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by Vivian Stockman
Outreach Coordinator
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
This hollow is like so many others-a twisted, narrow ribbon of fertile
bottomland separating the steep, convoluted mountains of Southern
West Virginia. Here, as in all these valleys, it's easy to see that
this sheltering, isolating landscape molded the culture of the Appalachian
folk as they made a living off what they could harvest both from above
and below the ground.
A rock-strewn stream meanders through the hollow. Minnows dart in
and out of the shade cast by elderberry bushes, scrubby willows and
a trio of sycamores, their upper trunks nearly all white. Come autumn,
a woman will pick the elderberries for a cobbler made from a recipe
given to her mother by her grandmother. Each of them grew up in this
hollow, sharing with the birds the berries from these same bushes.
A pickerel frog, perhaps startled by a muskrat, springs in a graceful
arc from the bank into the cold water with barely a splash. The flute-like
trill of a wood thrush floats out from the branches of a stream-bank
dogwood that, in response to its prime edge habitat, spreads wider
and taller than its counterparts in the woods.
A tidy farmhouse sits alongside a little brook that flows into the
bigger stream. Here, it's just a few yards before the gardens and
clipped lawn surrounding the house give way to the dense thickets
of hazelnut, blackberry and blooming multiflora rose, marking the
dark edge of the woods. A deer bounds into this maze, and disappears
within seconds. Now, in late May, the landscape is utterly dominated
by a breeze-tossed wall of many shades of green-the leaves of scores
of different kinds of trees, each rooted in the unfathomably ancient
soil of the Appalachian Mountains. The tree-covered slopes rise hundreds
of feet above the hollow, so that only a sliver of perfect azure sky,
complete with cotton candy clouds, is visible from the old homeplace.
Inside the woods, life expresses itself in myriad ways- this is the
mixed mesophytic forest, home to one of the most richly diverse plant
communities of all temperate climates on earth. A recent shower has
tumbled the last tulip tree flowers to the forest floor. Earthy soil
scents mingle with the light, fruity aroma of the blossoms. The heart-shaped
leaves of the wood violet tell of wildflowers missed, while a late
bluet sways in the slightest breeze. Sunlight dapples the yellow-green
fronds of maidenhair ferns, as they bob on delicate black stalks below
a towering white oak. Velvety, emerald green moss and scaly gray-green
lichen carpet a sandstone boulder that serves as a resting perch for
anyone making her way through the forest.
The diversity of the woods shapes the activities of local people's
lives. In early spring, folks gather ramps and greens for tonics-an
internal spring-cleaning. Molly moochers, or morels, reward the sharp-eyed
person who knows the exact moment in spring when rainfall will sprout
these delicacies from the damp soil. The seasons, too, dictate when
one should scramble about the steep woods, hunting herbs like black
cohosh and ginseng, both for personal medicines and for some cash
income. Locals pluck wintergreen from its creepings along the forest
floor and dig the roots of sassafras saplings to flavor mugs of aromatic
tea. They harvest fallen trees and fell hardwoods for firewood and
lumber. In fall, black walnut and hickories feed animals of the two-
and four-legged variety. Some of those four-leggeds fall to the hunter's
gun, providing protein for families throughout the winter. After the
first freeze, people shake the persimmon tree for its custard-like
fruits that dangle with an offer of sweet sustenance. So the woods
cycle through the seasons, from stark winter to lush summer jungle.
Back down in the hollow, people resting on the front porch mark the
onset of a spring evening by the increased nattering of a catbird
mimicking its cousins. As twilight fades into night, the whippoorwill,
named for its song, begins its repetitive call.
This was the beauty, serenity and bounty of this hollow up until a
few years ago. Now, the whippoorwill's cry no longer heralds dusk
and few people remain to live within this landscape's seasonal rhythms.
Some days, the last few folks can still hear the melodious songs of
the ever-dwindling number of birds, the bubbling of the brooks and
the whisperings of the leaves. Other days, when the wind blows differently,
the blasts and mechanical rumblings and beeps of nearby destruction
shatter the soundscape. The din draws ever closer-a noisy foreboding
of the annihilation heading this way.
Profit-crazed coal companies that practice mountaintop removal / valley
fill coal mining are coming to claim this hollow, despite the objections
of the people who want to stay on the land they love…people who,
so far, have resisted the buyout offers. Long ago, their ancestors,
deceived by the slick talk and of company reps, signed away their
rights to the coal deposits beneath their land. Of course, those ancestors
could never have conceived of mountaintop removal.
For over a century, the coal has been mined from the ground beneath
these hills and hollows. For many families living here, the mining
jobs provided cash that helped buy what the land could not offer.
That cash came with a toll, as tens of thousands of miners died from
accidents, or from black lung disease, or from battling the companies
in order to establish unions. The coal industry promised prosperity,
but the wealth was mostly whisked out of state. To this day, the majority
of West Virginians have very little monetary wealth compared to folks
in other states.
Sadly, now the area's most important natural wealth-the forests, the
streams and the culture-is being devastated so that companies can
get more coal, more quickly and more cheaply, with far fewer miners.
The moonscapes-the biological deserts-that are the aftermath of mountaintop
removal have come to Southern West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and,
to a limited degree, portions of Virginia and Tennessee.
To get to the multiple, thin layers of low-sulfur coal that underlie
these mountains, coal companies first raze the verdant forests, scraping
away the topsoil and its priceless bank of seeds. In a mad dash to
get to the coal, the trees are usually shoved out of the way, not
even harvested as lumber. The understory herbs like ginseng and goldenseal
are trashed with an arrogant disregard for their current worth, let
alone their value to future generations.
Up to 800 feet of denuded mountaintops and the underlying rock is
then systematically blown up. The explosives used can register anywhere
from 10 to 100 times the strength of the explosion that tore open
the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The blasts send health-endangering,
silica-laden dust into the air. The shock waves can travel miles from
the site, sometimes ferociously rattling the foundations of homes,
as well as people's nerves. The blasting has affected groundwater,
drying up wells or ruining the taste and color of the water. "Fly
rock," more aptly named fly boulder, can occasionally rain off
the blasting sites, endangering residents' homes and lives.
The layers of coal are then scooped out by giant draglines, up to
20 stories tall. Behemoth dump trucks cart hundreds of millions of
tons of "overburden"-the former mountaintops-to the narrow,
adjacent valleys. The trucks dump the rubble over the sides, filling
the valleys and burying the headwaters streams, which scientists say
provide habitat for an unusually high diversity of aquatic organisms.
These critters act as the biological engines that drive the life downstream.
Across Appalachia, according to a draft environmental impact statement
on mountaintop removal, valley fills already have buried forever 724
miles of streams and have negatively impacted a total of 1,200 stream
miles. Some aquatic biologists argue that the figure is much greater,
and that the destruction more harmful than most people realize. Selenium
is just one toxic metal that has been found in high concentrations
in the water seeping from valley fills.
Already, mountaintop removal has claimed nearly 400,000 acres of forested
mountains. Entire communities, built long ago in hollows the companies
now desire for valley fills, have been bought out. For other communities,
mountaintop removal grinds ever closer, and worries about the blasting
damages become almost routine, as even bigger problems claim attention.
Every time it rains, folks who live close to this greed-crazed form
of mining get scared. Really scared.
Government studies have shown that valley fills can dramatically worsen
floods associated with heavy summer thunderstorms. Residents really
didn't need these studies to back up their experience-thousands of
acres of bulldozed-away forests, blown-up mountains and rubble-filled
valleys just don't handle rain like intact ecosystems do. In Southern
West Virginia, flooding in 2001 and 2002 killed 15 people, destroyed
thousands of homes and damaged thousands more. Recovery efforts so
far have topped $150 million. Residents blame mountaintop removal
and virtually unregulated logging for making the floods far worse
than they would have been without these disturbances.
Floods don't just come off valleys fills. Mountaintop removal generates
huge amounts of waste. While the solid waste becomes the fills, the
liquid waste, created when coal is washed and processed for market,
is stored in massive slurry impoundments that loom above communities.
These lakes of slurry contain water contaminated with a black, toxic
brew of carcinogenic chemicals-used to wash the coal-as well as particles
laden with all the heavy metals found in coal, including arsenic and
mercury. Several times a year, water plant operators are forced to
shut down drinking water intake valves as upstream waters are blackened
by spills from coal processing plants and sludge impoundments.
In 2000, the floor of one coal sludge impoundment near Inez, Ky.,
partially broke through into an abandoned underground mine. Over 300
million gallons of sludge spewed into people's yards, in some places
up to fifteen feet deep, and fouled 75 miles of waterways. Several
similar impoundments still sit above schools and towns. People believe
it's a matter of "when" not "if" for the next
disaster. They fearfully wonder if, this time, someone will be killed.
For years, while coal companies have had their way with the coalfields,
both state and federal regulators have failed to enforce mining laws
that would rein in some of the worst abuses. Many politicians, secure
in the coal industry's pocket, have ignored requests for help. Feeling
under siege, people mourn the loss of their homeplaces. They question
the wisdom of those who can rationalize such devastation as necessary
for meeting the nation's "cheap" energy needs. And, they
turn to each other for answers. With the help of West Virginia environmental
groups like Coal River Mountain Watch, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, as well as Kentuckians for
the Commonwealth, people are rising up to demand an end to this ecocidal
form of coal mining. They organize, educate, litigate, and strategize
to save what is left of the central Appalachian forest-and they are
making strides to save this land and its people. Please join them.
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