The People Comment Passionately On
Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

July 24, 2003

Comments by Julian Martin

Note: These are reconstructed comments, not necessarily verbatim, but very close. Several, but not all, of the cuss words have been removed. My name is Julian Martin. I am the eighth generation of my family to have lived on Coal River. My grandfather fought at Blair Mountain and my dad's eye was cut open in the mines. My uncles, brother in law, son and cousins all worked in coal mines.

I was the second person to walk in the door and Larry Gibson was the first, and we did not get to speak in the first hour. It was supposed to be first come, first served. Chris Hamilton VP of the WVCoal Ass. walked in just 5 minutes before the hearing began and spoke second--obviously some of his industry buddies filled out a card for him or they just blatantly let him go second--probably afraid to be so blatant as to let him go first!

The economic study should be done over, and it should be made into a 200- to 500-year projection. (Julian gave each of the panel members copies of Bill Maxey's retirement statement and newspaper interviews and his comments to a board meeting of the WV Highlands Conservancy, which are all below. Julian also suggested that Maxey be interviewed for the EIS.) Maxey was the chief Forester for WV and is by no means a tree hugger, being a former timber industry employee and an advocate of clear-cutting. Maxey resigned because of mountaintop removal. 

Maxey equated mountaintop removal to a disease like AIDS, and has said that between 1977 and 1997 300,000 acres of mountains have been destroyed by mountaintop removal, and that is increasing by 30,000 acres per year. He said that each acre could have had new growth of 200 board feet of timber. That is 60,000,000 board feet of new growth lost each year forever. This would support three large band mills forever. The EIS said that mountain top removal would double by 2013. So more than 2 billion board feet of new growth would be lost every year forever. This represents a renewable resource and permanent renewable jobs. 

The present laws on strip mining should be enforced. The Nationwide 21 permit scheme should be abolished. And since the EIS says there is 147 years worth of underground coal left in WV, let's mine that leaving pillars in place to prevent the longwall mining disasters. During those 147 years we could come up with alternatives to our so-called energy "needs" and not destroy the mountains. 

I have talked with a WV DEP employee who said that it looked like they did all that research and then ignored it in the EIS conclusions. We have spies in all your agencies--you cannot trust anyone.

(I should have contradicted Chris Hamilton's statement that mountaintop removal has "minimal and temporary impacts." I should have pointed out that mountaintop removal is biological warfare and that every four days the explosive power of all the bombs and explosives used on Afghanistan occurs in the mountains of southern West Virginia, that nothing is worth destroying the mountains, not one million jobs nor 600 mountaintop WalMarts. I could have talked for days but I only had five minutes to argue against this rape of the mountains.) 

It is true that I told them that I felt like I was pissing in the ocean and that the EIS conclusions were bullshit.

Bill Maxey on Mountaintop Removal

Bill Maxey served as director of the Division of Forestry from 1993 until 1998 when he resigned in protest against mountain top removal. Maxey was a tenured associate professor of forest management at West Virginia University, where he taught for 11 years. Maxey also has worked 15 years as a forester for Westvaco Corp., and seven years for Georgia Pacific. 

The following quotes were taken from two articles in The Charleston Gazette

"I think mountaintop removal is analogous to serious disease, like AIDS..." "...most mines strip topsoil and do not replace it."

"It will take 150 to 200 years before trees would become reestablished following such a drastic" mining practice."

"It is a sad irony that mountaintop removal actually destroys more coal mining jobs than it creates; union miners are expediently replaced by relatively few heavy-equipment operators."

"This irresponsible excavation of coal makes the landscape so unsightly that it ruins tourism. (I can't envision tourists coming to see these barren wastelands!)"

"All native plant and animals are practically eliminated."

"In West Virginia, from 1977 to 1997, 300,000 acres were made into a moonscape by the decapitation of our mountains. Vast areas of our Mountain State are made uninhabitable for our citizens."

"Timber is the only renewable natural resource and the industry employs more than 30,000 people..."

"...the current reclamation practices are bogus."

"Television ads falsely lead viewers to think all [mountain top removal] sites are fine developments. Less than 5% really are."

"I resigned as a matter of principle, for I did not want to share in the blame nor guilt for the loss of West Virginia's heritage through the loss of our forested mountains."

In an interview with Bill Maxey (Not in The Charleston Gazette): "The over 300,000 acres already destroyed by mountain top removal would have grown 60,000,000 board feet of timber every year forever. 60,000,000 board feet of timber could have been cut every year forever, without reducing the timber mass, on what has already been destroyed by mountain top removal."

"I think mountaintop removal is analogous to serious disease, like AIDS," Maxey was associate professor of forest management at West Virginia University, where he taught for 11 years. Maxey also has worked 15 years as a forester for Westvaco Corp. and seven years for Georgia Pacific.