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Photo courtesy of Peter Bosch

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Photo courtesy of Peter Bosch

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Photo courtesy of Peter Bosch

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Photo courtesy of Peter Bosch

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Photo courtesy of Peter Bosch

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http://www.sludgesafety.org/what_me_worry/marsh_fork/index.html

I love the taste of pollution in the morning. The thick dust from the mine drifted up to where I stood perched over a 600-foot drop, coating my lips with a sour, metallic film.

Below me lay a barren wasteland of exposed rock, large machinery and a handful of workers. This is the new face of Appalachia. This is mountaintop removal mining.

In the last 30 years, mountaintop removal (MTR) mining has ravaged the Appalachian Mountains, particularly in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. It chokes the life out of the environment and surrounding communities, leaving a wake of poverty, ecological degradation and despair.

MTR is a type of surface mining in which large quantities of explosives are used to blow off the tops of mountains in order to reach the coal seams below. Entire mountains (over 470 thus far) are reduced by 500-1,000 feet.

Once the coal is extracted, the excess rock is dumped into adjacent valleys, filling in streams and disrupting the local watershed and wildlife. These “valley fills” remain conspicuously barren because the topsoil is destroyed in the mining process.

Additionally, “cleaning” the extracted coal results in billions of gallons of toxic sludge, which is subsequently injected underground or held in enormous earthen dams called “impoundments.” The toxins (such as selenium and arsenic) contained in the valley fills and sludge impoundments inevitably seep into the groundwater, contaminating the potable water of nearby hollows (small Appalachian communities).

One such impoundment, containing 2.8 billion gallons of sludge, looms ominously above an elementary school that I recently visited. The school lies a mere hundred yards away.

The MTR cycle is vicious. Coal companies move into an area, buy some land, erect a processing plant and begin blowing up mountains and filling in valleys. Through processes of seepage, the subsequent coal waste pollutes the groundwater.

The disruption of the water’s natural flow caused by valley fills results in excessive flooding. Continuous explosions shake the frames of nearby homes and launch coal dust into the air.

The value of homes rapidly declines, often dropping to a mere 10 percent of normal market value. As a result, selling one’s home does not yield sufficient money to buy a new home, so residents become trapped in the area. The only people who have any reason to buy the devalued land are the coal companies, so they soon collect parcels of land at discount prices.

Also, MTR mining employs only a tenth of the workforce that deep shaft mining once employed, causing unemployment to skyrocket in the region in recent years.

Recent Calvin graduate Thommy Thompson, fellow senior Peter Hiskes and I recently had the opportunity to travel to West Virginia to witness the devastation firsthand.

We met with a number of local West Virginians who were fighting the coal companies tooth and nail; they were fighting for clean air and water, fighting for jobs and fighting for their land.

It broke my heart to see my fellow Americans struggling for the most basic of human rights, drinkable water and breathable air. I have traveled in Latin America a little, so I am accustomed to being cautioned against the dangers of drinking from the tap in places like Ecuador or Guatemala.

But until a few weeks ago I had never received such a warning in my own country. In parts of West Virginia the water is so polluted that water emerges from the tap black.

The devastation in Appalachia is multi-faceted.

Biodiversity and jobs are lost at a staggering pace. Natural beauty is cast aside for coal. And, perhaps most tragically of all, the home of bluegrass, the Appalachian Trail and the best moonshine this side of the Mississippi (so I’m told) is being forsaken by the rest of the nation.

West Virginia — as I came to realize during my brief trip — is nothing more than a third world nation within a first world nation, and as such it suffers all the neglect and exploitation that we award other underdeveloped nations.

I hope that our lack of outrage concerning MTR stems from ignorance. I imagine most people are simply unaware of the exploitation and degradation occurring in Appalachia. Well, no longer is that an excuse. Consider yourself informed, my friend.

Now, on to the outrage. Since the problem itself is complex, the solution is equally multi-faceted.

Outrage at MTR can easily be directed at a number of sinister men, including Don Blankenship (CEO of Massey Energy) or any number of complacent politicians representing the great state of West Virginia.

However, such outrage would be, for the most part, unproductive.

The fact of the matter is that we demand the coal that MTR yields. On the Consumers Energy grid (the company that provides you with light, charges your cell phone and powers your computer), there are four coal-fired power plants that buy coal directly from mountaintop removal sites.

We are directly linked to MTR, and we are destroying Appalachia.

I imagine a powerful wave of nausea has just passed over you. I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself. OK, read on.

The first step to ending MTR is to reduce energy usage.

The second step is to pass legislation against the mining technique itself. Thommy, Peter and I worked to do just that as we concluded our trip by lobbying for the Clean Water Protection Act (H.R. 2169), which would prohibit mining companies from dumping their mining waste into streams (and therefore valleys as well). The bill has yet to be presented before the House, but a coalition of thirteen grassroots organizations known as the Alliance for Appalachia is working hard to build up support for it.

In a simple twist of fate, Congressman Vern Ehlers (former Calvin professor and current representative of Calvin’s district), whose position on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee makes him extremely important for the success of H.R. 2169, has yet to support the bill.

Congressman Ehlers, a longtime proponent of the environment and clean water, should support this bill. He may need a bit of prodding however, and the Calvin community is in a perfect position to prod.

MTR stands in stark contrast to God’s call to creation care and social justice, and as Christians we must act against it. ESC and Restoring Eden hope to sponsor a letter-writing campaign to convince Congressman Ehlers of the importance of this bill and to make our outrage known.

Let’s stop blowing up our mountains and start saving Appalachia.