This would be a sample of why the Mountain Party exists.
Mine critics: Why not use windmills instead of blowing up mountaintops
DOROTHY, W.Va. – Tacked to the front porch of a cabin atop Kayford Mountain is a sign. “Larry’s Place,” it reads. “Almost Heaven.”
Almost. In five minutes, Larry Gibson can walk to a crumbling overlook he calls Hell’s Gate.
It is a window onto an alien landscape of gray rubble where only machines move. It’s a small example of mountaintop removal mining, he explains. Only 900 acres.
Then he turns away from the Patriot Coal Corp. project and gazes left toward the unbroken green tentacles of the Coal River Mountain.
It is a web of jagged ridges, some rising more than 3,300 feet. At its base are communities like Colcord, a few dozen neatly kept homes along Sycamore Creek. Under its canopy are bears and blackberries, white-tailed deer and wild turkey, ginseng and sassafras.
And like so many in southern West Virginia, it is a mountain that could be blown to bits for its coal.
Massey Energy, holder of state permits to blast 6,000 acres, sees the future — and a fortune — in Coal River Mountain. With the spot-market price of steam coal at $133 a ton and likely to rise, the mountain is a resource capable of feeding power plants for 14 years. Massey plans to start work as soon as federal regulators approve.
But Gibson and others propose a future in which the mountain survives.
Mine coal the traditional way, they say. Dig tunnels and leave the top intact for 200 windmills. Generate enough electricity for 150,000 homes. Let the mountain produce energy forever.
Gibson, 62, sees Massey’s way of mining as no less than “the genocide of Appalachia,” the sacrifice of a people, a culture and the hills that bind them.
“This land right here has done as much for the people as their own mother did,” says Gibson, whose own lights and phone are powered by a solar panel while logs feed his potbellied stove.
“Coal’s something we used in primitive times…,” he says. “We can surely do better.”…
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Jeff Gentner / AP file
Coal River Mountain is seen at left and behind an existing mountaintop removal mining site at Kayford Mountain, W.Va.
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In mountaintop removal, forests are clear-cut. Holes are drilled to blast apart the rock, and massive machines scoop out the exposed coal.
The rock and dirt left behind, the “spoil,” is dumped one 240-ton truckload at a time into adjacent valleys, changing the shape of the earth, lowering the mountain and covering streams.
Coal River Mountain Watch, the environmental group pushing the wind farm, says more Americans want clean energy, so it’s the perfect time to consider a more sustainable use.
It’s also the perfect place: For industrial wind farms, developers seek sites with wind speeds of at least 15.7 mph, the minimum to be labeled Class 4. Coal River Mountain catches winds that range from Class 4 to Class 7, with speeds of 19.7 mph or higher.
Money talks
But the battle is uphill when nearly everyone stands to get rich from the coal…
Underground mining now minority
In the 1970s, the federal government passed laws to control damage from surface mining, and underground mining remained the dominant method of production for many years.
But after Wyoming supplanted Appalachia as the nation’s biggest supplier of coal, that began to change. In Appalachia, surface mines now outnumber underground operations.
A study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated 400,000 acres of forest were wiped out and nearly 724 miles of streams buried between 1985 and 2001 alone. North Carolina-based Appalachian Voices estimates 470 mountains have been destroyed…
At Flint’s Hardware in Sylvester, a railroad conductor who hauls coal says it’s time Manchin and everyone else realize that alternative energy must be developed: Coal is a finite resource.
“If they don’t do something with wind and water,” says Charles Cowley, “we’re all going to be with the lights out.”
Read the full article here.
