Resistance Heats Up in the Coal River Valley

For residents of the Coal River Valley, these are days of heartache. The community is rattled by the echoes of explosives, as Massey Energy blasts away Coal River Mountain, the last intact mountaintop in the range. To make matters worse, looming like the mythological sword of Damocles over the mountain hamlet of Rock Creek, a holding pond containing 9 billion gallons toxic coal slurry sits a dangerously close 200 feet from the blasting site, one false move away from pouring down the hillside into the town below. A dam breach would kill nearly a thousand people, and destroy hundreds of miles of watershed.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, citizens have recently been able to expose the many ways coal companies have sidestepped, or generally kicked aside, what many falsely perceive as watertight environmental regulations. A recent report of National Public Radio suggested that the Clean Water Act has been violated by most major coal companies at least 500 times, as these companies dump waste water impregnated with toxic heavy metals like mercury and arsenic into what becomes the municipal water supply of many major cities. Mountaintop removal mining, which has scarred many areas of the Appalachians beyond recognition and polluted countless communities, has gone on relatively unmitigated. Following the advice of the Bush Administration, the EPA agreed to ignore these blatant violations of the law, allowing coal companies to perpetuate dirty operations free of oversight or restraint. The fallout has been disastrous for many, with cancer, multiple sclerosis, autism and other pollution-linked illnesses on the rise in many communities downstream of coal mining and refining sites.

As state and federal agencies fail to hold these corporations accountable, citizen resistance groups like Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice have taken up the fight. Beginning in August 2009, tree sitters took turns occupying groves near the projected blast site, with the intent of preventing the company from following through with any projected activities. Unfortunately, the corporation acted swiftly upon each effort, and tree sitters were routinely removed, allowing them to prevent blasting only one day at a time. In October, after two months of protest and direct action, the valley shook as blasting officially begun on Coal River Mountain.

Since then, protesters have upped the ante, moving from passive tree sits to more aggressive direct action, such as occupying work sites, commandeering vehicles, and tampering with machinery and equipment. Still, the activists were swiftly arrested and blasting soon resumed. A few weeks later, 13 activists staged a sit-in to protest mountaintop removal mining at the EPA headquarters in D.C., while activists staged sit-ins at their local agencies in over 30 other cities.

On December 7, 2009, in concert with the mass protests occurring in Copenhagen, resident activists staged a protest at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. In a call to the public, an activist named Sparki wrote, “We have lobbied. We have written letters to Congress, the Federal EPA, The Federal Office of Surface Mining, The Department of Interior, our state representatives and state agencies, all to no avail. Abandoned by our government we are left for sacrifice, trapped in this very narrow valley between two life-threatening mountaintop removal operations. We have now reached a true state of emergency in the Coal River Valley.”

What now remains to be seen is if any of these activists’ dedicated efforts will take seed, or if they are still speaking to deaf ears. If the latter is the case, perhaps they will only be heard when they can raise a ruckus far louder than the blasting itself. For that, they will either need thousands more supporters, or explosives of their own.