These have been fiercely full weeks. Tensions are cranked
high in Appalachia right now and hope and fear are in
the air. Mother Jones is probably rolling in her grave as the coal industry’s PR
groups organize workers to voice opposition to environmental concerns and
scapegoat the environmentalists for ‘destroying the economy of the region.’ The
polarities are as thick as the fog over the New River Gorge, while just as
solid.
-Last week the EPA put all 79
pending mountaintop removal permits on hold another 60 days as a result of all
our letters and years of hard work!
-This Tuesday I ended up on the ‘wrong’
side of an angry mob of coal supporters at a public hearing hosted by the Army
Corps of Engineers in Charleston.
-Last week I sat in a court room
witnessing a judge rule in favor of our citizen group in Ansted in support of GauleyMountain and against the coal
company.
I am reminded daily of the choices
we have when things get tough. A tenet of the Great Turning, a name for a shift
toward a life sustaining society, is that rather than contract into tighter,
smaller and meaner beings when resources get scarce – we choose to expand
further, open up more and use collective creativity to work through issues.
Please join me in a prayer for Appalachia that rather
than stay hooked to the extreme ups and downs of hope and fear we can ride a
middle wave of equanimity with a shared local intelligence, or at least civil
discourse without anymore violence.
The leaves are a brilliant mass of
reds, gold, oranges and browns. The snakes are sleeping for the winter and my
pantry is full of homemade applesauce and jam for the winter. I discovered a
great quilt shop down the road from my cabin, and the mornings are as crisp as
fall mornings should be. Meanwhile, tensions are soaring as the movement to end
mountain top removal seems to be succeeding.
Last time I wrote I began with a
supplication for everyone to write to the EPA to encourage them to deny all of
the 79 pending permits on mountain top removal throughout Appalachia.
Well – it is working! I received a lot of e mails from you saying that you had
commented. Thank you. A few days later the papers were full of the news that
the EPA put all 79 pending permits on
another 60 day delay while they review all the letters and research the
evidence! With more pressure all 79 permits may even be denied.
I didn’t realize the
personal impact of this decision until after writing yall and sending my own
comments to the EPA. A few days later I returned to Jones Branch just north of
my home to continue doing listening work in the community where I went before
with the toxic water below an active coal mine. One of the men I had previously
met passed away since the last time I visited, so I baked a chicken pot pie
from scratch to bring the family. After a few hours of chatting I was shocked
to find out that the mountain above the hollow was still standing only because
the EPA put the permit on hold! I had no idea that mountain was one of the 79
we all wrote about. It is a small steep mountain right above their homes.
Dynamiting that mountain would be a tragedy. Filling in the valley would be the
end of their home. The conversation wandered to all the cemeteries that have
been bulldozed and dynamited, lost forever. I still find myself holding my jaw
wide open in disbelief. I live here and see the effects of mountain top removal
all around but still find it hard to believe!
At any rate, letters thanking
the EPA for this decision and encouraging them to deny all 79 permits and ban
mountain top removal mining are appreciated now. However, if you are like me
and think you only have one letter in you today, please consider this request
to write to the Army Corps of Engineers
appreciating the proposal at hand to abolish the Nationwide Permit 21 process
and instate an individual permitting process for each valley fill.
The reason this is important enough
for me to use up my letter time on is that I tried to testify on this account
the other night at a public hearing and instead it turned into a violent mob of
pro-coal supporters threatening our lives. Our voices were silenced through
force the other night and I am asking for your help making sure we are not just
silenced by it.
Here is the background as I am
learning it:
Last June, the three regulating
agencies that allow mountain top removal to happen, the EPA, the Department of
the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers signed a Memorandum of
Understanding which included an ‘Inter-agency Action Plan’ developed to reduce
the adverse environmental impacts of surface coal mining in Appalachia. (Read
the MOU at http://www.usace.army.mil/CECW/Documents/cecwo/reg/mou/mou_final_mtm.pdf)
The public comment period for the EPA was a part of this process and seems to
be going strong.
The Army Corps of Engineers is in
charge of overseeing the health of the water as it relates with the valley
fills from this kind of mining. For years they have fulfilled that duty by
issuing a “Nationwide Permit #21” which basically says that any water quality
issues which result from filling in headwater streams are negligible and can be
solved through a blanket mitigation process. This is now in serious question
and the Corps sent out a proposal to terminate the NWP 21 and instate an
individual permit process for each valley fill. Here is a link to the actual
proposal from the Federal Register: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-16803.pdf
Ending the Nationwide Permit 21 and requiring an individual environmental and
community impact statement for each valley fill is a sane and appropriate move
on behalf of the Corps.
To put it bluntly – this
could help save the Appalachian Mountains and
communities because I can not imagine that blowing up mountains and filling in
streams and valleys can actually be legal in the Clean Water Act.
The coal companies clearly know
this and have decided this is the time to rally the workers and point the blame
at the local residents fighting for their lives. There was a hearing by the
Army Corps of Engineers in Charleston, WV
this past Tuesday and it turned into a violent and terrifying scenario where
free speech was drowned out by severe heckling, jeering, threats, shouts and a
lack of security. The industry front groups turned out nearly a thousand people
and many of the West Virginians opposed to mountain top
removal were prevented from entering the building or chose to stay home. Here
is one video from outside the hearing. Click here.
I actually made it inside the
hearing and surprised myself by testifying in the most hostile and openly
threatening situation I have encountered at a public forum. The room was packed
with people wearing mining uniforms and yelling. The mob was a scared and angry
throng of miners and mining supporters who did not seem to know what the permit
hearing was about but were keen to yell at, scream over and threaten violence
to anyone recognized as a ‘tree-hugger.’
Sound familiar? It is an old story
and an old tactic – dividing the “us and them,” and vilifying whoever happens to
be ‘them.’ Well this time I was a ‘them,’ and it was terrifying to hear the
threats and see the lack of safety in the room. It was also sad to see how much
fear was there in the alcohol-filled bodies of the neighbors shouting down my
friends. The testimony given by the so called Friends of Coal and the coal
miners all had to do with saving “Coal” because there are no other jobs, no
other choices. The despair in the room was noticeable even while being verbally
assaulted and physically threatened. The fear is also well-founded as the coal
companies have owned the coalfields of Appalachia for
the past century and have kept any other industry out so effectively that there
really are no other jobs to be had. Soon there won’t be jobs or mountains left.
The Corps said public comments sent
in will be accepted with as much weight as verbal testimony at the meeting.
Well, our testimony barely made it on the record because the yelling was so
loud and we were all scared. We have until October
26th to send in letters in support of the proposal to end the
Nation Wide Permit 21 process and instate both the interim and long term
proposal of establishing an individual assessing process for valley fills.
Please write a letter to send via the internet or snail mail. It will help a
lot!
On
and on it goes. My work as an eco-chaplain helping mediate conflict, inspiring
a culture of self-care and facilitating dialogue is clearly cut out for me
here. Want to join? J
Meanwhile, today is my
dear friend Sage’s birthday and we are off to southern Virginia
for some Old Time music and dancing at the Carter Family Fold. We played music
together up at KayfordMountain
and then in the pavilion in downtown Ansted for the Mayor last weekend. I even
played the two songs I can squeak out on the fiddle already!
I am signing off with a hearty
thank you to all of you who have sent me support by means of letters or money
or both. It means everything to me. I love hearing from all of you and even just
knowing you are doing your work in the world and sharing in this work keeps me
warm inside.
