MTR Mining Equipment Taken Off Gauley Mountain – For Now

Powellton Coal blames economic factors, but continues fight for permit renewal

With our indifference, we have allowed an industry, completely out of control since its inception, to destroy our beautiful state, pollute our air and water, destroy our wildlife habitat, strip the land of its substance and beauty and destroy the graves of our ancestors.

This is an industry with more power than the Mafia, and it wields its power by intimidation, false propaganda and arrogance. Why? Because it can!

Most of our legislators and our governor invariably kowtow to the demands of King Coal. Our Senators and Congressman represent him to the exclusion of the rights of the citizens of this state. They are all complicit in the rape of our state and the abuse of our people.

Finally, on February 12, at Ansted Middle School, I saw some of the sustained outrage that could prevent the continued destruction of our mountains and homes, if only we had a real Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). This public hearing was held by the DEP to gather citizen input on a proposed renewal of a mining permit that is part of Powellton Coal’s larger mining complex on Gauley Mountain. About 170 people turned out – not one spoke in favor of granting the permit renewal.

All of these persons were there to ask the DEP not to renew a mining permit that would further encroach onto the beautiful Gauley Mountain range – which is already being damaged by mountaintop removal.

According to the DEP’s own records, the permittee – a subsidiary of Consol Energy – had violated the permit that it was trying to renew hundreds of times. Indeed, the permittee had three unabated Notices of Violation and is continually discharging illegal pollution into Rich Creek of the Gauley River. Rich Creek is one of the few naturally reproducing trout streams in West Virginia.

After an hour of dawdling and doublespeak by the DEP, the people were allowed to speak. They did so with heartfelt eloquence and accurate factual information that should have led to the denial of this permit renewal.

However, as usual, the ruling by the DEP was seemingly a foregone conclusion. DEP of course renewed the permit.

What we have is not a WV Department of Environmental Protection, but rather a Department of Environmental Permitting, where the mining of coal must be permitted at all costs to the land and the people.

Once again we are confronted with the cold fact that the beautiful mountains of West Virginia are expendable. The graves of our ancestors are expendable. The people of West Virginia are expendable. But not to those of us who remain outraged and willing to fight for them.