NOVANEWS
Environmental and Human Destruction for Profit
by Stephen Lendman
Activists call it “strip mining on steroids.” So did John Mitchell in his March 2006 National Geographic article titled, “Mining the Summits: When Mountains Move,” saying:
Julia ‘Judy’ Bonds, “(a) coal miner’s daughter….no longer (could) tolerate the blasting that rattled her windows, the coal soot that she suspected was clotting her grandson’s lungs, and the blackwater spills that bellied-up fish in a nearby stream.”
As a result, she moved downstream and joined Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW), an activist group against mountaintop removal.
CRMW is an initiative “to stop the destruction of our communities and environment by mountaintop removal, to improve the quality of life in our area, and to help rebuild sustainable communities.”
In January 2011, Bonds died of cancer at age 58, CRMW co-director Vernon Haltom saying:
“Judy endured much personal suffering for her leadership. While people of lesser courage would candy-coat their words or simply shut up and sit down, Judy called it as she saw it. (As a result, she) endured physical assault, verbal abuse, and death threats because she stood up for justice for her community. I never met a more courageous person, one who faced her own death,” yet wouldn’t back down. “Fight harder,” she always said, in the vanguard always doing it.
On January 3, 2011, coal toxins silenced the “passion, conviction, tenacity, courage, and love for her fellow human beings” that coal barons tried and failed to do for years. “Judy will be missed by all in this movement as an icon, a leader, an inspiration, and a friend.”
National Geographic quoted her saying:
“What the coal companies are doing to us and our mountains is the best kept dirty little secret in America.”
Because of her efforts and fellow activists, the secret’s out. “Coal companies have obliterated the summits of scores of mountains scattered throughout Appalachia….”
According to iLoveMountains.org, coal companies destroyed or severely impacted about 500 mountains and 1.2 million acres, reclaiming only a small fraction of the land for so-called beneficial economic uses.
In fact, a 2009 Appalachian Voices 2009 report (based on 2008 aerial and mining permit data) found “one in every ten (Central Appalachia studied) acres” ravaged by surface mining. Moreover, in some locations, it’s much more. In Wise County, VA, it’s nearly 40%. States affected include Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee.
In June 2006, Vanity Fair writer Michael Shnayerson’s article called it “The Rape of Appalachia,” saying:
Its mountains “are being blasted at a rate of several ridgetops each week. Parents fear for the health of their children. And those trying to fight the devastation have found that coal baron Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, is tougher than bedrock.” So are his counterparts at Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and CONSOL Energy.
Industry arrogance is hidden underground, except when avoidable disasters kill miners because its profiteers flout laws and regulations for bottom line priorities.
Above ground, miners rarely die, just the environment and human health incrementally over time. The visible evidence includes:
“mile after mile of forest-covered range, great swaths of Appalachia, in some places as far as the eye can see, are being blasted and obliterated in one of the greatest acts of physical destruction this country has ever wreaked upon” nature and humanity.
They’re sacrificed for King Coal profiteers, the 1917 title Upton Sinclair used for his novel about Western America’s poor industry working conditions, based on the 1913-15 Colorado coal strikes, including at Ludlow.
In his “People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn poignantly described its 1913-14 strike and subsequent massacre, killing 75 or more strikers, strikebreakers, and bystanders for defying what he called “feudal kingdoms run by (coal barons that) made the laws,” imposed curfews, and ran their operations more like despots than businessmen. To this day, little has changed.
As a result, something is very wrong, including in Whitesville, WV. “It looks desolate, its storefronts abandoned, its streets and sidewalks still. Hardly a car is parked here, not a soul to be seen.”
Only two florists remain. Though poor, West Virginians “buy a lot of funeral flowers. Whitesville resembles a wartime town pillaged by an advancing army.” So do many others throughout Appalachia, raped by coal profiteers. For maximum profits, they denuded former panoramic landscapes, blasted away majestic mountaintops, and left desolation behind.
More affluent communities might have stopped them, but not Appalachia, “a land unto itself, cut off by” mountains East and West, its people too poor, isolated and cowed by generations of King Coal dominance to stop the destruction of their communities, homes and lives.
Moreover, few Americans elsewhere know it or even care. They’re oblivious to “three million (daily) pounds of explosives” destroying a mountain culture, producing the most toxic fossil fuel used to supply more than half of the nation’s electricity, as well as power for manufacturers of paper, chemicals, metal products, plastics, ceramics, fertilizers, tar, and high carbon coke used for steel industry metal processing.
In addition, other coal-derived compounds and residues are used in many other manufacturing processes for synthetic rubber, fiber, insecticides, paints, medicines and solvents.
A 2010 Environmental Integrity Project/Sierra Club/EarthJustice study, however, found that ash produced by coal-fired power plants contaminated ground water and air with dangerous toxins, including arsenic, benzene, mercury and lead. They’re linked to cancer, congestive heart failure, nervous system damage, respiratory diseases, asthma, other health related problems, and lower life expectancies.
Moreover, the Union of Concerned Scientists calls coal burning “a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxins,” saying each year a typical coal plant generates:
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– “3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2),” the equivalent of “cutting down 161 million trees;
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– 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2),” causing acid rain damaging forests, lakes, and physical structures, as well as harmful airborne particles able to penetrate deeply into lungs;
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– “500 tons of small airborne particles, (responsible for) chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility;”
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– 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx),” the equivalent of what’s emitted by half a million late-model cars; it produces lung inflaming ozone, making people susceptible to respiratory diseases; and
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– smaller amounts of other toxins, including carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, benzene, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.