The People Comment Passionately On
Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

July 24, 2003

Comments by Vivian Stockman, OVEC

I am Vivian Stockman. I work for OVEC.

First, given the size of the draft EIS, I would like to ask for a 90-day extension to the written comments deadline.

I am opposed to this destruction of communities, forests, streams and groundwater that is euphemistically labeled mountaintop mining.

This draft EIS utterly fails to address mountaintop removal's devastating toll on mountain culture. The draft EIS also fails to address MTR's effects on human health. Many people will address these topics tonight, and much more detail will be coming in our written comments.

In an act of blind greed and ecocidal stupidity, the Bush administration has ignored the EIS science, making recommendations that discard scientific fact in order to appease its campaign donors. Some in the administration and the coal industry believe they can use the term "low-cost energy" to justify their destruction of the coalfields. But politics cannot long ignore scientific reality. We have been paying and will continue to pay the extreme ecological and financial toll of mountaintop removal coal mining. For instance there's the recurring flooding-and now we have consultants recommending moving people out of their ancestral homes and neighborhoods to avoid the floods.

But let's pretend for a minute that, as the coal industry would have us believe, this EIS is just about jobs and economic development.

The EIS fails to consider an alternative scenario where miners are put to work cleaning up abandoned mine lands. It fails to consider a scenario where alternative energy research, development and manufacturing are promoted in the coalfields.

Last year, a study showed that 11 mid-western states could create more than 200,000 jobs and $5.5 billion for workers by transitioning to truly cleaner alternative energies. If we took just some of the money we spend subsidizing the coal industry and cleaning up its messes, we could do much to bring alternative energy plants into the state. Imagine jobs that leave an intact environmental legacy for our children!

The draft EIS fails to consider the monetary value of ecosystem services to the current and future economy. Old school economics put no value on ecosystem services. The emerging field of ecological economics is replacing the older, discredited Enron-style school of economics.

According to the Stanford Report, ecosystem services are "the processes through which natural systems support human life by purifying air and water, detoxifying and decomposing waste, renewing soil fertility, regulating climate, preventing droughts and floods, controlling pests and pollinating plants….Watersheds may be among the most marketable of all ecosystems… because they provide essential services such as water purification and flood control."

Scientists have found that "the services of ecological systems…are critical to the functioning of Earth's life-support system. They contribute to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the economic value of the planet. For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range of $16-54 trillion per year, with an average of $33 trillion per year. Because of the nature of the uncertainties, this must be considered a minimum estimate.

Many of the human activities that modify or destroy natural ecosystems may cause deterioration of ecological services whose value, in the long term, dwarfs the short-term economic benefits society gains from those activities." I add that mountaintop removal is one of the most destructive of all planned human activities.

My point in bringing up the concepts of ecosystem services and ecological economics is that we must begin to think this way here in West Virginia. We must acknowledge that short-term profit for a handful of individuals comes at great long-term cost to all of us and our children.

Smart mining practices are like money in the bank. MTR is not smart. It is part of a false economy that is robbing the future. Which do we choose?

This EIS, regulatory agencies, politicians and the coal industry need to consider the huge economic benefits of intact ecosystems. We need to behave as if our lives depend on them, because they do.