All Hands On Deck: Coal Truth
By Cindy Rank, West Virginia Headwaters Waterkeeper

The Surface Mining Act at 30: The View from Appalachia
On November 13, 2007, I testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the 30th Anniversary of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Congress passed the law in 1977 to protect the environment and health of communities in coal country. I told the committee that the very heart and soul of our mountain way of life is being ripped apart while regulatory agencies twist the law to aid the coal industry.

Mountaintop removal is the scourge of communities in Appalachia. Entire mountains are blown apart to allow access to seams of coal that lie within. Emotions run high — as dust, blasting, water pollution and flooding push people out of their homes. For those brave enough to challenge illegally granted permits in the courts, threats against home and family are now rampant. We find ourselves embroiled in difficult and lengthy efforts to hold regulatory agencies accountable. Citizens must hire independent hydrologists, biologists, and other legal and technical experts to challenge illegal practices at great personal and financial expense. We find ourselves confronting angry neighbors who work in the mines; one family’s livelihood pitted against another family’s home and heritage.

Today in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia the situation is explosive — literally. Streams disappear in an instant as coal companies blast apart mountains and bulldoze rubble into valleys. These ‘valley fills’ have buried or damaged more than 1,200 miles of irreplaceable headwater streams. What’s left is a wasteland. Well over 400,000 acres of the world’s most productive and diverse temperate hardwood forests have already disappeared, and it is predicted that figure could increase to 1.4 million acres — 2,200 square miles — by the end of the decade if nothing is done to limit this practice.

The federal Office of Surface Mining now wants to gut the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, the most important safeguard under the law for protecting streams. The change would eliminate the current prohibition against mining within 100 feet of a stream. In its place a new rule would instruct coal companies to merely “minimize” environmental harm to the extent possible. The proposed rule is a violation of both the Surface Mining Reclamation Act and the Clean Water Act.

Congress and the Office of Surface Mining must withdraw the change to the buffer rule and stop the insanity that is now taking place in Appalachia. As the late Judge Charles Haden recognized in 1999, this is a bell that once rung, can’t be unrung. Many of our human mistakes can be corrected, even polluted streams might be restored over long periods of time, but we will never get our mountains, streams and springs back again. In short, it’s time to ban mountaintop removal coal mining. w

What’s My Connection to Mountaintop Removal?
Plug in your zip code at www.ILoveMountains.org and find how much of your electricity is coming from mountaintop removal coal mining. Brought to you by Appalachian Voices, home of the Upper Watauga Riverkeeper, and partners throughout Appalachia.