Press Conference Statement of Retired Miner Lucious Thompson, June 6, 2002

Hello, my name is Lucious Thompson. I'm a retired coal miner. I live in Letcher County, Kentucky, in the community of McRoberts. That's at the head of Elkhorn Creek, which feeds into the Big Sandy River and eventually flows into the Ohio River. Before strip mining started around my community, life was beautiful. The streams ran 24 hours a day and the birds and wildlife were abundant. It was also safe for our children to play anywhere around our home. Since the strip mining started, it's hard to rest day or night with the bulldozers running, drills drilling, dust flying and blasts that shake like earthquakes 2 or 3 times a day. Because they have stripped the tops off the surrounding hills and pushed their waste into our streams, every time it rains our community has to worry about flooding. These floods happen so quickly at times that you have to watch your children 24 hours a day. Our community's playground has been destroyed by flooding. We live in constant fear that their silt-ponds and valley fills will slide down and wash us out. In the last 5 years their silt-ponds and valley fills have washed out surrounding communities 8 times. Coals companies are being allowed to break the law. And in the process of breaking the law, they are destroying the streams and communities of southeastern Kentucky. Companies like TECO, Arch, AEI Resources, Inc. (Addington), Coastal, Consol, Martin County Coal and the Dean Brothers, just to name a few, have been breaking the laws for years. We need both enforcement and compliance of the 1972 Clean Water Act and the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.