Earthbytes

Save Coal River Mountain!

National Day of Action to Stop the Blasting on Coal River Mountain

The Brushy Fork impoundment is near the new blasting on Coal River Mountain. Photo by Vivian Stockman, OHVEC, flyover courtesy of Southwings.

All kinds of grassroots groups and national organizations have joined together today in a mass appeal to the Obama Administration to use its power to stop the destruction of Coal River Mountain -- the last mountain in the area to be untouched by mountaintop removal mining.

Blasting at Coal River Mountain is especially dangerous because of its proximity to the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment that keeps 8.2 billion gallons of toxic sludge from flooding over the Marsh Fork community below it. If shock waves being generated were to knock the structure apart, citizens would have very little time to get out of the way, and as many as 1,000 people could lose their lives.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy at Coal River Mountain today is that new mountaintop removal mining will foreclose a community option for clean water, good jobs, clean energy and homeland security. A detailed study has shown that the ridges on the mountain could support a 328 megawatt wind farm, and many residents have energetically put forward such a proposal to anyone who will listen.

Once the ridges are diminished by blasting, their wind-catching capacity would be substantially disabled. The community would continue to live with the threat of killer sludge floods unleashed by new blasting. More headwater streams, springs, seeps and bogs will be ripped apart and buried. Wells and surface waters already impacted by intense surface disturbance and toxic slurry leachate will suffer further assaults. The oppression and poverty of coal-unconsciousness will pollute the possibilities for a socially just economy where risk, burden, benefit and reward are shared equally.

Wars like this against people and nature in the name of resource extraction for financial gain of an elite corporate minority rage daily across the face of the Earth.

We, the people, need to rage back. Daily.

Today lets do it for Coal River Mountain and our sisters and brothers who live there. Click here and go for it!

   

Knoxville Premier of 'Coal Country'

via www.youtube.com

Hawk's Notes: I hope lots of folks will join us to celebrate the Knoxville premier of Coal Country on Monday, November 2nd, from 6 to 9 pm at the Square Room in Market Square.

The documentary itself -- a look at the ongoing coal war in Appalachia as told by miners who are desperate for coal jobs and coalfield activists who just want their homeland back -- is only one piece of a large project that is underwritten and supported by Sierra Club Productions and the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, with additional support from Adam J. Lewis, Earthjustice and the Park Foundation.

In addition to the film that will air nationwide on the Planet Green Network on November 14th, a Coal Country companion book, home video and CD also will be released this month.

Prior to the showing of Coal Country in Knoxville, the LoneTones will perform music from the CD, Still Moving Mountains. Following the film, a guest panel will lead a discussion and be available for questions on impacts of mountaintop removal mining, and other activities in the cycle of coal from extraction to coal ash disposal.

And, if you can produce appropriate photo ID, you can sip free beer (while supplies last!) provided by the New Belgium Brewery.

Tickets for the event sponsored locally by SOCM are $7 in advance or $10 at the door. See you there!

Smith Mountain Ash Dump Debate

The Tennessean (Nashville, TN) published two guest opinions and an editorial today on the proposal to build a coal ash landfill at Smith Mountain, site of the Turner mine in Cumberland County, Tennessee. Check them out, then join the debate!

Coal ash is not hazardous waste (Steve Wright, Smith Mountain Solutions)

This landfill shouldn't happen (Cathie Bird, SOCM)

More solid assurance needed against risk from ash site (Editorial staff, Tennessean)

Welcome to West Virginia -- The Extractive State?

via www.youtube.com

Hawk's Notes: I'm still working on a post about a remarkable past week for the campaign to end mountaintop removal mining, but here's a piece of film for the history books. A group of Coal River Valley folks went to speak with their Governor today, to declare a state of emergency as the life of Coal River Mountain hangs in the balance between citizens who love it and coal-mongers who want to blow it up. Check out this video for the bigger picture on the events in West Virginia today, and the Governor's dramatic renaming of the Mountain State. Also see Jeff Biggers' articles here, and here, and a great article on the event at Climate Ground Zero.

Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining by : Yale Environment 360

via e360.yale.edu

Hawk's Notes: This is one of the more awesome film documentations of the war on Appalachia that I have seen.

As I was watching, the nagging question came back to me as it often does when I see such things or hear people in such utter denial of the horrid consequences of mountaintop removal mining: how can people do such a thing to their homeland?

It occurs to me that the murder of mountains can only happen under the same circumstances that one human being can kill another -- somehow that other being must become an enemy, less than human, worthless.

I think this must at least unconsciously be how human beings could justify blowing up mountains: the Earth, nature itself, becomes an enemy that must be devalued and destroyed to save one's own life. Stuck in this imaginary, sometimes even psychotic, relationship to our planet, such people become blind to the fact that the opposite is true: to live, to preserve human life, we must cherish and love the life of the Earth as much as our own.

Understory: Cultural Genocide in Appalachia

via www.youtube.com

Hawk's Notes: I found this video of Goldman Prize winner Maria Gunnoe -- talking about all the mountaintop removal mining that surrounds her home in Bobwhite, WV -- in a great article posted by Brandon at The Understory, the official blog of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

The article includes several videos shot in a lengthy interview with Maria. What struck me as important about this post is the story it tells about intimidation, vandalism, dirty politics and outright violence against coalfield citizens who are brave enough to tell the truth about what's happening in Appalachia at the hands of corporate coal.

Add to this the poisoning of streams and wells, high cancer rates and health stressors, obliteration of forests, native plants and aquatic species that happen when mountaintop removal comes to the neighborhood -- all happening under federal SMCRA permits, by the way -- and I have to stand with Brandon, Maria and many others who see this as no less than cultural genocide.

Please check out the Understory article -- read it, watch it, then share it widely.

Jeff Biggers in The Nation: The Coalfield Uprising

When the Environmental Protection Agency declared this year on September 11 that all pending mountaintop removal mining permits in four Appalachian states stood in violation of the Clean Water Act and required further review, Lora Webb didn't have time to join in any celebrations. As she and her husband, Steve, a coal miner, packed up their possessions and left his family's ancestral property outside Lindytown, West Virginia, Lora was more concerned about finding a place to sleep that night.

via www.thenation.com

Hawk's Notes: Jeff Biggers article in The Nation takes a long, hard look at real impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining to real people, and a grassroots "coalition of the willing" to take on corporate coal.

This is an AWESOME article! Please use the link below the excerpt or go here.

EPA Takes Another Step in Review of 79 Mountaintop Removal Permits

On September 11th I posted an article of EPA's announcement that it would review 79 mountaintop removal mining applications, and summarized the steps in the ongoing review process. Yesterday, EPA notified the Corps of Engineers that -- in light of available project data, existing environmental conditions in the watersheds, and the nature of impacts predicted -- all 79 permit applications continue to raise "potentially significant environmental and water quality issues."

EPA says their concerns fall into 4 key areas having to do with avoidance and minimization of impacts, potential water quality violations, inadequate information regarding cumulative impacts and inadequate evaluation of mitigation plans to compensate loss of headwater streams.

Many of the points made in EPA's September 30th letter to the Corps echo concerns that grassroots and environmental activists have been yelling about for years, hoping somebody was listening.

Now that I see some of those arguments smiling back at me from an real EPA document, I'm sensing some light at the end of the corporate mountaintop mining shaft that Appalachian mountains, watersheds and communities have endured for way too long.

While coalfield activists may pause for a breath, nobody that I know plans to hibernate or hold a victory dance. Yesterdays announcement is still just one more step toward protection of people and nature through adequate assessment of impacts and consistent enforcement of the law.

Lots of folks have been writing about all this since the news broke yesterday. Here are some links to other articles and documents:

Letter from EPA to Corps of Engineers on 9/30/09

EPA finalizes list of 79 permits for further reviews

EPA: All 79 mining permits need further review

The Alliance of Appalachia Praises EPA Decision

EPA Concern Over Mining Permits -- 49 Are in Kentucky

Advocates Fight Mountaintop Removal --IPS

EPA Holds Up Coal-Mining Permits as Firms Fume

Be sure to let EPA and President Obama know what you think. For more information and to take action, go here.

The War on Appalachia and Hedges' "War on Language"

AP / Mohammed Ballas

A Palestinian boy aims a toy gun as he stands next to a mural of militants in the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp. The Arabic graffiti reads: “Many people held weapons but few used them against their enemies.”

via www.truthdig.com

"Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech," notes Chris Hedges in his great article today, The War on Language.

I'm working on a paper at the moment that speaks to this very issue, though from the perspective of psychoanalysis and my experiences as a grassroots social and environmental justice activist. When I read this article, I snagged it for my archives as a possible reference for my paper.

Hedges uses graffiti on walls in Gaza as an example of impoverished language that traps us in "a binary world and renders us children with weapons."

To me, the language of engineering and politics is impoverished with respect to the rich, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional language of headwater streams or watershed ecosystems.

A point that I'm developing in my paper is that this is essentially a restriction on the language that citizens can bring to the defense of nature and our communities. And that puts limits on what we can do or how fast we can do what's needed to avoid the tragic consequences of poverty-stricken language being played out on Appalachian mountaintops.

With this article Hedges shines a light on these language wars from a different arena of human interaction. The situations he talks about ring a bell for me as I think about people trying to protect their homelands from the coal barons.

Stop Work Order Halts Fracking Operation in Pennsylvania

The stop-work order, which was accompanied by new citations issued for the third spill, will interrupt development of seven new wells that Cabot is currently drilling, and intending to fracture, in Susquehanna County. The citations were similar to those levied earlier in the week, including a failure to contain fracturing fluids.

    The state's order gives Cabot two weeks to re-submit an "accurate" Pollution Prevention and Contingency Plan and Control and Disposal Plan for its well pad sites in the county. It gives the company three weeks to complete an engineering study of the equipment and practices used for hydraulic fracturing.

via www.truthout.org

The people of Dimmock, in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania finally got some big help from the state to stop Cabot's hydraulic fracking in their community until those operations undergo an intensive review.

I really appreciate Abrahm Lustgarten's ongoing reportage of this important issue. I can't imagine living with a threat of exploding water faucets in my house. I hope lots of folks will stand strong in support of this community and others where this underground assault on water quality and homeland security is coming to light.

Please see the whole article here. You can see the DEP's press release here.