OVEC in Action

Below are a few of the things OVEC has been up to since our last newsletter came out in June. In between newsletters, to keep up to date on OVEC actions and events, visit the People in Action and the Action Alert pages of the OVEC website.

June 20-22 – The Coal Summit

Over 150 folks from across the nation gathered for the Coal Summit, three days devoted to examining the true costs of coal, including the social and environmental impacts of the extraction and combustion of coal. Many participants witnessed the destruction known as mountaintop removal first hand, either on flyovers, provided by Southwings, or on fieldtrips to Kayford Mountain, the homeplace of OVEC board member Larry Gibson.

Groups involved in the planning of the Coal Summit included American Rivers, Appalachian Voices, Citizens Coal Council, Clean Air Task Force, Coal River Mountain Watch, Friends of the Earth, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, Mountain Watershed Association, National Parks Conservation Association, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Sierra Club, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Tri-State Citizens Mining Network.

So many great speakers had so many thought provoking things to say. You’ll find a summary of the event on the People in Action pages of the OVEC website. Below is just a little of all the great information presented at the Coal Summit.

Hydrogeologist Rick Eades said there is enough flattened land in the Coal River basin ALONE to allow all of the following:

8 Five 5,000-acre recreational parks, 25,000 acres;

8 Ten 1,000-acre prison sites, 10,000 acres (Prisons are of the state’s favorite ideas for "economic development," even though JUST ONE prison built on a MTR site in Kentucky has already spent $40 million in trying to stabilize the shifting rubble of MTR-flattened land.);

8 Fifty 500-acre shopping malls, 25,000 acres (Not to mention that the MTR blasting is driving people away, so where would the shoppers come from?);

8 One hundred 100-acre trailer parks to relocate MTR-induced flood victims, 10,000 acres (Because scalped mountains are several hundred feet above major roads and infrastructure, "flatlander" arguments are moot. Valley fills/dumps will settle differentially and are among the least stable sites to build on);

8 Four hundred 50-acre school sites, 20,000 acres (Where would the students come from? WV has probably closed 400 public schools in the past 20-plus years, during many years of record coal production).

Joel Schwartz, epidemiologist with the Harvard School of Public Health: "Particles from coal (combustion) are killing people and they are killing a lot of people."

Ellen Fister of the Citizens Coal Council: "Coal is a black hearted outlaw with no intention of obeying the law."

Former Secretary of State Ken Hechler: "Be a hell-raiser like Laura Forman."

Charleston artist and OVEC member Winter Ross created a series of "River Goddess" quilts in memory of the late OVEC organizer Laura Forman. On July 26, OVECians attended an opening of Winter’s work at the Taylor Bookstore Annex in Charleston. Winter will donate a portion of the funds received from the sale of River Goddess quilts to OVEC.

In her statement on the series, Winter says, "All the pieces depict the female figure as landscape and are inspired by the rivers and hills of West Virginia…This series is dedicated to the memory of Laura Forman, a mother and activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition who died suddenly after giving an impassioned speech against valley fills and mountaintop removal."

Respected journalist Bill Moyers aired "The Cost of Coal" on the national PBS TV show, Now with Bill Moyers. OVEC staff and volunteers devoted six days in July to helping the Moyers crew get all sides of the mountaintop removal story. The result was a biting expose on valley fills and MTR, and the national consequences of changes to the Clean Water Act the coal industry has "bought" from the Bush Administration. OVEC members Willard and Evelyn Kelly were featured on the program, as were OVEC’s good friends Wheeling Jesuit University aquatic biologist Dr. Ben Stout, Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment executive director Joe Lovett and Earthjustice senior legislative counsel Joan Mulhern.

NOW: But one of the hidden costs of our hunger for coal may be the effect of mountaintop removal on our thirst for water…

BEN STOUT: We’re starting to see serious water quality degradation, impairment of biological communities and a major loss of our forest ecosystems…The forest will never return ever the way that it was to these sites. It’s impossible.

WILLARD KELLY: The blasting was so heavy when they were close behind the house, which was a half a mile away, they cracked the sheetrock in our house, our cinderblock foundation, our chandeliers. Our doors would fly open.

EVELYN KELLY: My sons when they were teenagers used to hunt these mountains. There’s no top of the mountain squirrel hunting anymore. So they’re just taking it all away. They’re just taking it community by community by community. Whole communities are being just moved out for the sake of coal.

BILL RANEY (president of the West Virginia Coal Association): And you do change the environment. And I’m not suggesting you’re improving on it. I’m not sure you can improve on what the good Lord put here. And we feel like the impact is absolutely minimized.

EVELYN KELLY: Our children and our grandchildren, they’re gonna inherit all this. And there has to be something left besides a moonscape mountain and polluted water.

OVEC’s so cutting edge. On Sept. 30 we posted to the website and sent out an Action Alert! asking you to ask our politicians to nix the national energy bill, born out of Dick Cheney’s secret meetings with fossil fuel execs. A day or two later we began getting e-mails from national groups urging us to take action on the energy bill. On Oct. 5, the New York Times ran an editorial: "Kill the Energy Bill." Hmmm…is the Times checking our website?