Wind vs. Coal: False Choices in the Battle to Resolve Our Energy Crisis

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted February 15, 2007.

When you cross the border into West Virginia along I-64 the welcome sign that used to say, "West Virginia: Wild and Wonderful," now says, "West Virginia: Open for Business."

It is a sign of the times.

According to a few area residents, the sign change coincidently occurred this fall around the same time that the state decided to approve an application for development of the largest wind farm east of the Mississippi.

West Virginia, long known to be an energy sacrifice zone for its sizable contribution to our nation's coal supply at the expense of Appalachians, is now beginning to diversify. But not everyone is excited about the prospect.

In the more pastoral eastern side of the state, which has thus far been spared, thanks to its lack of coal, the proposed 124-tower industrial scale Beech Ridge Energy Wind Farm would be built along ridgetops on the eastern front of the Alleghenies in scenic Greenbrier County.

A group of residents have formed a well-organized action group, Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy (MCRE), in opposition. To them, the project is just another big out-of-state business (this time Invenergy from Chicago), coming into the area to exploit a rural community who stands to reap little benefit.

However, to MCRE's neighbors on the western side of the state, a group known as Coal River Mountain Watch, who are battling mountaintop removal coal mining, any action to block the advances of renewable energy is insulting, to say the least.

As the country begins to awaken to the realities of global warming, West Virginia has emerged as the perfect stage to witness our nation's energy drama play out. Over the last year the two organizations and their supporting camps have clashed in bitter public debates, and the media has captured the story as a simplified struggle of dirty versus clean power.

But West Virginia's civil war is indicative of a nationwide energy crisis that will affect communities across the country and the solution will require more than building wind turbines: It will take real dialogue about the true costs of energy and what a more sustainable system might look like.

The endangered hillbilly

West Virginia is ground zero when it comes to energy in this country. As environmental writer and thinker Bill McKibben said, the state "stands as the perfect example of the bankruptcy of our energy model."

The history of coal companies in Appalachia is a tragic one full of stolen land, broken promises, and lost lives -- not unlike the story of how this country was settled and its destiny manifested.

The result has been an impoverished people, forced to work for coal companies, and as a result, "to poison their children in order to feed them," in the words of activist Judy Bonds of Coal River Mountain Watch.

She is like the Erin Brockovich of Appalachia, only she would need someone punchier than Julia Roberts to play her in a movie. Bonds is short, gray haired and always on message. She grew up in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia, a tenth generation mountaineer whose grandfather, father, cousins, ex-husband and brother worked in the mines.

Bonds has unabashedly said that the wind debate in her state is a class issue.

The eastern half of Greenbrier County, where these turbines would sit, is decidedly wealthier in comparison to Bonds' turf in the southwestern part of the state, where the coal industry has been entrenched for 150 years.

"The more coal we mine, the poorer we get. We don't have good roads, good infrastructure, water and sewage -- we have nothing," said Bonds. "They treat us like a third-world country, and the rest of America turns their faces away. There is no prosperity here."

It is hard to argue with her. The town of Whitesville, where her organization is headquartered, is a sad stretch of dilapidated brick buildings puckered by empty lots with tufts of grass attempting to reclaim the concrete.

In between empty storefronts is a gas station and a market/café that advertises a special on chewing tobacco and the steak 'n gravy dinner, and there are signs that say, "Support our Troops," and even one proclaiming, "Yes to Clean Energy."

If you drive east from the town, in the direction of Greenbrier County, steep hills rise on either side of a small highway with tiny homes built so close to the road that the lips of their porches seem to touch the pavement.

These forested foothills hide what is behind them -- acres upon acres of what looks like moonscape but used to be one of the world's most diverse hardwood forests. As coal has gotten harder and harder to reach, the coal industry in West Virginia has resorted to mountaintop removal mining, blowing from 600-1,000 feet off the tops of mountains with 3 millions pounds of explosives per day. The process results in a tremendous amount of excess debris, technically about 15 feet of "overburden" for every one foot of coal, Bonds said, which is then dumped into valleys, burying streams and covering habitat.

Coal River Mountain Watch reports that 400,000 acres of Appalachia's mountains have been leveled and 1,400 streams buried by the process.

While many valleys are being filled with mountain debris, others are being converted into sludge dams (called "slurry impoundments" by the industry), giant holding tanks filled with billions of gallons of wastewater leftover from cleaning coal at preparation plants.

See more stories tagged with: west virginia, coal, wind, climate change, global warming

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.

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