With gas prices increasing almost daily, I decided to follow the vacation-close-to-home directive issued in the Sunday Gazette-Mail and took an enlightening day trip.
Less than an hour from Charleston, with a leisurely itinerary, I'll share with you my mountaintop removal tour.
10:30 a.m.: depart Kanawha City with Jack Spadaro, tour guide. Jack is a mining engineer with 42 years of experience. He was fired by the Bush administration in 2004 for refusing to doctor a report on the worst environmental disaster ever in the Eastern United States, a coal slurry spill in 2000 in Martin County, Ky. These days he's an expert witness for folks who find themselves entangled in litigation with coal companies. We head south on the Turnpike to the Cabin Creek exit, arriving at the home of Larry Gibson around 11:15 a.m.
Larry and his kin are holdouts on Kayford Mountain, refusing to move despite 20 years of mining around their property. He's been threatened in one way or another 130 times over the years. I don't ask why he doesn't move, because I already know. We're both Scots- Irish and giving in is not in our genes. When generations of your family live, die and lie buried in a piece of land, it is sacred, and you don't just leave. Larry's tenacity affords visitors the opportunity for an up-close look at mountaintop removal mining. The sight is breathtaking in a way completely unrelated to beauty. I'd seen it in pictures and documentaries, but nothing quite prepared me for the reality. It is an abomination. Scarred earth all around, with a couple of "reclaimed" areas, one of which is a steep hillside full of gullies formed by rainwater. There is no wildlife to be seen, and Jack tells me of a study that found 50 to 60 species of birds in the remaining forested areas of the Gibson property and two species in a nearby reclaimed area.
The air is full of dust stirred up by the heavy equipment and it's very irritating to my eyes. When we return to Larry's house, he and his Uncle Vernon tell us of "accidental" mine waste discharges and sickened residents. Blasting occurs for the second time that day as we stand talking.
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