Mountaintop removal mining takes place in many states in the Appalachian region, including West Virginia, Kentucky, southern Virginia and Tennessee. In this destructive process, entire peaks, hillsides, and mountaintops are literally blown off in order to reach the coal seams that lie underneath. Mountaintop removal is a practice that is clearly hazardous to our environment and opposed by residents of the surrounding communities as well as environmentalists nationwide.
Hear the voices of the communities destroyed by mountaintop removal mining:
Julia Bonds
Larry Gibson
Freda Hudson Williams
JULIA BONDS
VIDEO: Watch Julia Bonds and others discuss mountaintop removal (YouTube)
"Coalfields citizens have watched as mountaintop removal valley fills filled our feeder streams in the Coal River, until the Coal River is an impaired stream, once a vibrant river. As a child and teenager, we swam and fished this river and now I can walk across from bank to bank in places and never get my knees wet. These fills are unstable and unable to handle rain events, causing flooding and erosion.
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| Phill Barnett shows Julia Bonds and Freda Williams where the coal company proposes to begin another mountaintop removal / valley fill mine. Addington's flattened mountain and filled-in valley can be seen behind Barnett's house. |
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"A recent permit in Raleigh county projected 4 million tons mined, but there will be 65 million tons of overburden to be placed in valley fills. First our homes are destroyed by blasting and then we are flooded. It is our duty to give our children the same clean water that we enjoyed, not to destroy our children's water.
"What you do to Appalachia, you do to our nation’s water, remember that.
"The surest way to defeat your enemy is to poison and destroy their water, this is a tactic used in many ancient wars. I ask you, Why is the Bush administration determined to destroy Americas' waterways?
"This administration has backed the people of Appalachia into a corner, We demand this administration stop the destruction of Appalachia. The coalfields of Appalachia look like a war zone and quite frankly that is exactly what it is. If this administration goes forward with this madness, our children will pay the ultimate price."
LARRY GIBSON
"If Bush gets to mangle the Clean Water Act with this rule change, the coal companies will show no mercy whatsoever to us living in the coalfields. From my home you look out over a destroyed landscape. You can't tell what once were forested mountains and where streams once ran in the valleys. It's a moonscape now. With this rule change, our suffering will only get worse."
[Larry Gibson is a board member of the Huntington, W. Va.-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (www.ohvec.org). Gibson's ancestral home, Kayford Mountain, near Cabin Creek, W. Va., is practically surrounded by a sea of mountaintop removal mines and valley fill.]
FREDA HUDSON WILLIAMS
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| Freda Hudson Williams |
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"Injustice is and has always been present in the coalfields. The water and air are polluted from illegal mining.
"Our government needs to say if you mine illegally you will be issued a cessation order. The value of homes has dropped to rock bottom from blasting that causes the floors in our homes to vibrate. Flooding is caused by mining and erosion of valley fills. The flooding is made much worse by the fills, as is stated in the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. The number of valley fills is increasing by leaps and bounds. The coal river valley alone has permitted enough valley fills to fill 9,000 football fields. We must at all costs protect the Clean Water Act and stop the subtle terrorism of the people of the coalfields."
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