insightful analysis of the stranglehold of Massey on the region:

When Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was born in 1950, 130,000 West Virginians worked in the coal mines. Today, roughly 20,000 actual coal miners saddle up on heavy equipment to strip mine the ridges, or head into the underground mines.

In Blankenship's native Pike County in eastern Kentucky, nearly 50 percent of the coal mining jobs have been eliminated over the past 25 years, thanks in large part to highly mechanized strip mining. Here's a chart:

Not that Massey has lost any profits. During their 4th quarter 2008 Earnings Call last spring, Massey Energy executives crowed that "2008 was a very exciting and successful year for Massey, by many measures, the most successful in our history." Massey turned a $20 million profit in its last quarter in 2009.

And yet, these are the headlines from Massey:

Massey Energy Black Castle Mine, 300 Affected: Due to Market Conditions

Massey Pays Largest Settlement in Coal Industry History: Massey Pays $4.2 million for miners deaths

Massey cited in miner's fatal conveyor belt fall

Massey Energy to Pay Largest Civil Penalty Ever for Water Permit

Is this world of Massey violations that future for coalfield residents?

Even Big Coal's biggest supporter, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), recently noted that "the state's most productive coal seams likely will be exhausted in 20 years. And while coal will remain an important part of the economy, the state should emphasize green job development."

Unlike Don Blankenship, Van Jones and West Virginia-based green jobs advocate Eric Mathis not only understand and respect the rights of coal miners, but they also have a plan for a sustainable economy and future for coalfield residents.

Jones told an interviewer in 2008:

"I think it's important that we be respectful of all the contributions that have been made by all workers. Even our coal workers are heros in a way... in that they've been asked to sacrifice their lungs, their health, their communities. We're now asking our coal miners to blow up their grandmother's mountains! Awful... Mountain top removal and strip-mining... Those coal miners don't set the energy policy in this country but they have to make the sacrifices to carry it out. I think that sometimes we aren't respectful enough, that we're not as encouraging and honoring of the people who have gotten America to this point."

On this Labor Day, I honor Van Jones, the rednecks of Blair Mountain, honest security guards Chris Carey and Patrick Curry, the United Mine Workers and Terry Steele and green job advocates Eric Mathis.

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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:

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UPDATE, Sept. 2: The folks over at Credo Action are encouraging Verizon customers to communicate their displeasure with the company's sponsorship -- via Twitter, Facebook and Email.

--

Verizon Wireless needs to reconsider its "Friends and Family" feature--or, more pointedly, withdraw its support for Massey Energy's outrageously bogus "Friends of America" rally on Labor Day weekend.

Do 87 million Verizon Wireless customers, stockholders, and its Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility Department know that their company is a cosponsor of next week's climate change–denying, union-busting, pro–mountaintop removal rally organized by Massey Energy in Logan, W.Va.? (And what about Greenebaum Doll and McDonald, "a top 200 trademark law firm"--perhaps the rally's most odd sponsor?)

Does the Environmental Defense Fund, which recognized Verizon's Green Initiatives--to save energy, support solar and other renewable-energy sources, and lower its greenhouse-gas emissions--know that Verizon Wireless is sponsoring an event at which the featured speaker is Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and one of the most infamous global-warming deniers?

On its Green Press Kit site, Verizon claims, "Environmental stewardship is ingrained in Verizon's heritage, and the company prides itself on having a positive influence on the environment in which it operates." The page links to info on solar-energy and energy-efficiency measures undertaken by various offices.

Does Verizon know that 500 mountains have been destroyed, historic communities devastated, and watersheds polluted by mountaintop removal--and that Massey Energy has worked aggressively to not only wipe out our nation's carbon sink of deciduous forests in Appalachia, but also any attempts at renewable energy and development in the region? Read about Massey's role in strip-mining the last ridge on Coal River Mountain and impeding an incredible wind farm.

Do the Communications Workers of America, who represent Verizon technicians, know that the bogus "Friends of America" rally is a blatant anti-union event aimed at taking down the 70th annual United Mine Workers of America picnic, and that Massey Energy is defiantly anti-union?

So why is Verizon sponsoring this pro–mountaintop removal rally on a strip-mine site? Does Verizon support Massey Energy's ruthless mountaintop-removal campaign and its infamous CEO Don Blankenship? Check out this ABC News report on Blankenship's campaign to bankroll the West Virginia courts:

During their 4th quarter 2008 earnings call last spring, Massey Energy executives crowed that "2008 was a very exciting and successful year for Massey, by many measures, the most successful in our history. As you know, we undertook a very aggressive expansion plan in late 2007, and our members executed that plan almost to perfection in 2008." And then, in answering a question about how 2010 guidance could lower production 10 percent and impact the high head count, a Massey executive simply responded with the bottom line of profiteers: "I think the answer would be that we will be able to reduce the workforce with attrition fairly markedly," and "we also will cut back on salaries."

Bottom line: Massey Energy profits up, jobs down. Find out more about Massey.

And here's Lord Monckton:

George Monbiot has thoroughly debunked Monckton's anti–global warming thesis

Verizon should withdraw its sponsorship of this bogus rally immediately -- or explain its support of mountaintop removal, climate-change denial, and union-busting to its 87 million customers.

Call or text or email Verizon Wireless corporate leaders and let them know. CEO Dennis Strigl can be emailed at Dennis.Strigl@verizonwireless.com. Verizon HQ is here:

1 Verizon Way
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920-1097
(908) 559-7000

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Yet another pro-coal group has popped up to rally folks against climate action. The Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security -- or FACES of Coal -- joins a growing list of "grassroots" groups formed to support fossil fuels.

The "faces" shown on the group's website include a smiling flower vender, a child playing golf, a family with a baby, and a grandmother waving an American flag. Shockingly, no coal miners, residents of homes destroyed by mountaintop-removal mining, or asthmatic children are featured.

FACES says it's an "an alliance of people from all walks of life" united by their belief in the importance of coal. "In addition to keeping tens of thousands of people employed in good-paying jobs, coal is the lifeblood of our domestic energy supply, generating half the electricity consumed in the United States today," says its website.

The group intends to "make sure local, state and federal lawmakers and people around the country know the facts about coal and understand how important coal mining is to the region" of Appalachia.

FACES is allied with Friends of Coal, Coal Mining Our Future and the Coalition for Mountaintop Mining .

Grist tried to find out more about FACES, as the website does not list members or funders. The only contact information listed is an email address, and our email inquiry bounced back.

Are there any actual faces behind FACES?

h/t to Ken Ward

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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.)

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Jay Rockefeller

Sen. Jay Rockefeller has expressed concerns about the impact a climate bill would have on West Virginia's coal industry. He's probably more likely to vote for a bill than his home-state colleague Robert Byrd, but he would need to be assured that whatever bill passes isn't too hard on the coal industry.

"Senator Rockefeller followed the process in the House on the climate change legislation very closely, and he continues to have serious concerns about the House bill," said a statement released by his office after the House bill passed. "The Senate process is in the beginning stages, and Senator Rockefeller will continue working with his colleagues to make sure West Virginia’s interests are represented."

Last year, Rockefeller voted to move the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act forward to a full vote on the floor, but that vote never took place. Afterwards, he signed a letter from swing-vote Democrats noting that he would have opposed final passage of the bill.

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When you hear the phrase "alternative energy," what comes to mind?

Solar power? Wind? Hydroelectric?

Not for West Virginia's political leaders. They think a little differently.

In the recent legislative session, Gov. Joe Manchin (D) championed and state lawmakers approved an energy portfolio standard bill requiring 25% of generation to come from "alternative and renewable" sources by 2025. But the new standard, which goes into effect this month, has defined "alternative" to include natural gas, old tires, coal gas and even waste coal -- energy sources that emit significant quantities of climate-warming greenhouse gases as well as toxic, health-damaging pollutants.

"It's Governor Humpty Dumpty occupying that nice mansion beside the Kanawha River (where he can admire the endless coal barges)," West Virginia Sierra Club Chair Jim Sconyers wrote about the new law. "After all, it was Humpty Dumpty who said, 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'"

SB 297 sets up a system of tradable credits for electricity produced by alternative and renewable sources. While it offers credits for traditional renewable sources including solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal, it also gives credits for what it calls "alternative" sources -- defining those as:

* advanced coal technology, a method of capturing emissions from burning coal that's still unproven on a large scale;

* coal bed methane, or natural gas extracted from coal beds, an energy source that has a serious impact on groundwater supplies;

* fuel produced by coal gasification or liquefaction, which emits toxic pollutants as well as greenhouse gases;

* synthetic gas made from coal, another hydrocarbon-intensive and polluting fuel;

* integrated gasification combined cycle technologies, which reduce but do not eliminate the emissions typically associated with coal plants;

* waste coal, the burning of which produces large amounts of greenhouse gases as well as toxic emissions;

* tire-derived fuel, another polluting, toxic fuel source;

* pumped storage hydroelectric projects, which are actually net consumers of energy;

* natural gas, the burning of which produces greenhouse gases and other pollution; and

* nuclear power, which releases radioactive pollution to the environment and also produces dangerous waste products.

The West Virginia Environmental Council head lobbyist Donald S. Garvin Jr. blasted the new standard in an op-ed:

No other state includes natural gas as a source of "alternative" energy. Nuclear energy is included by only a few, and they specify "advanced generation" nuclear facilities.  Most states that include "clean coal" specifically limit it to facilities that include carbon capture and sequestration, or require that they lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Some jurisdictions specifically exclude "pump-storage" hydropower facilities.

By listing all of these heavily polluting sources as "alternative," Garvin said, the standard undermines the original goal of reducing carbon emissions while creating a system that puts West Virginia "completely out of step" with the rest of the nation.

He also pointed out that by including natural gas and nuclear, the new law may enable West Virginia's utilities to meet the standard without building any renewable energy facilities at all. That because there's no requirement that the electricity provided actually be produced in West Virginia. And American Electric Power -- the Ohio-based utility that serves the state through its Appalachian Power unit -- already has enough nuclear and natural gas generation to meet the requirement through 2025.

A toxic standard for environmental health

The new law gives West Virginia the dubious distinction of being the first state to include tire burning in its alternative/renewable portfolio, observes Mike Ewall of the Energy Justice Network. While that helps dispose of the 290 million or so tires discarded in the U.S. every year, burning tires also release toxic chemicals including cancer-causing lead, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxin.

The new standard also makes West Virginia the only other state besides Pennsylvania to include in its energy portfolio standard waste coal  -- mining refuse originally cast aside during processing as too low-quality but which can now be burned thanks to the development of fluidized bed combustion technology.

As with burning tires, this provision helps disappear a big waste problem -- but the experience of the Pennsylvania communities with the nation's heaviest concentration of FBC waste coal burning power plants raises serious questions about waste coal's potential environmental health impact.

Last week, representatives of the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry held a public meeting in eastern Pennsylvania to discuss a planned $5.5 million research project into what may be causing a confirmed cluster of the rare blood cancer polycythemia vera in the coal mining communities of Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties. The area where the cancer was found to be occurring at an unusually high rate is home to toxic hotspots including numerous waste-coal burning plants, with five such facilities in Schuylkill County alone and three others just across its border in Northumberland, Carbon and Luzerne counties.

Plants using FBC technology operate at lower temperatures and oxygen levels than conventional coal-fired power plants and inject limestone during combustion to reduce sulfur oxide pollution. But lower temperatures and oxygen levels, low-quality fuels and limestone injection have all been found to contribute to increased emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) -- toxic compounds known to cause genetic mutations and cancer. In fact, the specific genetic mutation involved in polycythemia vera has been linked to PAH exposure. And because radioactive elements are found in waste coal, FBC plants emit radioactive pollution, which has also been linked to an excess risk of polycythemia vera.

Today there are 18 FBC plants nationwide using waste coal as a primary fuel, according to the Energy Justice Network -- 14 in Pennsylvania, three in West Virginia and one in Utah. There are another 13 plants using waste coal as a secondary fuel -- four in Virginia, three each in Alabama and South Carolina, two in Pennsylvania and one in Mississippi.

The three existing waste coal burners in West Virginia include Dominion's North Branch plant in Grant County; the company's Morgantown Energy Facility in Monongalia County, which provides power to West Virginia University as well as other customers; and Edison International's Grant Town plant in Marion County, which also burns tires.

Looking at these three plants' emissions, it is clear that "alternative" does not mean non-polluting. Together these facilities released more than 89,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air alone in 2007, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory. That includes more than 38,000 pounds of hydrochloric acid, 11,000 pounds of sulfuric acid, more than 9,000 pounds of hydrogen fluoride, 183 pounds of mercury and 57 pounds of lead. The TRI does not include PAHs or radioactive emissions.

Three new waste coal burning plants have been proposed for West Virginia, according to the Energy Justice Network, and a big waste coal plant -- the nation's largest, in fact -- is slated for Wise County in southwestern Virginia, just three counties south of the West Virginia line. A coalition of environmental groups represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center is challenging the Wise County plant's air permits in court, with the trial scheduled to start July 31.

At the same time West Virginia is promoting dirty power through its energy standard, new evidence is emerging about the serious environmental health problems already afflicting residents of Appalachia's coalfields. A study released last month by West Virginia University Professor Michael Hendryx documented higher mortality rates in Appalachian coal counties, which it blamed in part on environmental pollution.

Unfortunately, rather than easing the problems associated with environmental pollution and poor environmental health, West Virginia's new energy standard ensure they will continue -- a big missed opportunity for the state to build a greener, cleaner future.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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The Mountain Keepers Music Festival took place this place this July 4th weekend at a park on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, an event organized by the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation in solidarity against mountaintop removal mining.

But Saturday's fun was disrupted when some 20 supporters of Massey Energy, a coal company with mountaintop removal mining operations in the area, crashed the festival and threatened attendees verbally and with obscene  gestures. People who were there report that some of the pro-mining protesters were wearing Massey Energy-issued blue and orange shirts.

"You get off our goddamn mountain!" yelled one heavyset man who was not wearing a shirt. "This is ours! We was here first!" He threatened to slit one attendee's throat.

A woman pro-Massey protester, who at one point threatened to show her [behind] to the camera, shouted, "You may have another way of living, but we don't."

The incident illustrates the growing tensions in the Appalachian coalfields over the practice of mountaintop removal mining, which involves blasting off a mountain peak to get to the coal seam and dumping the waste into the valley below. Festival goers did not engage the intruders, who eventually left on their own.

The incident was captured on camera by Patchwork Films Director B.J. Gudmundsson. You can watch the film here, but please take seriously the warning that it contains offensive language and content not suitable for children. A big hat tip to West Virginia environmental activist Danny Chiotos for bringing our attention to this.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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As a groundbreaking clean energy counterpart to this summer's extraordinary Food, Inc. documentary on the agribusiness, the long-awaited "Coal Country" film on the cradle-to-grave process of generating our coal-fired electricity will be hitting the theaters next week with the big bang of an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive.

And Big Coal ain't happy.

Here's the trailer:

After a year-long campaign of threats and intimidation, the Big Coal lobby plans to have its Friends of Coal sycophants out in force to picket the premiere of the film on July 11, 7pm, at La Belle Theater in the South Charleston Museum in Charleston, West Virginia.

Why is Big Coal so afeared of this documentary film by native Appalachian daughters Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, producer and director of three-part award-winning landmark PBS series, "The Appalachians"?

If anything, Coal Country goes out of its way to include the views and voices of the Big Coal lobby and its executives, engineers and miners. This, in fact, might be why Coal Country is so compelling; far from any hackneyed agenda, Coal Country simply allows the coal industry and those affected by its mountaintop removal operations and coal-fired plants to tell their personal stories. The end result is devastating. In a methodical and deliberate fashion, Coal Country brilliantly takes viewers on a rare journey through our nation's coal-fired electricity, from the extraction, processing, transport, and burning of coal.

Once you see the breathtaking footage by cameraman Jordan Freeman, and the unaffected and heart-rending portraits of coal mining families, you will never flick on your light switch again without thinking about Coal Country.

From the git-go, West Virginia governor and coal peddler Joe Manchin declares: "There is no replacement for coal. There might be 30 or 50 or 100 years from now, but there's not today."

A French engineer cheerfully proclaims, "Coal is a wonderful resource. It's too bad it's dirty."

As one coal company executive coldly states, the millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives that rip through the Appalachian mountains and poison the watersheds and air of local communities daily, "might make some people uncomfortable."

Another coal engineer playfully recalls teaching his children to refer to coal-fired plants as "cloud factories" to bring the rain, in the face of some of the highest cancer and heart disease rates in the country, and an American Lung Association study that 24,000 Americans die prematurely from coal-fired plant pollution each year.

One reclamation engineer even breaks into tears, lamenting that his dedication and work are misunderstood. He waves his hand at denuded hills, stripped of the hundreds of species of flora and fauna in one of the most diverse deciduous forests on the American continent, and lauds his planting of a small stand of sycamores. After 30 years of reclamation laws and over 1.5 million acres of clear cut and destroyed hardwood forest, he champions the novelty of his tree-planting efforts: "We're trying them out on some mountaintop removal sites and seeing how they do."

Whew. Big Coal doesn't want you to see this stunning expose because they have been allowed to let the truth slip out of their mouths.

Michael Shnayerson, the author of Coal River, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, wonderfully plays the role of an informative commentator throughout the film, delivering his facts in a no-nonsense and quiet manner. Yet, he tells an interviewer: "Nothing prepared me for the visual devastation..." of mountaintop removal.

And this is where Coal Country shines the light on one of the darkest human rights and environmental violations overseen by federal and state regulators in our times. Through a series of moving portraits of coalfield residents, the film chronicles the extraordinary and largely overlooked toll of coal mining on the lives of Appalachian residents.

In a gripping montage, Coal Country shows how those affected by mountaintop removal and coal-fired plants have emerged as the most informed and articulate spokespeople against the ravages of the out-of-state coal companies. In effect, it is the gross indifference and recklessness of Big Coal that turns former coal miners and farmers and shopkeepers into the nation's leading coal and climate change activists--and true American heroes.

One of the film's most illuminating moments takes place during a hearing in West Virginia over the Bush administration's 2002 manipulation of the stream buffer rule, which allowed mining waste to be dumped into mountain streams. While a line of residents and coal company employees take their turn at the microphone, the room silences when a young man in a halting voice steps up and quietly tells the truth:

"Both sides are scared. And we're screaming insults back and forth at each other, and I think we're losing sight of the source of our fears. West Virginia is the poorest state in the country, and southern West Virginia is the poorest part of it. And I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping burgers. You look out and that's all you see. Mining and flipping burgers. And I argue that the coal company, that they want it that way. That they want that to be the only options. That is the only way they can get support on the way they treat their workers and treat our community."

In Rock Creek, West Virginia, Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds recounts the polarization and poisoning of the community's watersheds. She quotes Upton Sinclair: "It is hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck demands him not to understand."

In eastern Kentucky, Teri Blanton describes the devastated woodlands landscape replanted with foreign grass, "which is fine for Montana, but it's not supposed to look like that in eastern Kentucky."

Former coal miner Chuck Nelson walks viewers through the union-busting tactics of out-of-state coal companies and mountaintop removal operations, and the rarely noticed destruction of real estate values for local coalfield residences due to coal dust and environmental ruin. Mountaintop removal, ultimately, he points out, "is not so cheap for people who have to live under these sites."

In southwestern Virginia, Kathy Selvage describes how she went from too shy to speak in public, to her transformation as one of the most articulate activists and well-researched coal experts. Far from being politically motivated, it comes down to an "assault on our community and way of life." Standing in the face of a pitiful reclamation efforts, she declares, "I grieve over the lost of a mountain."

Farmer Elisa Young in Meigs County, Ohio, tours the parade of coal-fired plants along the Ohio River that have led to the highest cancer and poverty rates in the region. "I'm not a trained activist, I'm not an environmentalist. I just live in a county that is being waled on...As a farmer, I need clean air, clean soil and clean water to run a farm."

With some spectacular photography in the background during a flyover across mountaintop removal sites, Kathy Mattea, the wondrous West Virginia country music star and granddaughter of coal miners, speaks of her support of coal mining families and the region's dilemma.

Mattea nails the issue of mountaintop removal: "It's not against the law," she says, "but what if a law is unjust?"

Coal Country should be required viewing for our nation's elected officials, and the administrators at the Council on Environmental Quality, the EPA and the Department of Interior.

In fact, Coal Country needs to be screened at the White House theatre.

For more information, visit the Sierra Club or the Coal Country film site.

Info on the West Virginia premiere is here.

A book companion, Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal, will be released this fall, and edited by Silas House, Shirley Stewart Burns, and Mari-Lynn Evans.

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Editor Jon Queally at Common Dreams has just posted the testimony of Goldman Prize winner Maria Gunnoe from last Thursday's historic Senate hearing on mountaintop removal. 

Below is the full text from Gunnoe, who is a community organizer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

by Maria Gunnoe

The following was submitted as prepared testimony to the The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife on Thursday, June 25, 2009:

My name is Maria Gunnoe.  I am 40 years old and I am a lifelong resident of Boone County in southern West Virginia.  My family history there goes back to the 1700's.   I know the areas and the people that are being impacted by mountaintop removal very well simply because this is the homeland where generations of our ancestors before me have raised their families and lived their lives.  Most of these families have depended on underground coal mining to make a living but we as a culture of people have depended on these mountains to take care of our families.  We are gatherers, hunters, gardeners, fishermen, active and retired miners, loving community members; we are stewards of this land and we are now organizers.  We are working to protect and preserve the communities, culture and people that we love and hold dear to our hearts 

Water Quality Impacts

There is a relatively new method of mining now happening in the coal fields of Appalachia called mountaintop removal coal mining.  This method of mining is where the coal companies use nearly 4 million pounds of blasting material a day (in WV alone) to blast the coal out of the mountains.  Then everything other than the coal (including trees and topsoil) is used to create valley fills in our headwater streams.  The artificial streams running off these sites are toxic with selenium. 

The energy is temporary energy.  You only burn coal one time.  The destruction of the land, air, communities and people is permanent.   There have been 500 mountains leveled for their coal and energy in the name of homeland security.  These 500 mountains were surrounded by communities who depended on the mountain's resources and water for their very existence.  There have now been more than 2000 miles of streams buried by valley fills.  People depended on these streams as much as any animals.  The cumulative impact of the permits that are being allowed in some incidents are further depopulating and destroying communities and people. The regulatory agencies turn a blind eye to this pollution by continuing to allow the companies to buy more time to come in compliance with the existing laws.  Without enforcement these laws are only words on paper. 

Local communities truly do not have a voice in the process of these permits.  The DEP will set up what is called an informal conference to inform citizens of what the DEP and coal companies are planning to do and to give community members a chance to comment.  These comments are recorded and we are told that they become a part of the permit record.  In these hearings the citizens often beg the regulatory agencies to not allow these permits but commonly they approve every permit applied for.  The people who live in these communities do not want mountaintop removal mining.  Especially near their homes and communities simply because it is destroying everything they and their families before them have worked for. 

In the eight years of the Bush administration the laws and courts were aligned to destroy any protection that we had for these beautiful and unique places and their people.  The Clean Water Act lost its meaning when the Bush Administration changed one word of this law - the definition of fill material.  Another important rule -- the buffer zone rule -- that protected our streams was done away with on the eve of Christmas 2008.   With this rule change the Bush administration opened us as residents up to nothing but destruction. 

There are health impacts too.  A study by Dr. Michael Hendryx at West Virginia University has proven that there is reason to be concerned about the pollution that the people throughout the coalfields are being exposed to.  This study has not been taken seriously by our state leaders or our state regulatory agencies; as a matter of fact it has been ignored.  Portions of this study were based on the community of Twilight near where I live.  Twilight Surface Mines surrounds the small communities of Lindytown and Twilight and the people who live there either put up with the impacts or leave. 

The blasting has been horrible and the communitys members' concerns are not being heard.  There are near 4 million pounds of blasting material used each day in West Virginia alone.  At one point the Department of Defense and Department of Environmental Protection allowed the coal company to dispose of old munitions from war (called tetryl, it's used as an igniter) on the mine site behind my home.  It was too dangerous to use in war so they thought they would dispose of it in our community over our people's heads.

We have for many generations depended on the water from these mountains.  Now this water is being polluted forever.  In the case of Big Branch Creek where I live it is now polluted with toxic levels of selenium.  This is also present in my well water.  This was quietly done by the coal company and the regulatory agency permitted it.  The entire aquifer of where I live is now a pollution spill way.  The loss of timber from our hollow alone will be felt for thousands of years to come.  There is no way that the reclaimed land can grow the hardwood forest that the natural land does.  This land is dead.  It's impossible to grow a healthy forest on dead polluted land.  Reclamation is a pretty word but on the ground it has been proven to be impossible.

Culture

My family before me settled these mountains through the forced removal of the Cherokee, known as the Trail of Tears, and most of my neighbors have a similar story.  My grandfather told me the story his mother told him of the men in the family dressing as women to allow the women and children to escape this forced removal.  The women and children then followed the rivers to their headwaters and settled the area where I now live.  Throughout the past 250 years our families have built these places through determination and love for the place itself. The mountains here sustained our families by supplying us with an abundance of food and fresh clean water in our wells, springs and streams.  Southern West Virginians are fortunate enough to live in the second most bio-diverse region on this planet.  This is richness beyond wealth.  As residents we recognize our most valuable resources as being our land, water and people, not the coal that lies beneath it all.  Our people were here before the coal was discovered.   Why should we have to leave now in the name of coal?

Some of our current resident's ancestors were awarded their land for military service to this country.  Now this very land is being destroyed and the residents don't have the rights to protect it.  Appalachians are the history of this country.  We have given all to build the infrastructure that supports this American dream that we all share.  We help to supply 48 percent of this country's energy and the cost of this is never truly calculated.  I have heard coal referred to as a cheap and clean energy source.  This ignores the facts. The facts are that the true cost of coal fired energy has never been calculated.  We must consider the cost of coal from the cradle to the grave.  We must consider the cost of mountaintop removal coal mining -- for not only the aquatic life and the wildlife where this coal is being extracted, but for the human lives of everyone it touches.

I have to ask, what about the homeland security of the folks that are being forced to sell out to the coal companies in Lindytown, W. Virginia? The people who proudly built this community are being told that they are in the way of coal production and that they must leave their homes of many generations.  The coal company engineers strategically buy out homes and family-owned land to depopulate communities by making life unbearable.  Their air, land and water are being destroyed by mountaintop removal; there is no way people can continue to live here and be healthy.  They are being forced to leave home, places of many generations, to save their lives.  This alone is personally and emotionally devastating.  The boom of "Big Bertha" -- a dragline -- swings over the community of Lindytown.  Blasting is frequent and terrifying for residents that are holding out, not wanting to sell.

This is the same "clean coal" that forced an elderly woman out of her home who happened to die of a heart attack while she packed her belongings for the first time in 72 years.  She too was in the way of production. The people in Lindytown were only free to leave.   Why is it that as homeland security increases here in DC ours only gets less and less likely to even exist?

In our mountains we have many mountain cemeteries that date back to the beginning of civilization here.  We are grounded like our ancestors before us. These cemeteries are awarded no protection by our regulatory agencies or law enforcement.  We as citizens are expected to register and account for these cemeteries in order to protect them from mining activity and most of the time the coal companies won't allow us into our family cemeteries to do this work.  They stop us from visiting our dead by locking us out of our ancestral land in these mountains.  I know of many grave yards that were in our mountains that no longer exist.  The areas where they were are now gone. 

The people here belong nowhere but here.  These folks will thrive in their own environment, but taken away from here they will perish as they are not where they belong.  The culture of people in West Virginia is a culture of survivalists, not environmentalists. Our existence as a culture of mountain people is being annihilated for its coal. 

Jobs

Boone County falls second in poverty only to McDowell County, W. Virginia, another leading coal producing county. This is still the most impoverished area in the U.S. today.  If mountaintop removal was about jobs and prosperity, where are they?  In the 1960's we had 125,000 direct coal mining jobs in the coal industry in W. Virginia, but now we have less than 12,000.  Ask yourselves is this really about jobs or profit and exploitation?  These jobs are temporary jobs at best.  The operation behind my home started in 2000. It is now closed down.  These good paying jobs only lasted long enough for the employees to get in debt.  

I have watched as coal companies have destroyed one of the most beautiful places in this country by mountaintop removal coal mining.  The people who live in these areas are often retired or active UMWA underground miners and their families.  The people who work in mountaintop removal most often do not live in the environment that their jobs create.  The companies are out of state coal companies and the workers are out of area workers.  The companies commonly do not hire local people.  

The coal companies will tell all that will listen that they are doing this for future economic development of an impoverished region.  They will say that we don't have any flat land for development.  They will tell you that we need this flat land and that our mountains are useless land in their natural state.  I have even heard them say that the mountains are in the way of development. There will be no future here for anyone with mountaintop removal.   I cannot believe that we as a nation are depending on continuing to blow up mountains to supply energy in this country when the energy we need in this country rises with the sun everyday and blows in each churn of the wind.  The ridges of southern West Virginia are wind viable ridges until they are blown up.  We cannot continue to allow this to be called clean coal.

Stop Mountaintop Mining

In my own mind I know that mountaintop removal coal mining will stop.  According to USGS we are running out of mineable coal and we are quickly running out of mountains in southern West Virginia.  Global warming is very real.  We are all just pawns on this chess board called Earth.  I hope that we can stop mountaintop removal and coal's global attack soon enough to preserve some of what is left of one of the most beautiful and ecologically diverse places in this country.  The rolling hills of Appalachia are becoming the flat plateaus of the West as I speak. 

We have the opportunity to stop the annihilation of mountains and people by mountaintop removal and to change the history of energy in this country.  We are at a crossroads. We must put all special interests aside and follow what we know to be best for all of our future generations.  Stop the attack on Appalachia's water supply and the people it sustains.

Thank you again to Senator Cardin and Senator Alexander for standing up for what any fellow human knows to be the right thing.

I would like to extend my tremendous appreciation to Senator Cardin and Senator Alexander for introducing Senate Bill 696, the Appalachian Restoration Act.  This Bill, if passed, could turn back some of the Bush administration's changes that are currently allowing coal companies to destroy valuable headwater streams and all that is connected to them. The residents I work with in the Boone County coal fields send their support for this bill, as it is in some cases the only hope we have of remaining in our ancestral homes and in our ancestral homelands.  

I leave you with photos and a recent article about flooding in the coalfields caused by run off from flattened mountains.

This is what inspired me to get involved in stopping mountaintop removal.  There are other organizers just like me being created everyday by this industry.   We have no choice but to oppose the practice of filling headwater streams; we live here! 

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Question of the week: Has any Obama administration or West Virginia state official publicly denounced the violence by the mountaintop removal operators this week?

Courtesy Coal River Mountain Watch / Amy SicklesIn last Tuesday's nonviolent march from Marsh Fork Elementary School, which sits downslope of a precarious 2.8 billion gallon coal sludge impoundment, and a Massey Energy coal prep site, a Massey Energy Spousal Group member violently assaulted Goldman Prize Winner and Coal River Mountain Watch Co-Director Judy Bonds. The video of the attack is at the bottom of this post:

Judy Bonds, the victim of the attack and one of the arrestees, later went to the emergency room. Doctors treated her injuries and gave her medicine and orders not to return to work until next week. Coal River Mountain Watch community organizer Lorelei Scarbro, a coal miner's widow, just barely escaped an assault.

While violent attacks by hired thugs are nothing new in the coalfields, this act of violence took place by union-busted Massey Energy supporters, who also used air horns, threatened violence, shouted obscenities and crowded against event attendees, in blatant acts of intimidation.

This begs the question: Why is the Obama administration supporting these violent, union-busting supporters of an outside coal company that has devastated a region with mountaintop removal operations, plundered it for record profits in 2008, and then slashed its union-busted workforce this spring?

“This violent, unprovoked attack demonstrates the tactics Massey will use to silence and intimidate local residents,” Bonds said. “This reminds me of the 1999 reenactment of the Blair Mountain march, in which coal industry supporters kicked, pushed, and spat on Ken Hechler and other marchers, including female senior citizens and me.”

"Is this really how we want to represent West Virginia?" asked Coal River resident Sarah Haltom, one of the arrested protesters. "Gov. Manchin says to 'come home to West Virginia,' but Massey tells us to either go away or shut up about defending our homes from mountaintop removal. My husband and I both received threats of violence during the day."

In a statement sent via email Friday, Dr. James Hansen, who was near Bonds at the time of the attack said, “As for the local people, we found them to be very friendly, and the state police were courteous and professional. Massey employees were out in force making as much noise as possible to try to drown out the speakers at the protest.”

“Pro-mountain community activists adhere to principles of nonviolence, but the coal industry has no such principles,” Coal River resident Vernon Haltom said. “Pro-coal rally speakers have consistently used hostile, aggressive and inflammatory language. Last year we asked Gov. Manchin and others to tone it down. Instead we are subjected to violent attacks with the tacit approval of Manchin, Massey CEO Don Blankenship, West Virginia Coal Association president Bill Raney and United Mineworkers president Cecil Roberts. Not one of them has publicly denounced the violence or called for industry supporters to behave nonviolently.”

For more on Judy Bonds, see: http://crmw.net/

Here's the video:

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

James Hansen getting arrested on June 23 at an anti-mountaintop-removal protest.Antrim Caskey

Note: This blog will be updated during the day, with dispatches, video and photos being filed by Stephanie Pistello.)

"When I get to the other side, I shall tell God Almighty about West Virginia!" -- Mother Jones

UPDATE: "The Sword of Damocles hangs over Marsh Fork Elementary School." "I started out an as activist, but founded it necessary to be a hell raiser. We are going to need hellraisers to stop this devastating practice."--Ken Hechler UPDATE: Video of former US Representative Ken Hechler (D-WV), who introduced the first bill to end mountaintop removal and stripmining in 1971. As a hero to coal miners, Hechler led the campaign for better mining workplace safety and black lung laws and compensation. The 94-year-old Hechler was arrested at the Coal River action, along with coalfield residents and parents, 88-year-old West Virginia activist Winnie Fox, Daryl Hannah, and James Hansen, and Goldman Prize Award winner Judy Bonds, RAN director Michael Brune and many others.

UPDATE: 6pm EST. Goldman Prize Award Winner Attacked. During the rally in front of the Massey Energy coal property today, Coal River Mountain Watch co-director (and 2003 Goldman Prize Award winner) Judy Bonds was reportedly assaulted by a Massey supporter. While Bonds was engaged in a nonviolent protest, the Massey supporter lunged from the line without any provocation and roughly slapped Bonds on the head, ear and jaw. The Massey supporter also attempted an attack on another protestor, Lorelei Scarbro, a coal miner's widow and local community organizer. The Massey supporter was immedidately apprehended by the police and charged with battery, according to news reports. For more information on Judy Bonds, see: http://www.goldmanprize.org/node/84 The crowd included dozens of Mountain Justice participants who have been active in similar protests since 2005, including getting arrested at the same site. (http://mountainjustice.org/)

UPDATE: 2:30 PM EST: Ken Hechler, the 94-year-old legendary West Virginia congressman and coal miner hero who has been battling mountaintop removal since 1971, was arrested in a non-violent protest with NASA's celebrated climate scientist James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, Michael Brune (the executive director of Rainforest Action Network), Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds, Vietnam veteran Bo Webb, and dozens of other coalfield residents after they crossed onto the property of leading mountaintop removal coal mining company, Massey Energy --purposely trespassing to protest the destruction of mountains immediately above the Coal River Valley community.

In the face of recent Obama administration actions to regulate and not abolish mountaintop removal, which has wiped out 500 mountains and destroyed historic communities, the action launched a yearlong national campaign to bring mountaintop removal to an end.

"I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen," said Dr. James Hansen. "Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient. Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished."

In an interview posted on Huffington Post last month, Hechler made a special appeal to President Barack Obama to stand by his word and end mountaintop removal. That post is here.

Here is today's scene for the historic nonviolent direct action and march in Coal River Valley, in West Virginia: A 2.8 billion gallon toxic coal sludge impoundment behind the earthen Shumate Dam hovers just a couple of football fields above the Marsh Fork Elementary School, while massive mountaintop removal blasts boom daily within a few feet, and where hundreds of concerned parents, families and citizens from around the country have gathered to call to an end to mountaintop removal--for the sake of the children, the coalfield communities, and the Appalachian mountains.

Actress Darryl Hannah at the June 23 anti-mountaintop-removal protest in West Virginia.Antrim CaskeyAlong with with NASA climatologist James Hansen, long-time environmental activist and actress Daryl Hannah, retired coal miner Chuck Nelson, and many other national environmental and political figures, the rally and march from Marsh Fork Elementary School to a Goals Coal Prep Plant and Massey Energy mountaintop removal site will be joined by two legendary West Virginia titans: 88-year-old activist Winnie Fox, and 94-year-old former US Representative Ken Hechler.

UPDATE from Stephanie Pistello: 1:30pm EST: The state police allowed the coal supporters to line up along the road and then to proceed into playing field to intermingle with activists. The coal supporters are generally being aggressive towards other rally participants and chanting slogans such as "this is our state". The state police have general allowed aggressively (shouting, physical intimidation, standing very near/sitting on vehicals/equipment) activity and only intervene when asked to (including allowing power cords to be ripped out of the wall to silence the PA system). There are around 10 local media outlets on the scene including 2 live broadcast trucks. Several old time bands played from 11 to 12. Speakers started around noon and include Rev. Jim Lewis (who coal supporters taunted and tried to shout down), retired coal miner Chuck Nelson and Appalachian Voices biologist Matt Wasson (former US Rep. Ken Hechler and Daryl Hannah will speak later.)

Over 500 mountains, 1.5 million acres of hardwood forests, and 1,200 miles of streams, along with historic mountain communities, have been destroyed by mountaintop removal. In a study the last fall by the Ashby-Tucker environmental firm, air quality experts found that the coal dust blanketing the Marsh Fork Elementary School exceeded accepted limits.

According to the study, Dr. D. Scott Simonton reported: "My concern about the school is that dust levels not only appear to exceed human health reference levels, but that the dust is largely made up of coal. Coal dust contains silica, trace metals, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), many of which are known human carcinogens. PAH’s have been found in dust samples taken at the school. Inhalation of coal dust is known to cause adverse health effects in humans, however, studies of coal dust toxicity are understandably mostly of adult populations. Children are particularly at risk from dust exposure in general, so it is reasonable to assume that coal dust creates an even greater risk for children than it does adults. The sampling to date certainly indicates that dust levels and composition at the school reach a level of concern. Particulate matter at levels found at the school has been shown to cause adverse effects in children."

According to the evacuation plans, if the Shumate Dam and coal sludge impoundment failed--as happened in eastern Kentucky in 2000 and at the TVA coal ash pond--the school children and communities below would have THREE MINUTES to flee.

Over 500 mountains, 1.5 million acres of hardwood forests, and 1,200 miles of streams, along with historic mountain communities, have been destroyed by mountaintop removal. Antrim CaskeyBorn in the eastern Kentucky coalfields, Winnie Fox's first protest took place in 1930, when she insisted on drinking from a segregated water foundation in Huntington, West Virginia, where her family moved when she was a child. A former board director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (ohvec.org)--one of the main organizations in the battle against mountaintop removal--Fox has been involved in stopping reckless pollution in the rivers and watersheds for decades, dating back to her earliest movement against Ashland Oil's pulp mill dumping of toxic material in the waterways.

Fox will be in a wheelchair today, but that will not stop her from risking arrest at the coal prep plant and Massey Energy site.

In a 2007 interview with Shannon Bell, Fox declared that her battle against mountaintop removal would be a lifelong commitment: "I would never give up, I will never stop. Because to me, that would be betraying everything that I am and everything I’ve ever been and everything I ever hoped to be. And I’ve seen too much suffering by these women [who are involved]. Too many sad stories."

Actress and environmental activist Daryl Hannah will speak at the Educational Rally on Sustainable Solutions for West Virginia at the Marsh Fork Elementary School today.

Hannah lives on a solar-powered ranch in the Rocky Mountains in the West. In an interview with the Central Florida Green Guide, Hannah said: "It’s a small but beautiful house made with salvaged materials. It’s both passive and active solar, meaning it faces southwest. It is bermed into the landscape and uses the natural movement of the sun and the insulation of the earth to heat/cool the structure."

Hannah is a long-time activist with various environmental groups and Greenpeace, and host of her own environmental blog -- www.dhlovelife.com

Here's a clip from the Sundance Channel about her work for solar energy.

Dr. James Hansen, the nation's foremost expert on climate change, will not only risk arrest today, but has agreed to debate Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship on the reality of climate change.

"Stopping coal emissions is 80 percent of the solution to climate change, and halting mountaintop removal is the essential, rational first step," Hansen wrote. "Any politician who claims to support our children and the environment, but also supports mountaintop removal, is either a fool, a liar, or both."

Hansen recently published a piece on Huffington Post on mountaintop removal and his decision to come to Coal River Valley.

And as the rally unfolds today, here's a clip of Marie Gunnoe, the recent Goldman Prize Award winner, whose own home and hollow has been been stripmined, and subjected to flooding seven times, describing the disastrous realities of the coal sludge dam above the elementary school and mountaintop removal blasting.

While the rally at Marsh Fork Elementary School and the nonviolent march continues today, it is important to recall a similar moment in West Virginia in 1923, when coal miners went out on strike. Chicago-native Mary "Mother" Jones arrived to support the miners. Her appeal to the West Virginia governor to support striking coal miner is a haunting parallel to today's West Virginia governor Joe Manchin, who has refused to deal with the Marsh Fork Elementary School, despite the health care studies and parent complaints and campaigns.

"Governor," I said, Mother Jones wrote in her autobiography,"listen-do you hear anything?"

He listened a moment.

"No, Mother Jones, I do not."

"I do," said I. "I hear women and little boys and girls..."

The boys and girls of Marsh Fork Elementary School, and the coalfield communities, along with Americans across the country, are calling on the West Virginia governor, the EPA, the Council for Environmental Quality, and President Barack Obama to listen.

More updates to come.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

I wrote a slightly snotty post about West Virginia recently, in response to Gov. Joe Manchin making coal the state rock. The point was that dependence on coal has produced more misery than benefit for West Virginians -- nothing to celebrate.

As it happens, at a recent event I had the opportunity to ask Manchin about it, and to debate it with several people afterward. All that was off the record ... but basically the argument came down to: coal has meant jobs, and anyway, what's the alternative?

Enter empirical data. Ken Ward Jr. reports:

Coal mining costs Appalachians five times more in early deaths as the industry provides to the region in jobs, taxes and other economic benefits, according to a groundbreaking new study co-authored by a West Virginia University researcher.

The peer-reviewed paper, "Mortality in Appalachian Coal Mining Regions: The Value of Statistical Life Lost," by Michael Hendryx of West Virginia University and Melissa Ahern of Washington State University, appears in the latest issue of Public Health Reports.

On Hendryx's past work:

Previous papers, also published in peer-reviewed journals, found that residents of coal-producing counties are more likely to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases and more likely to be hospitalized for certain health problems that are connected to coal pollution. Hendryx has also reported that coal county residents are more likely to contract lung cancer and generally suffer from excess numbers of premature deaths. In each of his studies, Hendryx has tried to weed out other possible factors -- such as smoking and diet -- to pinpoint coal's possible role in these public health problems.

Lots more on Ward's great blog, Coal Tattoo.

Here's the conclusion of the paper:

In response to this and other research showing the disadvantages of poor economic diversification, it seems prudent to examine how more diverse employment opportunities for the region could be developed as a means to reduce socio-economic and environmental disparities and thereby improve public health.

Potential alternative employment opportunities include development of renewable energy from wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, or hydropower sources; sustainable timber; small-scale agriculture; outdoor or culturally oriented tourism; technology; and ecosystem restoration.

The need to develop alternative economies becomes even more important when we realize that coal reserves throughout most of Appalachia are projected to peak and then enter permanent decline in about 20 years.

Economies tied exclusively to single natural resources tend not to fare well. Wiser West Virginia leaders would long ago have recognized the need to economically diversify. But they didn't. Will Manchin? He argues persuasively that he's taking some steps in that direction, but in practice he continues to make it his top priority to defend the coal industry from any disturbance. West Virginians deserve better -- they deserve choices.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?