Coalfield Residents Speak the TRUTH

Great work! The Office of Surface Mining received over 32,000 written comments on Bush’s proposed gutting of the Stream Buffer Zone rule, which is supposed to prohibit mining activity within 100 feet of a stream.

OVEC board member, Regina Hendrix: "I do not want my grandchildren to have to pay for cleanup of streams polluted with mine waste. This is greed for short-term profit, and most of the profits go out of state anyway ... I intend to fight this proposed change, which will further degrade our water quality. We must clean up our rivers and streams for future generations. And dumping more mine waste into them is not the way to do it."

Almost all of the comments opposed the Bush administration proposal. A newspaper article said it would probably take the agency more than a year to examine all the comments!

Thanks to the hard work of the Friends of the Mountains coalition (for instance, wonderful OVEC volunteers conducted a phone bank, handed out fliers, and helped us mail out a newsletter asking people to come to the hearing), the room at the Civic Center was packed with over 100 people on March 31, the evening of the Charleston public hearing on the Bush administration’s proposed Buffer Zone rule change. Hearing rooms were also filled in Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and DC. A carload of West Virginians traveled to DC to participate in a press conference with Robert Kennedy, Jr., prior to the hearings there.

Coalfield residents and others spoke eloquently to the issues, denouncing what amounts to an open invitation for mining companies to dump more of our tortured mountains into biologically crucial headwater streams. However, at the Charleston hearing, one person was stopped from presenting her prepared comments.

If OVEC’s co-director Janet Fout had not been silenced, maybe news of the hearing would not have gone all the way to London, England, as it did.

From the Charleston Gazette’s March 31 article, "Stream rule proposals criticized," by Ken Ward Jr.:

"Janet Fout thought strip mine regulators should hear the sounds of frogs and birds whose homes could be damaged by mountaintop removal mining.

"So, at a public hearing on proposed changes to a key stream protection rule, Fout tried to play a tape of spring peepers and wood thrushes.

" ‘I’m speaking for life,’ said Fout, a Huntington environmental activist. ‘We will all miss the birds and the frogs and the fish.’

"U.S. Office of Surface Mining officials weren’t interested. ‘I’m not going to listen to that for five minutes,’ said OSM’s Tom Morgan, referring to the allotted time for each speaker.

" ‘What relevance does that have to the stream buffer zone rule?’ Morgan said. ‘We are not here to hear animal calls or bird calls.’ Fout continued to play the tape.

"She said that numerous scientific studies have found mountaintop removal is harming bird and other animal habitat.

"A uniformed Charleston police officer – one of two posted inside the hearing – walked to the front of the room and exchanged whispers with Morgan. Then, the officer walked over to the podium and whispered to Fout. When she still didn’t stop the tape, the officer shut off the microphone. He appeared at one point to be trying to confiscate the tape player or at least turn it off.

"But Morgan and several other OSM officials heard plenty more from mountaintop removal activists who dominated the three-hour hearing. Julia Bonds of Whitesville blasted mountaintop removal as an ‘evil scheme to allow greedy mining companies to destroy our mountains and our streams.’

" ‘This administration and these agencies are nothing more than prostitutes for the extractive industries,’ said Bonds, a leader of the group Coal River Mountain Watch. OSM held Tuesday’s hearing to accept public comments on its proposal to rewrite a 20-year-old regulation called the stream buffer zone rule.

"More than 100 people packed a small meeting room at the Charleston Civic Center for the hearing.

"Currently, the rule generally prohibits mining within 100 feet of perennial and intermittent streams. As the rule is now, mining operators can obtain waivers to come closer to streams. But, to obtain such a variance, companies must show their proposed mining will not violate water quality standards or ‘adversely affect the water quantity and quality.’

"…Earlier this year, the Bush administration proposed to rewrite the federal buffer zone rule. Under the proposal, a variance could be approved if a company showed it had ‘minimized, to the maximum extent possible’ the size of its valley fills. The Charleston meeting was one of five public hearings on the rule change that OSM held on Tuesday.

"On Monday, the industry group Friends of Coal sent out a mass e-mail to urge its members to attend the Charleston hearing. ‘Show up and let OSM know what coal means to you, your family and your community and how important these changes are to secure your future in West Virginia,’ the message said.

"But only two of the nearly four dozen speakers at the hearing spoke up for the coal industry or mountaintop removal.

"At the end of the hearing, Charleston lawyer Mary Ann Maul asked Morgan to allow Fout to play her tape. Then, Maul said, it would be part of the hearing record and OSM could decide later whether to consider it in its final decision.

"Morgan refused and also said he would not cite any OSM rules that prohibit the playing of such tapes at public hearings.

" ‘I’m not here to justify what I do,’ Morgan said. ‘I’m in charge of this hearing.’ "