MTR Flyover

I refer to it as "the support of nature." It’s those times when you or your organization has planned an outdoor activity and the weather is absolutely perfect – when the odds are clearly against you for blue skies and light breezes (like the third week of February when this adventure was scheduled).

Yet, that’s exactly the kind of day it was when I arrived at the small private plane terminal at Yeager Airport in Charleston to meet my fellow passengers on a flight over southern West Virginia – sunny, clear, and light winds.

Ted Williams flashed me a smile when I came through the terminal door. He’s a writer for Audubon magazine, who coined the phrase "mountain range removal" after his first flight over the southern coalfields in February 2001. Ted is writing a piece for an upcoming Audubon about whistleblower Jack Spadaro’s recent scrape with the Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA).

This time, he wanted to focus on coal waste impoundments, especially the gigantic one looming over the community of Whitesville – the Brushy Fork impoundment owned by a Massey Energy subsidiary. There’s no better way to see the scope and scale of the devastation than flying at 4,000 feet.

Our pilot for the morning touched down from Abingdon, Va., in her red and white four-seater. I was anxious to finally meet Susan Lapis, a volunteer for Southwings, a non-profit organization that provides a bird’s-eye-view for journalists and others wanting to see mountain range removal (and other environmental damage) firsthand.

Our first hug was just a matter of formality after numerous phone conversations and e-mail messages over the past several years. I already knew that she and I were connected at the heart. Time and again, Susan has responded to OVEC’s call to fly reporters and others over the southern WV coalfields. One has to admire Susan’s invaluable contribution and commitment to this work.

When the final passenger, Jack Spadaro, arrived, we waited while he placed a call to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.(!) whose organization, Riverkeepers, has been involved in the work to ban mountaintop removal/valley fills. Jack is the MSHA whistleblower and former superintendent of the National Mine Safety and Health Academy, MSHA’s training facility Beckley, WV.

As an experienced mining engineer who had investigated the tragic Buffalo Creek disaster that killed 125 West Virginians in 1972, Jack was assigned to the team investigating the causes of the calamitous Inez, Ky., coal waste impoundment failure of October 2000. More than 306 million gallons of toxic, lava-like coal waste polluted nearly 100 miles of streams in West Virginia and Kentucky and inundated yards of residents; federal regulators dubbed it the worst environmental disaster in the eastern United States.

So what did Jack do to incur the wrath of his superiors? He refused to sign off on a study that failed to place blame where it correctly belongs – on Martin County Coal, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, and on his own agency.

After Bush assumed presidential power in January 2001, Jack’s troubles began. Ridiculous accusations were made against Jack such as "abusing his authority" and "failing to follow instructions." Just recently, the Charleston Gazette reported that Jack has been demoted and sent to MSHA "Siberia" – assigned work in Pennsylvania, away from his West Virginia home for the past 25 years (Pennsylvania readers please note: I’m not comparing your beautiful state to Siberia, but only comparing Jack’s new desk job at MSHA to being put out in the cold as punishment for doing what’s right!).

I stuffed some hard mint candy in my pocket as we left the building and headed for the plane (mint settles the stomach). Susan assured us that the weather was absolutely splendid for our one-hour dip through the coalfields. Coincidentally, our good friend, Mike Forman, was in the control tower that day at Yeager.

As we took to the air, an ugly brown layer of haze streaked across the sky. To the west, I pointed out the John Amos power plant, a major polluter in West Virginia. Susan, schooled in chemistry, explained that nitrogen oxides, referred to as NOx, caused the brown color. According to U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s 2002 report, "Darkening Skies," American Electric Power’s John Amos plant was 14th out of the nation’s 50 largest NOx emitters. In 2000, the facility belched 43,970 tons of NOx, or about 49 pound for each of West Virginia's 1.8 million residents.

Within 5 minutes of being aloft, Susan pointed out a "small" mountaintop removal operation – a brutally scarred and barren landscape below us, once one of the most diverse hardwood forests on the planet, now transformed to a biological desert. I never get used to the shock and sickening feeling I experience seeing this brutalized landscape; and I always ask myself what is the possible justification for the annihilation of mountains – the defining geologic feature of West Virginia and Appalachia? The usual reply of "greed" echoes in my head, but after seven years of coming up against coal companies, politicians and lobbyists who profit from this, I think the issue goes much deeper.

Is the destruction and desolation below us a reflection of an unseen inner landscape? Could people be compelled to this havoc-wreaking venture in their deeper quest for personal meaning? Are they simply filling a void in their spiritual lives with money, power and prestige? I wonder.

My attention returned to the conversation inside the plane. We buzzed past Sylvester, WV, where Massey Energy’s enormous white dome covers a huge coal pile. Residents there successfully sued the company for habitually covering the town with black dust from their processing plant. The determined faces of Mary Miller, Halline Thompson and Pauline Canterbury come to mind – three ladies fondly known as the "Sylvester Dustbusters."

As we continue our flight southeastward, Susan and Jack are pointing below us to darkened and unnaturally colored "lakes" associated with this type of mining. Typically these coal waste impoundments are situated with a former mountaintop removal job above communities and out of sight. Like valley fills, these "lakes" are a "cheap" way for coal processors to dispose of waste. After coal is gouged from the ground, it’s trucked to a processing plant to be washed. Water, chemicals used to wash the coal, and coal fines (particles) are pumped into an impoundment.

Often the land beneath is riddled with underground mines, like cells in a honeycomb, increasing the likelihood of a break-though (the cause of the failed impoundment in Inez, Ky.). Jack said that Martin County Coal had incorrectly mapped the mining beneath the impoundment. The bottom of the impoundment was separated from the underground mines by fewer than 10 feet. Failure was almost assured.

As we approach Whitesville, Susan alerts us to the Brushy Fork impoundment, situated above the town. In the event of a catastrophic failure, 5 billion gallons of slurry will have only one place to go - downhill, inundating the town in the narrow valley below it. Marfork Coal Co. (a subsidiary of the violation-prone Massey Energy) operates it.

Since the late 1990s, Coal River Mountain Watch and OVEC have been raising awareness about this impoundment and challenging coal industry "regulators" to stop permitting the expansion of this behemoth lake of toxic goo. We’ve won some concessions along the way, such as forcing Marfork to monitor the groundwater downgradient of the impoundment for dangerous heavy metals like mercury. The United Mine Workers of America is also gravely alarmed over the dangers this impoundment poses for miners and coalfield residents.

Susan tells Ted that the community evacuation route in the event of an impoundment failure calls for the townspeople of Whitesville to head towards the mine. Now there’s a sorry example of planning!

Next, we buzz Sundial, a tiny community in the northwestern corner of Raleigh County, where an impoundment appears above a grade school. I can only imagine that the Buffalo Creek disaster would pale in comparison to a failure occurring here during school hours. Out of sight, out of mind.

Maria Gunnoe lives below this massive valley fill. Her property has been badly flooded nine times in the last three years. Before the valley fill went in, her property, which has been in the family 50 years, never experienced such dreadful flooding.

Susan heads her little plane northeast towards Kayford Mountain. My eyes can scarce believe the scope and scale of mountain massacre below. Between Princess Beverly Mining (Massey Energy) and the Samples Mine (Arch Coal), Larry Gibson’s little piece of "heaven" is almost surrounded by thousands of acres of devastation. I recall the ironic wording on a tombstone in the Stanley family cemetery there: "Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal."

Throughout this flight, Jack has pointed out gigantic valley fills that have smothered more than a 1,000 miles of headwater streams in West Virginia. After explosives blast away the rock above coal seams, huge trucks dump the debris into the valleys with little forethought. Some, Jack said, are several miles across at the top of the fill; and he explained how the original intent of the federal mining law regarding valley fills was to build them from the bottom up to increase stability.

These fills however, are little more than waste dumps – a "cheap" way for mountain destroyers to dispose of "overburden" (a burden to their profit-taking?) – what we knew as former mountains.

This aerial view of the piecemeal destruction of southern West Virginia is the only way to see and truly grasp the inhuman scale of this mining.

A wave of relief sweeps over me as I pop a mint into my mouth, wondering if the queasiness is caused by the occasional bumps during the flight – or am I literally sickened by all the unnecessary destruction of our beloved mountains?