Letter to the editor originally provided by The Athens News

April 24, 2006

Letter writer misstated the situation pertaining to mine hazards, damages

I am writing in response to young Jonathan Harvey's letter in the April 10 issue of The Athens News. As an organizer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (www.ovec.org) fighting the coal industry, our staff members are often subject to attacks such as this. I would like to thank Jonathan for bringing this discussion to the forefront of people's minds, something we strive daily to do at colleges, universities and many other forums across this nation and the world.

Jonathan does not know me personally as he contends, though I have seen him wearing the uniform of a police officer in Danville, W.Va. Nor has there ever been a swift-water rescue team, as Jonathan stated, according to a 40-year veteran of the Boone County Volunteer Fire Department.

Jonathan wondered how our property could be flooded without rain. When a valley fill was placed in my backyard, it changed everything. The coal companies are permitted to pump chemical-laden water into the ponds, which they constructed, at the toe of the valley fill. This now makes up the headwaters of this stream -- and these ponds do overflow. The ponds are also perpetual treatment sites. They will have to be treated for heavy metals and acidity forever!

The once babbling brook with an abundance of aquatic life that runs near my home has been manipulated until it has become a raging river of toxins and debris. The two ponds and 1,183-acre strip have increased the volume and velocity of water coming through our property. Frequently, in the middle of the night, the coal company will release water out of these ponds and into the stream that goes past my home.

For the record, Boone County, W.Va., has 338 coal mines total with 75 mountaintop-removal sites alone. This doesn't include the number of impoundments and sediment-control ponds upstream of Bob White on Rt. 85. There are six impoundments, including one directly behind Jonathan and his family's home and two new ones -- all within a 25-mile stretch of highway. Alarmingly, we have no working emergency evacuation plans. If just one of these earthen dams were to breach, the loss of life would be catastrophic. In Buffalo Creek, W.Va., in 1972, a toxic coal waste dam breached and 125 people died; some were never found.

Anyone who may still doubt the truth of my statements can come and see what has happened here. Bob White, W.Va., will soon be history just like the quail it was named after, along with many other southern West Virginia communities. Mountaintop-removal coal mining is all about temporary jobs, temporary energy, dirty politics, mass exploitation, depopulation and permanent destruction of not only the land but a culture of people in the name of "cheap" energy and massive profit for the select few. Like the coal industry says in one of its recent public relations campaigns: "Yeah, coal can do that."

Refer to Revelation 11:18, then ask which side are you on?

Maria Gunnoe
Coalfield Community Organizer
Bob White, W.Va.