Learning In The Shadow
Posted on February 2, 2008 | By Denny Tyler | 2 Comments
This entire post is related to the video in Bluemountainmama’s post.
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I have to say, one thing that really gets on my nerves – when proponents of coal try to appeal to my patriotic values. I’m going to clear something up. I love this country from one end to the other, top to bottom. I put myself higher than no one. It really gets to me when I go up hollows where people live in the shadow of apparently one of the most lucrative industries in the nation and they don’t have clean water to drink, their cars are covered in coal dust – imagine what their lungs look like. These people are reaping absolutely none of the benefits and are, in fact, suffering so you and I don’t have to pay higher energy bills. I don’t know about you but that makes me feel pretty damn guilty. I’m having a tough time with the patriotic feeling.
But you know what, it’s not you and me doing it. It is a few people high up in the food chain reaping all the rewards and they are plowing straight through the Appalachia’s and over or through any residents that get in the way. What has stopped residents from speaking so far? lack of funds, no representation, FEAR
“In the years since high-tech earthmoving machinery made mountain topping increasingly attractive to the energy industry, more and more of West Virginia’s total production of coal—some 154 million tons (140 million metric tons) in 2004—has come from its decapitated highlands. Relative to Western coal (Wyoming is the nation’s top coal producer), second ranked West Virginia’s low-sulfur bituminous burns with a cleaner, hotter efficiency in the electric power plants of America. And taxes from bituminous coal help fuel a large part of the state’s economy.
But some West Virginians have been paying a hurtful price for their state’s good fortune—and the coal industry’s cost-cutting efficiency. In 1948 some 125,000 men worked in the mines of West Virginia. By 2005 there were fewer than 19,000, and most of these were employed in underground mines. Nowadays, it just doesn’t take many hands to wrestle coal off the top of a mountain.”
The residents have absolutely nothing to look forward to. Unless you consider the hope that one day King Coal moves out and leaves them just a little of their mountains and a little health to enjoy those mountains.
Somebody please help me understand – IF coal is so valuable to the nation then why aren’t the people suffering for coal of any value to the nation? That makes no sense to me. That would be like telling a major league baseball player to let the rest of his body go to hell as long as the throwing arm stayed fit and firm.
I wish I could type and show strong sarcasm then you would know what I meant when I say – patriotism.
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Coal Slurry/Sludge Impoundments
What is a slurry/sludge impoundment? – Sludge Safety.org
“In neighboring Kentucky on an October morning in 2000, the bottom of a waste pond near the town of Inez collapsed, pouring 250 million gallons (946 million liters) of slurry—25 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster—into an inactive underground mine shaft. From there, the slurry surged to the mine’s two exits and flooded two creeks hell-bent for the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy and the Ohio River beyond. Miraculously, there was no loss of human life, though 20 miles (32 kilometers) of stream valley would be declared an aquatic dead zone, water systems in ten counties would have to be shut down, and the black slick would eventually reach out toward the riverfront in Cincinnati. Lawyers for the Martin County Coal Company, a Massey subsidiary and owner of the impoundment, blamed the accident on excessive rainfall, which was simply another way of saying what had been said at Buffalo Creek. It was God’s fault.“
In one ongoing battle the concerns are from citizens who have children and grandchildren going to a local elementary school that sits in the shadow of a coal slurry impoundment.
These are our children…
Please read about the fight to get our children out of harms way!!
Special note – please pay close attention to what the teachers and the principal of the school say and then tell me how would you like to hear that from the guardians of your childs future? I will be writing a post strictly for the school kids within the next couple of days.
Learning In The Shadow
You can help!!
Pennies of Promise
If nothing else go there and e-mail them – let them know they are not alone. They’ve been forgotten too many times already by King Coal.
And yet – it goes on…
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Related reading -
Storing Coal Slurry
Buffalo Creek Flood – Wikipedia
Italicized paragraphs from – Mining The Summits, When Mountains Move – National Geographic.
Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation’s character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us. – Aldo Leopold
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February 3rd, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
the situation going on at mark fork elementary is an embarrasment for WV and our governor.
and the poeple living along th big sandy river are still suffering consequences from that sludge dam break. they can’t plant anything in their soil, have had adverse health effects, etc. and what is crazy is that you heard nothing about it in the media!
February 3rd, 2008 @ 9:28 pm
I don’t ever remember hearing about it – I was living outside Cleveland at the time.
As far as the kids – I’m speechless – How great a sacrifice that would be… for what? a non-renewable resource