Miami University Coal Week

The following is a narrative by Ben Stockwell. It originally appeared on his personal site

Arriving

I'm a member of Miami's Environmental club, Green Oxford. Within GO, I am also a member of the 'Coal' working group, or as we recently decided to call ourselves 'Greener Oxford.' This past weekend, five of us traveled out to Meigs County, Ohio so we could better appreciate what we're working to help put an end to: the burning of coal to fuel our daily lives.

To the right is the view from Elisa Young's farm, looking south towards two coal plants about 3 miles from her home. Elisa is on the front lines of the fight against the coal companies, and was our host for the weekend. She's been working tooth and nail for years to stop the continued overburden her community has faced, and it's been anything but easy. Elisa will be the first one to tell you she doesn't have a lot of people helping her. In Meigs county, the coal companies provide a fraction of the labor, but promises of new plants give hope to the people in the region which suffers from unemployment in the double digits and an average income well below the poverty line. We learned a lot from Elisa, and the experience was eye-opening, helping us to understand the true cost of coal, as it were.

When we arrived late Friday evening, we were greeted by an enthused Elisa and two elated dogs, all of whom we came to love. We stayed up late into the night talking to Elisa, sipping tea and having some of the best homemade vegetable soup any of us had had. The recipe was given to Elisa by another activist, and our having it seemed a fitting way to start our stand in solidarity. The fantastic food and the conversation set the weekend up to be something of a dream..

"Ohio has the worst air quality in the nation. And Meigs country has the worst air quality in the state." Elisa can tell you so much about the cost that the citizens of Meigs are paying each and every day so that we can turn our lights on in the surrounding region. In 2007 and 2008 Meigs was number one in Ohio for lung cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society, and that is even with an incomplete count of the numbers reported for the county, so they are possibly even higher. Elisa has seen several neighbors die from various forms of cancer, one of which of lung cancer after having never smoked in her life. An epidemiologist who visited once told her the cancer rates in the area are twice what he would expect. There is also a heightened occurrence of asthma in the area. On top of this, there nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. A death sentence in the case of a medical emergency. There is also an ongoing destruction of some of Meigs's most beautiful landscapes by the mines in the region and the free natural gas that Elisa and others enjoy from deposits on their own property are beginning to become fruitless in the wake of the destruction occurring underground. A nearby neighbor's water well went dry following core sample drilling for coal extraction, others are at risk for the same as the coal company plans to expand, which makes it harder to farm.

Day One

We spent the first part of the weekend touring the area around the local coal plants. We set off to Mount Moriah, a vantage point east of Racine. The first thing we noticed were the roads, many of which run alongside the area streams. They were lined with coal waste, which Elisa was told was "safe enough to pour on your cereal!" I wasn't going to be the first one to line up to pour it on my Wheaties, and I could only imagine what was in the water I was drinking from Elisa's faucet. From Mount Moriah, we could see four coal plants and the Manganese factory all in one panoramic shot, but us being environmentalists and not photographers, none of us were able to get an adequately focused shot.

In an 11.5 mile radius from Elisa's farm in the village of Racine there are already four coal plants. Upstream (along the Ohio river) is the dumping ground for DuPont's teflon factory, and a bit further into West Virginia is a Manganese Factory, one of two in the nation. Additionally, there is a Carbon capture and sequestration test site in the process of expanding with plans for more power plants pending. Believe it or not, there are plans to build four more plants, as well as a coal to liquids plant. From out vantage point on Mount Moriah, we imagined the looming environmental injustice of the plans. In a matter of years, we could be standing at the same place, and have plants surrounding us on all sides.

Recently the environmental movement got a small victory as an additional plant proposed by American Municipal Power (AMP) was deemed too costly and shelved. Elisa and her neighbors on the Ohio side of the river are provided little protection in the way of air monitoring; the Ohio is a divider for two separate EPA regions, and, thanks to insurmountable bureaucracy, while there are monitors on individual power plants in West Virginians and Gallia County, Meigs County is in the cross-fire with no ambient air monitoring to measure cumulative impacts to the actual air quality. West Virginia also received monitoring and emergency response warning systems for the experimental carbon injection site, which does not extend to the Ohio boundary. Little care is paid to the Meigs country residents who get all of the emissions, but none of the benefits.

We moved on to the banks of the Ohio River, passing on our way the Gattling mine, where an active surface mine site has obliterated one of the areas her ancestor's homesteaded. Her ancestor, George Roush settled part of Racine, and his son Jacob purchased farmland 7 generations ago that her family still lives on, shortly after the Revolutionary War. Jacob was one of 9 brothers who fought in the war, and Elisa appealed for a temporary halting of plans so she and others could go in to evaluate the land to check for grave sites and cultural the story of the current state of his land is the same across the region. When the strip mine was to open on the location, significance. Her requests were shot down and she was never given the opportunity to see what family treasures might exist in the now pulverized land. Back at the river, the ice floes made their way downstream, and Elisa asked us to give the water good energy, to metaphorically pass on our activism to nature itself.

Right across from where we paid our respects to the water, were the American Electric Power's coal plants Mountaineer and Phillip Sporn. The emissions put out from the smoke stacks cross over directly into Ohio, directly over Star Mill park where kids play baseball in the summers and families come to fish at the river. Across the way was Fellmans, the manganese plant which has been operating on and off for a while now, apparently also with questionable monitoring. Elisa shared one instance where residents were choking on the emissions when the manganese factory changed hands and reopened. Residents were told by the regulatory agency that "they had a hard time and the DEP decided they were going to look the other way for a few months while they got back on their feed. The regulatory agencies charged with safeguarding citizens health and safety seems to turn a blind eye to emissions from factories that might be polluting more than their fair share, but are also struggling to stay afloat.

South of Meigs county is Gallia, home to two more Coal plants. We picked up a few pizzas from "the Racine Mall" (a large grocery that had everything from fresh jerky, to spare truck parts) and headed down to picnic in the Devastated village of Cheshire. Elisa's description of what happened in Cheshire is something of a mariners tale. We were captivated by the weight of everything, and hoped that we weren't too late to help Elisa's village not fall to the same fate. American Electric Power moved into the town, building two plants and promising jobs. But few were to be had, especially for the local residents (as is usually the case), and after a series of events culminating with the knocking of the smokestacks (to protect people in Canada and other Northern regions who were threatening to sue AEP for damages from acid rain) the technology installed to clean up the acid rain problems made the local living conditions intolerable. People getting caught in plumes of sulfuric acid generated by the experimental pollution controls (scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction systems) began to succumb to health concerns like cancer and other related respiratory illnesses. Not wanting to leave, but unable to stay, the people organized a now defunct grassroots community group, Citizens Against Pollution, to bring lawsuit against AEP. When AEP learned this, they systematically bought out residents, saying they hadn't done anything wrong, but wanted additional land to expand the facility and create company housing. Since the $20 million buyout 90% of the homes have been demolished, no company housing has been created, the facility hasn't expanded in the direction of the buyout, and residents who accepted AEP's offer were required to sign legal papers never to speak of the terms of their buyout, their conditions, or sue for medical illness.

The skeleton of a once vibrant town is all that remains. The Gavin and Kyger power plants now dominate the landscape. Looming to the west of the town was a mountain of coal waste. Nestled here and there are reminders of what Cheshire used to be.. The Roush cemetery where Elisa's ancestors are laid to rest, is now wedged between an overflowing coal ash landfill and the Gavin power plant, teetering on the edge of destruction as the plants continue to branch out father from the town; she's lucky compared to another activist who we later met who already lost most of his family cemetery. The Cheshire school was rebuilt and the old one sits vacant surrounded on all sides by the power plant's tentacles.

We found a few picnic tables at the riverside in town and ate our lunch in the shadow of the Coal plants. Elisa offered a prayer asking for help for our ongoing actions. Barges transported freshly mined coal up the river to the two plants and come back empty to return again soon. One and a half tons of coal will burn in just 2 seconds. Coal accounts for 80% of our carbon emissions, but a lower percentage of our power. The industry is continuously planning new facilities all across the country, with about 600 currently in operation. There used to be a billboard on the outskirts of town that encouraged residents to stop smoking; these same residents were being exposed to massive amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other carcinogens from the power plants.

We left the corpse of a town and headed back to Elisa's farm. Why should the people who live in Cheshire and the other areas around Elisa have to carry the burden of the Coal industry? People aren't mobile like industries, they didn't choose to live in one of the most polluted regions in the country. Elisa was once told it was necessary for people to die where she lived, otherwise more people in the cities, the top consumers of the power created in the plants, would die from not having enough electricity, hospitals, and necessities. Elisa doesn't accept either outlook. For her, it's a matter of not only ending hazardous activities in her hometown, but also across the country, "If I don't want it in my backyard, then it's not up to me to say É that you're going to have it in your backyard." I don't think it's up to us to say that Elisa should have it in her backyard.

Before we went to bed that night, we stayed up late. Between planning our actions back on campus and bonding over ice cream and Wallace and Gromit movies, it became pretty clear that our little group was becoming something special.

Day Two

We awoke in the morning to the smell of pancakes, bacon and eggs (including a double-yolked egg from the farm hens!) All weekend, we had been impressed by Elisa's cooking, and it was almost bittersweet knowing that this would be our last meal with her during this trip. All of us were more than satisfied, and we were well prepared to begin the second day of our tour of Coal Country.

Our travels would take us to what some have called Ground Zero of the coal wars: West Virginia's Mountain Top Removal. If you were just driving through the valleys in the state, you wouldn't know the mines are even there, which is good for PR for the companies running the mines, since no one can be happy with the systematic decapitation and destruction that is occurring. We were visiting Larry Gibson at Kayford Mountain, and though we had to drive through half the state to get to the peak, it wasn't until we got to the top of his families tract of land, that we could see any of the well hidden devastation.

Larry had quite a story to tell us. Though the MTR was a different front of the ongoing battle against the coal companies, he'd faced some of the same hurdles as Elisa. On our way to Larry's cabin, we learned from her the story of his families old cemetery. Right in the middle of the pit that used to be Kayford Mountain, the coal company felt that respecting the dead was less important than their bottom line Ð profit over people. Over one hundred burial plots had been destroyed, and there were less than a dozen left. Larry isn't alone; there have been documented stories of coffins being thrown into the valley fill, along with trees and the rest of the collateral damage that 's shoved away that the mountains can be blasted away.

Mountain Top Removal is without question the most destructive form of coal mining currently being employed by the mining companies. The cycle is essentially this: First, the mountain is cleared of all vegetation. Usually trees that would be harvested and sold elsewhere are bulldozed into the valleys. When the brush is all cleared, and all that's left is a lifeless mound of dirt, and core sample drilling has determined the depth of the coal seams, the layers of earth are peeled away one by one until a seam of coal is extracted. Once that seam is mined, the process is repeated over and over until the costs (monetarily) are too great. The environmental costs are huge. Once the coal is exhausted the mountain is supposed to be returned to its "approximate original contour." This means taking the mixture of rocks and dirt and waste generated along the way, and packing down the mountain, if it can still be called that. Entire ecosystems are destroyed, the topsoil is gone, and nothing can live there except for the invasive turf that can also, incidentally, grow on concrete.

We followed Larry up to his cabin, appropriately named "Larry's Place" and listened intently as he told of his almost two decades of struggling with the companies seeking to mine on his of land. The land, put into family trust to protect it from coal company purchase, sits like "an island in an ocean" of MTR sites. A coal executive, upset that Larry and his family wouldn't sell the land to him threatened to make it feel like that for Gibson in 1993, and 17 years later, that is a reality. We were by no mean's the first visitors to Kayford; Larry had a notebook full of over 900 names. He told us of a few recent visitors, one of which was from the EPA, who told Larry that "what (the mining companies) are doing is illegal," this was just after he had revealed his identity, Larry had given the man a tour and talking to as we had been given with no indication of his credentials. After he left, nothing was done. We also learned of the various dangers that he faces. Larry sits at the center of the fight against the mining companies, and he's not about to give in. He's been arrested, accosted, and even shot at several times all because he wants the Appalachians to stay as they were. A kevlar vest hung on the wall, and Larry himself is well armed. Though he's never had to use his weapons in self defense, and hope he never will, he has come close. Every year on the fourth of July Larry has a gathering on his land. Scores of activists camp out just below his cabin, and they rally for renewables. Last year, a group of miners, angry at the mere presence of the group, crashed the party. Fortunately, very little, if any violence resulted, and the mud flinging mostly went one way: from the miners to the activists.

You can't blame the miners, really. Coal is a way of life for the people of Appalachia, and there is always the fear of not having a job, especially in the small towns that dot the region. Coal, a cushion to fall back on is promising, but in reality, offers nothing in the arena of careers, certainly not like it used to. Mines last for just a few years to a decade before they are exhausted, and because of techniques like Mountaintop Removal, the jobs available are far less than with conventional mining. The miners who have jobs are lucky, but their jobs aren't secure. For the region to embrace alternatives like wind, which would do quite well at the tops of the mountains would offer unlimited energy at a lower cost than the mines, and though the jobs would not be as abundant at each site, they would be permanent.

After Larry told us about what he was doing to fight MTR, we decided it was time to see the mine for ourselves. All of us packed into the truck and drive a few hundred yards to a place that Larry calls "The Gates of Hell." From there, we could really see the destruction. Making sure we didn't step onto land owned by the coal company, we surveyed the devastation for ten minutes while Larry further explained the process. MTR creates a lot of toxic liquid waste, and because of the sheer volume, the mining companies can't just pump that into the local watershed (like they do with everything else). Instead earthen dams are built, and sometimes they break. In 1972, one such dam in Buffalo Creek, WV failed, releasing a 30 foot high rush of mud and coal waste and water. It killed 125 and made 4000 homeless. These people were just going about their daily lives. They didn't have a chance.

The Buffalo Creek flood was particularly odd because it was an anomaly: a quick and explicit illustration of the environmental injustice people are facing in Appalachia and elsewhere. While Elisa can show that the carcinogen levels in her county are some 10 times high than other regions where plants have been closed. It's not so easy for her to show (or rather, not as easy for people to accept) that people are dying as a result. Even with epidemiologists, biologists, and the American Cancer Society on her side, the people who make the decisions don't take responsibility. Even though there are numerous lives at stake, there is no visible impending threat. A place where that threat is huge is Marsh Fork Elementary, which sits at the foot of a coal waste dam. Student's at Marshfork complain of illnesses, respiratory problems from coal dust generated at the coal preparation plant adjacent to the school and playground. A 9 billion gallon sludge impoundment sits behind the school with nothing but an earthen dam between the children at this wall of toxic waste. Recently the DEP issued permits to set explosive on the other side of the impoundment to do mountain top removal mining, which residents fear will hasten a dam break.

When we left Larry's and we were following him off the mountain, he got a call. In the previous few days, a sediment pond had been breached at another mine site. Larry, who couldn't reach media or photographers to document this, needed our help. We had cameras, and we could document whatever had happened. After driving for over an hour, we made it to the site. While we could see mud and muck oozing down the hollow, we couldn't make it far enough up to see exactly what happened, which got us all down because it seemed that our excursion had been for nothing, but from our vantage point there was clear devastation, retention ponds had been breeched and debris, including "black water," was being carried all the way out to the Gauley river. The picture to the right is from our friends at Climate Ground Zero.

It was getting late, and we needed to get back home to Miami, so we headed back toward Ohio, not sure when we'd get there, and all upset by what we had just seen. We had planned to leave way earlier in the day, but no one wanted to say good bye to Elisa, nor Elisa to us. So we did as any self respecting group would in that situation: we stopped at Cracker Barrel to end our trip on a high note. The food wasn't as good as what we had had at Elisa's during our time there, but it was nice to get a chance to sit down one more time. The drive home would be long, but we had a lot to think about coming off of such a busy trip. The car was oddly silent as we made our way back - we were all exhausted.

Our little group has done so much and there is still so much to do. Looking ahead, we're planning Coal Week, a weeklong action on campus consisting of speakers, movie screenings and other presentations from our friends living in the coalfields, culminating in a rally for clean energy. But I think that if the weekend taught us anything, it is that we can't just think about the bubble we live in when trying to push for sustainability. If our actions are to be truly effective, and for them to have a real meaning, then we need to be allies to people like Elisa and Larry. Through solidarity, recognizing that we're all in this together, we will make our ideas for a clean future a reality.

February 2010