Broken mountains, broken hearts

These Appalachian Mountains are some of the most ancient on Earth, and though modest in size compared to the Himalayans or the Rockies, their ability to support one of the most thriving and biologically diverse regions in the world is unsurpassed.

But in a matter of months, the creation borne from millions of years of metamorphosis can be undone. Rolling mountainsides and valleys once covered in thick canopies of evergreens and hardwoods, floors of ferns and mosses and clear, rippling brooks are transformed into gray, barren moonscape. Trees are clear-cut, then burned. Peaks are leveled by explosives and massive machines. Streams disappear beneath debris. A chorus of birds, squirrels and frogs is silenced. The air, once cool and crisp, becomes choked with black dust.

The bounty of Eden, reduced to the ashes of Gomorrah.

All of this happens as part of a mining practice called mountaintop removal, as companies search for thin beds of coal that are deep below the earth’s surface.

“It looks like the scalping of a mountain,” said Ann League of eastern Tennessee.

For nearly a decade, Appalachian Voices, based in Boone, N.C., has been working hand-in-hand with community members and organizations across the Appalachian region to preserve the mountains they love. Through the website iLoveMountains.org, Appalachian Voices is creating personal connections to its movement to end mountaintop removal and bringing the issue to a national audience.

Fewer Miners, Fewer Mountains

Coal is currently the most abundant fossil fuel produced in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Today, almost half of all electricity produced in the country is powered by coal. To create electricity, plants burn coal to make steam, which turns turbines that generate electricity. In the mid-20th century, advances in machinery led coal companies to turn to surface mining—also known as strip mining—which eventually overtook underground mining as the dominant method of coal extraction.

The result? Coal companies are able to increase productivity by mining more coal with significantly less manpower. The number of coal mining employees in the Appalachian region has dramatically decreased, from 124,000 in 1973 to 46,507 in 2003, according to EIA data.

“They’ve replaced people with explosives and huge pieces of equipment,” said Willa Coffey Mays, executive director of Appalachian Voices.

Although the advent of surface mining has caused a sharp dropoff in the number of mining jobs, the coal industry continues to be seen as a major source of employment in the Appalachian region. The West Virginia Coal Association asserts that every coal-mining job creates another five to eight jobs in the economy. “More than 50,000 West Virginia families depend on coal mining for their livelihoods,” the association states in its “Coal Facts 2009” report. West Virginia coal miners earn an average of more than $62,500 annually—more than twice the amount of the statewide average for all workers, the report said. The Tennessee Mining Association cites more than 1,000 coal mining jobs in its state; in Virginia, according to its mining association, 5,400 miners are employed by the coal industry.

One type of surface mining is mountaintop removal mining, a practice that removes between 250 and 600 feet from peaks and ridges to reach thin seams of coal underground. The massive amounts of soil and rock removed using heavy explosives and gigantic, multi-story machines—known as “fill” or “overburden”—is then pushed into valleys. The practice became increasingly prevalent in the 1990s, when demand for low-sulfur coal, a cleaner-burning form of coal found in Appalachia, increased due to strengthened Clean Air Act requirements, a May 2010 article in Congressional Digest explained.

According to Appalachian Voices, to date, nearly 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried and more than 500 mountains have been severely impacted or destroyed by mountaintop removal.

A Voice for a Region

Founded in 1997, Appalachian Voices describes itself as an environmental nonprofit committed to protecting the land, air and water of the central and southern Appalachian region. Initially, the organization focused on forest issues, but ending mountaintop removal coal mining soon became its central rallying cry.

“We started our campaign to end mountaintop removal in 2002,” said Mays. “At that time, it was an issue that few people had heard of. Since that time, it’s become a national movement.”

Today, Appalachian Voices has 17 full-time employees at its headquarters in Boone and offices in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington, D.C. It is one of 13 organizations in the Alliance for Appalachia, a regional coalition working to end mountaintop removal.

“We’re advocating for an absolute and immediate end to mountaintop removal,” Mays said. “We recognize that mining and coal is an important part of the economies of central Appalachia…[but] there are other ways to mine. We are not opposed as an organization to all forms of mining, although we’d like to see a transition to cleaner forms of energy.”

In January 2007, J.W. Randolph went to work in Washington, D.C. as Appalachian Voices’ legislative associate. Randolph, who grew up in a cabin his father built about an hour north of Chattanooga, Tenn., in the hills along the Tennessee River, has been involved with Appalachian Voices since 2004. 

“We believed that the best way to stop mountaintop removal forever is to pass a federal law that bans the practice,” Randolph explained. Randolph and others have asked federal legislators to pass the Appalachia Restoration Act in the U.S. Senate and the Clean Water Protection Act in the House, bills that would in effect eliminate mountaintop removal mining by prohibiting the dumping of debris into streams and forcing companies to transport mining waste off site.

Most recently, mountaintop removal opponents have made inroads with the executive branch, as the EPA under the Obama Administration has strengthened its enforcement of regulations with regard to mountaintop mining. 

“The agencies agreed to let science be the guidance for regulating mountaintop removal,” Randolph said. “They saw that valley fills were having a negative impact on water quality and human health.”

Of course, the mission has met with resistance. When supporters traveled to Sundial, W.Va., to advocate for the relocation of an elementary school away from a nearby coal sludge impoundment, local coal miners were excused from work so they could participate in a counter-demonstration. “There was a lot of intimidation,” Mays said. “One of the coal trucks tried to force us off the road. The people who live there who have spoken out against this practice face a lot of retaliation from the people who work for the coal companies.”

“Coal miners have a lot of pride in their job and in the heritage of coal mining,” said Daniel Hawkins, 31, a fourth-generation underground coal miner for three years in Dickenson County in southwestern Virginia before leaving his job and taking to blogging about the coal industry. “You work extremely hard [and] face a lot of dangers to provide for your family. The coal industry has been able to put a lot of money together to create media and propaganda surrounding environmentalists as people who are out to end coal-mining jobs.

“If there’s any kind of picture that’s been painted about the coal miners, [it’s] how these are people that are forced to do this job because it’s their only choice in life is to be a coal miner,” Hawkins said. “The truth is, at least for me, is that there are choices.”

Activism in a New Age

Prior to 2006, the extent and scale of mountaintop removal was unknown to much of the general public—even within the Appalachian region. 

“People didn’t quite understand what was going on until they saw it for themselves,” said Benji Burrell, technologist for Appalachian Voices. “We knew we had to explain and show the scale of what was happening.”

Then, along came Google Earth.

The program, which allows its users to zoom in on any place on earth using extensive satellite imagery, became an effective tool for Appalachian Voices’ mission. The organization mapped the locations of mountaintop removal sites, allowing users to click on a site and zoom in to see photographic images of the sites from above. Google Earth technology is a key piece of iLoveMountains.org, a site developed by Appalachian Voices and the Alliance for Appalachia that started in 2006. Chief among the website’s features is the “My Connection” tool, which, by typing in one’s zip code, allows users to see their connection to mountaintop removal by showing which mountaintop removal sites sell coal to their power companies. The website also includes videos of existing and potential mine sites and the people and environments affected, online forms for easily contacting government representatives and news updates.

“The site is designed to be a resource and action center for people all around the country—not just in Appalachia,” Burrell said. “If you live in Washington or California, your representative still plays an integral role in what happens in Appalachia.”

Since 2006, more than 46,000 people have signed the online pledge on iLoveMountains.org to help end mountaintop removal. As of early December 2010, supporters have sent 155,000 letters to government leaders through the site, and there have been nearly 2 million page views of the website and 700,000 views of its videos.

“iLoveMountains.org has been one of the main vehicles that takes this regional issue to all 50 states,” Randolph said. “When we’re talking with someone from southern Minnesota, or California, or Maine, they’ll tell us, ‘We’re hearing from our constituents about this issue.’ We can never spend more money than the coal lobby, but we know that people across the country are fed up with mountaintop removal and want to see it end. That’s the advantage that we have.”

You might have seen the “I ♥ Mountains” bumper stickers. Originating with the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy as a response to “I ♥ Coal” stickers, the phrase has since become a mantra of the movement to end mountaintop removal. “That’s the messaging that grabs people the best. If you don’t live in Appalachia, what’s mountaintop removal?” Burrell remarked.

Virginia Mining Association Director Bill Bledsoe, however, stresses that environmentalists aren’t the only ones who love mountains.

“I can assure you the coal miners love the mountains as well,” he said. “The coal miners are very protective of their mountains. They know their use of the land is temporary and they’re restoring it to a productive use.”

A Way Forward

While coal is a finite resource, it could impact the region for many years to come.

“In the 140-year history of the state’s coal industry, only a small percentage of the state’s coal reserves have been extracted,” according to the West Virginia Coal Association’s “Coal Facts 2009” report. “The state’s remaining mineable reserves amount to about 52 billion tons. West Virginia is in no danger of running out of coal.”

But those working to end practices such as mountaintop removal and pollution from coal aren’t waiting until it all runs out. They’re working for alternatives now.

Through its campaigns Wise Energy for Virginia and Re-energizing Appalachia, Appalachian Voices opposes the opening of new coal-fired power plants, promotes energy efficiency and supports the development of sustainable, clean energy sources such as wind.

Others working in the coal regions maintain that alternative industries and jobs must exist before the Appalachian region can begin to transition away from coal. Formed a couple of years ago and based in Williamson, W.Va., The JOBS Project works to increase opportunities for local ownership, employment and education in renewable energy in central Appalachia.

“We realized that people are very protective over the coal industry, but they’re not scared of new things,” said Nick Getzen, media consultant for The JOBS Project. “Folks know we need to do something to create jobs.”

The JOBS Project is working with regional businesses and property owners to install photovoltaic solar panels and is exploring sites, including Monroe Country, W.Va., to locate wind turbines. In some cases, the renewable energy developers will be able to sell renewable energy credits to easily recover their investments.

“A lot of people, they just need to see that it’s real,” Getzen said. “We have to shift the economy toward renewables—then it’s not a horrific transition for this area.”

Everyday People Impacting Appalachia

Through the hard work of a talented, dedicated staff and thousands of people who love the Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian Voices is now recognized as a national leader in the fight to end mountaintop removal.

“Appalachian Voices produces more work with the fewest amount of people than I’ve ever encountered in my life,” said Mays, who has spent 25 years working with environmental and nonprofit organizations.

“I think that after 150 years of mining coal in Appalachia, people are beginning to have an impact. We’ve watched regular everyday people of Appalachia have an impact on policy and Washington,” Randolph said. “To me, it means the world to be able to work alongside folks who would be my neighbors who are there to protect their homes…and that means that my daughter’s going to grow up in a better world.”

Altering the land and its people

It was 3:30 or 4 in the morning when the phone rang.

“My uncle called me and told me to watch the water,” said Melissa Lester, 34, a resident of Pigeon Creek, located near Williamson in southern West Virginia. What she saw when she looked out her back window prompted her to immediately wake her three children and get them into the car. The family attempted to drive away, but floodwaters blocked the road in both directions. Their only choice was to head for higher ground. They backed the car up a neighbor’s driveway on a hill and waited

Seated inside the car in the darkness, they heard a loud cracking noise. “We heard it split,” Lester said. “We didn’t know what it was until we got up here.” The swollen waters of the Tug River had divided Lester’s doublewide home in half. “We just lost everything we had,” she said.

The flood that swept through Mingo County in early May 2009, destroying hundreds of buildings and taking out numerous bridges, resulted from only about two inches of rainfall. “It wasn’t some 100-year rainfall event,” said Nick Getzen, a Williamson resident and community organizer. What happened in Mingo County is, unfortunately, a common occurrence near mountaintop removal coal mining sites. During mountaintop removal, the vegetation and topsoil that typically absorb rainwater is removed, creating dangerous funnels for stormwater runoff into valleys and communities.

There are hundreds more sad stories associated with mountaintop removal. In Wise County, Va., where about a quarter of the county has been surfaced mined, a toddler, Jeremy Davidson, was killed in August 2004 when a half-ton boulder, set into motion by a bulldozer at a mine site, crashed into his home. Blasting of explosives shakes the ground and rattles windows, sometimes cracking home foundations. Coal dust floats through the air, causing respiratory problems. The soil, rock and other debris from mountaintops are pushed into valleys, burying streams. Rain then falls on exposed coal seams, carrying toxic runoff into the streams that remain.

“All across Appalachia, where there are streams below mountaintop removal sites, they are being poisoned with heavy metals,” destroying indigenous aquatic life, said Donna Lisenby, Upper Watauga Riverkeeper for Appalachian Voices.

Ann League could see Zeb Mountain, one of the largest Tennessee mountaintop removal sites, from her front deck. When explosives were detonated, a blast of air would move her doors, and about three months after the operation began, her well water turned a bright orange. Though League no longer lives near Zeb Mountain, she now works to help end mountaintop removal.

“I’ve always been a backseat environmentalist,” she said. “I never really thought I would become involved. It’s amazing what happens to you when it impacts you directly.”

The 1977 Surface Mining Control & Reclamation Act requires that surface mine operators restore the mine site to its approximate original contour and an elevation resembling surrounding topography. But coal companies are exempted from this requirement if they claim the site will be developed for other uses, such as a shopping center, farm or public park.

“The perception set forth by a lot of the environmental groups and a lot of the media represent coal mining at its very worst,” said Bill Bledsoe, director of the Virginia Mining Association. When the ground is being mined, “of course it’s an unnatural state at that point—[it’s] a short glimpse of the mining process,” he said. “When the landowner sees an opportunity to use the land for other purposes…the mine operators restore the land to those capabilities. These areas are not distinguishable from any other development areas.”

But Hawkins, a fourth-generation underground coal miner for three years in Dickenson County in southwestern Virginia, has seen different.

“After they go back and reclaim it, it’s just not the same,” he said. “It’s grasslands and hard rock soil that you can’t hardly dig. That’s taking away from the culture of homesteading and sustainability that Appalachian people are known for.”

Kate Rooth, Appalachian Voices national field coordinator, notes that families of Appalachia have been dedicated to the region since before the Revolutionary War, but because of the dangers of living near mountaintop removal sites, they’re forced to move away or continue to live under serious risks.

“It’s really about people’s livelihoods—not just about the beauty of these mountains,” she said. “People have always had a dedication to living off the land. As a result of strip mining, so much wildlife has been destroyed. People are not able to live off the land in the ways that they were before.”

North Carolina and coal

The Tar Heel State is deficient in coal, according to the N.C. Geological Survey. Only one area in the state is known to contain coal beds of potential commercial importance—the Deep River coalfield in Chatham, Moore and Lee counties that stretches 35 miles long and five to 10 miles wide. Because the coal is deeply buried and broken up by numerous dissecting faults, production in the Deep River area ceased in 1953.

Although North Carolina largely has been spared from the destructive practices of coal mining due to its lack of mineable coal reserves, the state is closely tied to the coal industry, including mountaintop removal. North Carolina is one of the top two states that consume mountaintop removal-mined coal in its power plants, occasionally switching places with Georgia for the No. 1 spot.

“We are so connected to it,” said Willa Coffey Mays, executive director of Appalachian Voices, based in Boone, N.C. “Tremendous destruction is tied to our use of electricity.”

Born and raised in Cashiers in southwestern North Carolina, Kate Rooth is now national field coordinator for Appalachian Voices, working from Washington, D.C. She first saw mountaintop removal coal mining in Wise County, Va.

“My life was just completely transformed,” Rooth stated. “If we did [have coal here], they’d be doing the same thing in North Carolina. I feel just as compelled with the people in Kentucky that I have to fight with them and for them.”

In the 2009 session of the N.C. General Assembly, Appalachian Voices led efforts to pass the Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act—a bill that would have prohibited electric public utilities operating coal-fired power plants in North Carolina from purchasing or using coal obtained through mountaintop removal. Although the bill died in committee, 75 state legislators signed a letter that Appalachian Voices staff hand-delivered to U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) asking her to intervene in the mountaintop removal issue on a federal level.

“While there’s wide support in North Carolina, those representatives and senators believe that a federal solution to this problem is appropriate,” Mays said.

North Carolina’s ecological systems and human residents are also affected by the aftereffects of coal combustion. After coal is burned, the ash is stored in large, open waste pits or ponds, held in place by dams that sometimes fail—as was the case on Dec. 22, 2008, in Kingston, Tenn., just west of Knoxville. A 60-foot dam impounding a Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash pond failed, spilling a billion gallons of ash into the Emory River, a tributary of the Clinch River that flows into the Tennessee River. The waterways were contaminated with arsenic, lead, selenium, cadmium, chromium and other metals, said Donna Lisenby, the Upper Watauga Riverkeeper at Appalachian Voices.

“It’s one of the largest industrial waste disasters in American history, dwarfed only by the Gulf oil spill,” Lisenby said.

Lisenby noted reports have shown that all 13 of the coal ash pits in North Carolina are leaching metals into the groundwater—including the coal ash pond at Progress Energy’s Skyland plant in Asheville.

And coal-burning power plants also release mercury and other metals into the air, which later bioaccumulate in waterways. More than 40 percent of America’s waterways have mercury levels that make fish unsafe for pregnant women and children to eat, and mercury pollution comes mostly from coal-fired power plants, Lisenby said. Those waterways include Watauga Lake in Tennessee, about 45 minutes west of Boone, as well as Fontana Lake near Bryson City. Testing of water and fish in the French Broad River near Asheville has found high levels of arsenic and selenium, attributed to the Progress Energy plant in Asheville.

“At every step along the way, coal poisons water,” she said.