Essay 2

Ashley Yermasek
ENG-1020
Dr. Houp
25 February 2009
MTR: Handicapping Communities
Big-wig coal companies are playing a dangerous game of intimidation and control with the residents of Appalachia and surrounding coal sites. Mining there works out great for them because these are communities located in the backwoods, off the beaten path and are usually very poor. Without proper schooling, jobs, and outside resources, they are kept in the “dark” about what is really going on and that is just how the coal companies want it. Coal companies are not the only ones to blame however, the government plays its role as well. A lot of these coal companies are in pretty tight with both political parties, so they have a lot of leeway when it comes to destroying people’s property or the property surrounding. The government helps keep these residents poor by not funding their economy so there are no good jobs, the schools are falling apart, and without proper educations it can be assumed that well qualified teachers in these areas are slim to none. MTR is one of the most destructive forms of coal mining; the scars left behind leave the environment and the communities inhabitants caught in a toxic bubble of chemical waste and devastation.
The coal industry is on a burning power trip, and they do not care who they hurt in the process. In Bringing Down the Mountains, Burns talks about how there are three distinct stages of power relations that can be discerned among communities affected by MTR:
Stage One is the infancy/beginning stage; in this stage community members are often trusting of the companies, believing the companies to have the best interest of the community at heart. Stage Two is the intermediate or middle stage when community members are shocked, dismayed and angered as the MTR practices begin to directly effect the community in a negative way. In Stage Three, the final stage, massive buy-outs of homeowners and businesses dovetail, intense depopulation occurs, and migration escalates and soars. (Burns 98)
In other words, the coal companies completely dupe these communities into thinking that they are there to help and then they leave them hanging. When jobs start depleting due to more machinery being brought in, most residents have no choice but to leave and find work elsewhere or stay and fight to keep their communities alive. Burns also describes how most residents first encounter with mountaintop removal mining operations is when the coal company sends them a letter alerting them to plans of blasting (Burns 70). Many residents are not even aware of MTR until blasting begins. A quote from Greta Stone, a forty year resident of the Oceana-Kopperston community exclaims, “You’re so concerned (about jobs), and you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you. The coal companies and timbering companies provide jobs. No one wants to see anybody put out of a job because we have to work…we have to work” (qtd. in Burns 71). A chilling statement from an article on the Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC), stated by Erica Urias from Pike County, Kentucky reads: “Is coal a cheap source of energy? Not unless you think that people’s lives are cheap” (“About Canary”). This quote rings so much truth because, of course it is the cheapest form of coal extraction for the coal industry and the government alike, but the residents of these coal fields pay a much higher price. With the highest cancer and diabetes rates in the nation, these people are paying with their lives. But aside from this, aren’t they already paying with their lives by watching everything that they have worked so hard for being destroyed one mountain blast at a time?
MTR has become an increasingly mainstream form of destruction. MTR currently takes place in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but the turmoil can be felt by many cities, states, and towns across the U.S. In the book Lost Mountain, Erik Reece speaks with Teri Blanton, a prime mover in the KFTC. Blanton tells Reece about growing up in the small town of Dayhoit, in Harlem County Kentucky where she says it was the kind of community where neighbors shared their coal in the winter, and friend and neighbor Millard Sutton grew enough vegetables to feed nearly the whole town (44). Blanton goes on to talk about how the coal company tried to scare and intimidate her by sending a truck to slowly circle her trailer all day when she called the highway department to complain about a puddle of black water and coal slurry that stood in front of her trailer where her children caught the school bus. She also recalls how her children were constantly sick and would often break out into “measles like rashes” after bathing due to the groundwater from the well being poisoned with vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene, and volatile organic contaminants (45). Perhaps one of the most chilling statements Blanton makes is when she and Reece visit the White Star Cemetery and she states: “I don’t think I’ve ever been up here on a day I wasn’t burying someone”, she goes on to add, “Almost nobody in Dayhoit lives past fifty-five, at the meetings, the people from the EPA would accuse us of being too emotional. I told them, “Let all of your family members and friends die around you and see if you don’t get emotional” (49). It is apparent that coal companies have no regard for anything they destroy and anyone that they hurt.

Coal companies are poisoning communities with chemicals as well as lies. The coal companies and the government both work together and try to convince these communities affected most by MTR that what they are doing is safe, legal, and a necessity. A lot of the residents believe this because they know that they have little to no jobs available and for some it is the only means of supporting their families. Burns speaks of how the coal industry was able to convince some underground miners that any ruling against MTR would eventually cause underground mining to end (85). Miners did not like the sound of this at all so most went on the defense. One underground miner commented: “Until we quit letting the environmentalists come in and tell us what we can and can’t do, we aren’t going to have any mining” (85). Any of the miners afraid of losing their jobs will do most anything to keep this from happening.
The term “clean coal” is also thrown around in the press by government officials and coal company operators. An article from Business Week. quotes Blan Holman, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charleston, S.C., as saying “Clean coal’ is like a healthy cigarette, it doesn’t exist”(Elgin). The idea of “clean coal” is a fantasy, dreamt up by the government and coal companies to make the coal extraction process not seem so harsh, it is a lie. Using that term just allows the coal industry to keep doing what they are doing and get away with it, at the residents of the coal fields expense. To think of how many billions of dollars in coal are extracted from these mountaintops and the communities that provide access to it are the poorest in the nation is a sickening thought, but this is what is happening. The only way it can be stopped is by communities and anyone who has some knowledge of what is going on to join forces and fight for it. There are several organizations filled with information and touching, personal stories that you can access on the web and become a part of. The more people know, the better the chances of it being stopped. MTR can be brought down just like the mountain tops they destroy, several voices at a time.
















Works Cited
Elgin, Ben. “The Dirty Truth About Clean Coal.” Business Week. 19 June 2008.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “About Canary.” 26 February 2009.
Reece, Erik. Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness. New York: Riverhead, 2006.
Stewart Burns, Shirley. “Bringing Down The Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal
Surface Coal Mining on Southern West Virginia Communities,1970-2004. Ph.D. diss., West Virginia University, 2005.