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Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2011 See sidebar for table of contents
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The old school, with coal silo.
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Triumph - New Marsh Fork Elementary School
Underway
In early October, Raleigh County Schools officially
broke ground on the new Marsh Fork Elementary School. Unlike the old
school, the new school will be safely away from a coal prep plant, a
coal slurry dam holding 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge and a coal
silo. The Beckley Register- Herald reported:
The groundbreaking brings to fruition the vision to
which some citizens and groups, such as Pennies of Promise and Coal
River Mountain Watch, have dedicated more than seven years of work.
Discussion of a new school first began in March 2004,
when grassroots group Coal River Mountain Watch organized a
mountaintop removal educational day at Marsh Fork Elementary School.
One teacher expressed concerns about many students’ respiratory
problems.
Since then, Coal River Mountain Watch and other
concerned residents and groups have worked to bring awareness to the
school’s proximity to a coal silo (235 feet away) and a slurry
impoundment (400 yards away) formerly owned by Massey Energy and
currently by Alpha. The campaign for a new school kicked off with civil
disobedience and the arrests of many local residents. Citizens called
for health studies of the school and repeatedly petitioned then-Gov. Joe
Manchin and the Raleigh County BOE to support building a new school
upstream from the impoundment.
One student’s grandfather, Ed Wiley, even walked to
Washington, DC, to raise funds and awareness for a new school. The
group he helped found, Pennies of Promise, ultimately raised $12,227 –
much of it donated by other schoolchildren from across the country.
Just some of the history of the work that went into
what has become the victory of the new Marsh Fork Elementary School is
documented here:
www.sludgesafety.org/gallery/,
http://bit.ly/YopdB
and
www.ohvec.org/where_is_ed.htm.
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