The Government Sanctioned Bombing of Appalachia

By Antrim Caskey, AlterNet. Posted October 9, 2007.

On a calm, clear morning in the forested mountains of southern West Virginia, 12-year-old Chrystal Gunnoe played outdoors in the green mountain valley where her family has lived for hundreds of years. It was Veteran's Day and a school holiday. Chrystal's mother, Maria Gunnoe, 38, was inside when she heard her daughter yell for help.

Gunnoe rushed outside to find Chrystal coming towards her. Chrystal was coughing and struggling to breath, running from a strange-looking cloud that was moving down the valley and headed towards their house. Gunnoe would later learn the strange cloud came from something known as a "slow burning blast" -- an explosion set at the coal mine above her home that failed to ignite and instead burned slowly, releasing a wet toxic cloud of nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide.

Gunnoe lives in Bob White, W.Va., where coal companies have become increasingly unfriendly neighbors. Her home is surrounded by thousands of acres where a radically destructive type of coal mining is practiced -- mountaintop removal/valley fill (MTR) coal mining -- and it's turning Maria Gunnoe's life upside down.

In the weeks following, Chrystal suffered from a bronchial infection, a consistent cough, nose bleeds and bouts of painful breathing. Her mother, who was also exposed, "had sores on the inside of [her] nose," she said. "First they take our land, then the water, now the air," fumed Gunnoe who lives in Boone County, W.Va.'s top coal-yielding county, and the epicenter of Appalachian coal extraction, where the dirty business of mining, processing and hauling coal is the main meal-ticket in town.

Coal mining dominates the lives of the people in the remote, coal-rich mountain communities of West Virginia, where coal operators like Massey Energy are waging a remorseless campaign to extract all the coal they can, as fast as they can, before coal is legislated into the past and President Bush is out of office.

Out-of-state coal operators reap billions in profits every year, while residents of southern West Virginia remain among the poorest in the nation. In the coal fields, the imbalance is amplified: while Boone county produces the most coal in the state, 20 percent of its residents languish below the poverty line without sufficient income to achieve an adequate standard of living.

Massey Energy Co., the largest coal producer in Appalachia, grossed $1.78 billion in revenue on coal sales of 42.3 million tons in 2005, while residents have toy drives for the kids around the holidays and often rely on free medical care administered by a global traveling clinic unit that comes around once a year.

West Virginia has always been a coal state, and the coal industry has had unfettered access to the state's low-sulfur coal since mining began in earnest in the late 19th century. In the early days, underground coal miners used pick axes to dig out coal and put it in wooden buggies drawn by mules. Today, coal mining is highly mechanized, using a few men and enormous machines the size of skyscrapers to take the tops off mountains in order to get the increasingly harder-to-reach coal.

Pure greed drives the coal operators to rape and pillage Appalachia for profit. But mountain communities are standing up against King Coal -- lawsuits, citizen protests and national lobbying efforts are bringing the voices of the oppressed Appalachians to the nation.

Working within the system, citizen activist groups have garnered widespread support for the restoration of legislation that was written to protect our waterways -- legislation that the Bush administration has proactively maligned since he came into office.

When King Coal hits home

The Gunnoe home-place sits on about 24 acres in a beautiful mountain hollow, surrounded by deciduous forest. Their family-built home sits on a manicured lawn, nestled along the valley slope. But their home and health are in serious peril. Since 2001, seven floods have taken almost five acres of Gunnoe's family farm; two vehicular access bridges have been washed away forcing the family to cross a rickety bridge, then active railroad tracks to get into their house; and their well water has been so contaminated that Gunnoe now must spend $250 per month on bottled water.

Big Branch Creek, the headwater stream that flows from the mountains through her property, is now termed a "National Pollution Discharge Elimination System" stream by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). "There is no enforcement in Big Branch hollow," said Gunnoe.

All this damage and heartache has been the result of mountaintop removal/valley fill (MTR) coal mining, a highly mechanized process of a coal extraction that has gained favor with Appalachian coal operators over the last two and a half decades. With this method, massive machines are able to harvest coal in remote mountain ridge regions traditionally considered inaccessible to coal mining operations.

See more stories tagged with: coal, coal mining, massey energy, mountaintop removal, mtr, valley fill

Antrim Caskey has been reporting on the human and environmental costs of mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining since May 2005. Caskey is a Brooklyn-based independent photojournalist whose work focuses on community and social justice issues.

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