The news this week of the deadliest coal mining accident in two decades, which left 25 (maybe 31) dead in Raleigh County West Virginia, has upset me more than any other news story in a long time. In fact, I started writing this post on Tuesday, but haven't been able to finish it until now because I was so angry and outraged that I had to take a break to re-center.
Disasters like this one, that stem directly from human enterprises gone awry, provoke in me a kind of sickness and anger that’s totally different from what I feel in a natural disaster. This tragedy was preventable, and I mean that on at least two distinct levels. The accident itself was preventable, and should never have happened, because inspectors had cited this mine hundreds of times for safety violations and recommended that changes be made. Time will tell whether and what price Massey Energy pays for their corporate greed-fueled negligence.
But, bigger than that isolated incident, the whole situation, in which Appalachian workers are underground stripping out coal year after year risking their lives in a landmine of flammable gas, is preventable as well. Coal power and coal companies are destructive to the Appalachian environment, removing mountaintops and destroying entire ecosystems with one blast of dynamite that rips open a mountain for the coal inside. Appalachian Voices, a Boone, NC organization calls mountaintop removal mining "one of the greatest environmental and human rights catastrophes in American history."
What's wrong with this picture?
It's pretty obvious why blowing a mountain sky-high is an environmental catastrophe (in the northwest corner of Raleigh County WV, there is a 50 square mile area where all but ONE mountain have been destroyed). As a mountain-raised woman, the Appalachian mountains are at the center of my family's history and of my own spiritual source, and the attacks on this sacred space make me nauseous. But the human rights side of this issue cannot be ignored. The coal industry is inherently destructive to the communities where they work, keeping workers poor, isolated, and powerless. They leave residents no other choice than to be tied to the coal company for their livelihood, and when they've stripped one area of coal, they move on, often displacing entire mountain communities for the sake of what lies beneath. Appalachian coal mining communities are some of the most desperately poor in our nation, but the coal companies that run them have some of the largest lobbying staffs on Capitol Hill (here's just one). It’s disgusting.
What’s even more disgusting is that we’re all part of the system as well. If you get your energy from Duke Energy or Progress Energy (like most of NC), you’re using Appalachian coal from Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky, and directly using the products of dangerous mines and mountaintop removal mining. For a wake-up call on how you, yes YOU are feeding this system, enter your zip code here and see your connection.
Right now, I'm at a loss for what exactly to do to challenge the deeply disturbing system of environmental and community destruction that's ravaging my homeland. It's a grim situation, made all the more real by the folks who lost their lives this week.
According to the Action page at ilovemountains.org, the EPA has just passed some water quality standards that will challenge some mountaintop removal practices. There's a climate bill that just maybe might make its imperfect way through Congress this year. We've got to voice our outrage at unjust practices and urge Congress, the EPA, and other agencies to take action. Closer to home, for a few bucks a month, you can vote with your dollars and purchase NC GreenPower blocks and buy energy that doesn't come from coal sources. And, as Kilowatt Ours producer Jeff Barrie shows, talking to others about the horrors of our energy situation is always a good starting point.
Below are some other good starting points. Let me know what you're thinking about all of this, and what you think should be done to move forward as a region and a nation on these issues.
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