The Coal Summit
June 20-22, 2002
The Charleston Civic Center

June 20-22, 2002
Photos by Vivian Stockman

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OVEC co-director Dianne Bady, at podium, introduces the Friday morning panel on the environmental impacts of coal, left to right, Cindy Rank of WV Highlands Conservancy, hydrogeologist Rick Eades appearing on behalf of OVEC, and Wheeling Jesuit University aquatic biologist Ben Stout.

Cindy Rank has been an activist on coal issues for 25 years. She enumerated just some of the many, many environmental harms associated with the extraction of coal--underground mine drainage pools, (acidic underground lakes of up to 100,000 acres, which could break to the surface creating a catastrophic, toxic tidal wave) streams running orange and lifeless due to acid mine drainage, coal waste impoundments, and streams buried under valley fills. To add a massive insult to an unfathomably huge injury, mountaintop removal operations that Cindy saw on her summit flyover were burning the razed forests, instead of, at the very least, hauling the hardwood trees away for the timber market.

Ben Stout opened his presentation with a slide of Carol Jackson's mock cemetery, which represents the streams forever snuffed out by mountaintop removal. Ben said that most streams in West Virginia are not on maps and that the US Geologic Survey admits its maps are inaccurate. Ben has walked plenty of streams that aren't on maps, and his studies have found critters that indicate perennial streams, even in streams labeled as ephemeral or intermittent on maps.

Ben said valley fills should be more accurately labeled valley DUMPS. He bemoaned the fact that the coal industry is annihilating all kinds of biologically crucial fauna under valley dumps. He said reports that 1,000 miles of streams have already been lost in West Virginia are incorrect--the 1,000 mile figure is an extreme under-estimation. Mountaintop removal uses some of the world's largest equipment and, cumulatively, the world's most massive explosions. Valley dumps destroy the energy and nutrient flow created by headwater streams, thus endangering the downstream river continuum.

Ben said that for every acre of valley dump, at the very least, two acres of land surface are lost (the steep natural terrain of southern WV has lots of nooks and crannies--perfect habitat for biologically important critters--making for more surface area).

Ben noted that the forests and streams are intimately tied together in the web of life. The streams provide food for migrating neotropical birds, our favorite songbirds. The streams are a critical link in the ecosystem.

"We have the most valuable commodity--fresh water. It is worth a whole lot more than coal--now and in the future," Ben said. "Water is a tremendously valuable commodity we are throwing away."

Rick Eades displays one of a set of maps he, Josh Beck and Bobby Nutter created using WV Department of Environmental Protection and Arcview software. The maps graphically display the extent of mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia counties. The mapping project was made possible by a Progressive Technology Project grant to OVEC. 

The maps Rick, Josh and Bobby produced for OVEC indicate that coal companies' mountaintop removal and other strip mining operations have obliterated about 95,000 acres of mountains and valleys in the Coal River basin alone.

So much for the coal company propaganda that "West Virginia needs more flat land."

Rick said there is enough flattened land in the Coal River basin ALONE to allow all of the following:

• 5 5,000-acre Recreational Parks (25,000 acres)
• 10 1,000-acre Prison Sites (10,000 acres) (Prisons are of the state's favorite ideas for "economic development," even though JUST ONE prison built on a MTR site in Kentucky has already spent $40 million in trying to stabilize the shifting rubble of MTR-flattened land.)
• 50 500-acre Shopping Malls (25,000 acres) (Not to mention that the MTR blasting is driving people away, so where would the shoppers come from?)
• 100 100-acre Trailer Parks to relocate MTR-induced flood victims (10,000 acres) (The significant (several hundred feet) elevation of the scalped mountains above all major roads and infrastructure makes "flatlander" arguments moot. Valley fills/dumps will settle differentially and are among the least stable sites to build on this side of the West Bank.)
• 400 50-acre School Sites (20,000 acres) (Where would the students come from? Rick thinks WV has closed 400 public schools in the past 20-plus years, during many years of record coal production.)

Rick noted that would still leave about 5,000 acres for construction of a Coal River monument to Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association and chief mouthpiece for the coal industry's blather about how great the industry has been for West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the nation.

Josh Beck, Rick Eades and Bobby Nutter with their maps.

The crowd, of about 150, listens as Rick enumerates the true costs of coal.

Harvard Ayers of Appalachian Voices opens the panel on the "The Human and Community Impacts of Coal Mining." Jane Kochersperger of the Clean Air Task Force (not pictured) moderated the session. Panelists, left to right, were Coal River Mountain Watch's (Whitesville, WV) Janice Nease and Judy Bonds and Tri-State Citizens Mining Network's (PA) Mimi Filippelli and Beverly Braverman. Janice and Judy detailed the horrors of life in the shadow of mountaintop removal / valley fill strip mining, while Mimi and Beverly spoke about the terror associated with living above a longwall mining operation. 

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