Mountaintop Removal Clearinghouse

A symposium called “Writing about Mountain Culture, Mountain Top Removal, and the Environment” will be taking place at Marshall University on Friday, Oct. 20 and Saturday, Oct. 21.

Six authors will hold writing workshops, give readings, and engage in roundtable discussions. The authors include Chris Holbrook, Charlie Hughes, Kristin L. Johannsen, Eric Reese, Anne Shelby, and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, all of whom worked on Missing Mountains (Wind Publications, 2005), a book dedicated to stopping mountain top removal. Denise Giardina will be the featured speaker on Saturday afternoon.

For details about times and events, email Chris Green. Anyone interested may participate (all activities are free), but space in writing workshops is limited, so interested parties are recommended to register by contacting Green.

Patchwork Films announces the release of a three-film DVD entitled “The Mountain Mourning Collection.” This DVD is aimed at bringing immediate focus to the effect mountaintop removal coal mining has on the land and its people.

The films are as follows:

The title film, filmmaker uses photography and personal stories to create an epiphany, a personal awakening, as nature’s beauty is starkly contrasted with scenes of ruin. Powerful narration is supported by traditional gospel and Appalachian music to tell this story of tragedy and hope. “Mountain Mourning” calls upon Christians and their churches to summons moral courage and effective advocacy that will bring healing and justice to this land and its people. Produced by B. J. Gudmundsson, West Virginia Filmmaker of the Year 2005 Time approximate: 30 minutes.

An outing with Maria Gunnoe in Bob White, West Virginia, provides a snapshot of the Mountaintop Removal Mining that has moved into her back yard. Filmmakers, B. J. Gudmundsson and Doug Chadwick, traverse the rocky road up Cazy Mountain to survey the aftermath of a strip-mining operation. Maria’s Native American ancestry is revealed through her memories of family and their respect for the land. Her story is one of courage and strength that is woven around the heart by musical recordings of her mother and father. Time approximate: 20 minutes.

Larry Gibson is the only permanent resident on Kayford Mountain, just 35 miles from Charleston, West Virginia. For 19 years he has held on to his fifty acres – that which remains of his ancestral home. What was once a living community is now an island of life surrounded by death. Patchwork filmmakers join Larry and his band of friends as they pass through “Hell’s Gate” and - in one breathtaking moment – come upon “the end of the world.” Time approximate: 18 minutes

Read the story in the Huntington News. Learn more about the films.

This photograph comes from a blog post of a mountaintop removal tour of a mining site adjacent to Larry Gibson’s land in West Virginia.

“Exploding Heritage”, the radio documentary on mountaintop removal coal mining by NPR’s former Bob Edwards, which aired on Friday via satellite radio, is available from Audible.com for $3.00.

The blog Nostalgic Rumblings has a post on an upcoming radio documentary on mountaintop removal in Southern Appalachia. Here are the basics:

What: Documentary “Exploding Heritage” on The Bob Edwards Show
When: Friday, July 28, 8:00 a.m. ET
Where: XM Satellite Radio’s public radio channel, XMPR (Channel 133)

Then New Mexicio Public Interest Research Group (NMPIRG) has just released a report entitled: Making Sense of the “Coal Rush”: The Consequences of Expanding America’s Dependence on Coal. I’ve only read the executive summary, thus far. Here are some evident central ideas:

• The new coal-fired power plants, if built, will strain the U.S.’s ability to extract and deliver enough coal to keep them running. U.S. coal demand would increase by over 30 percent if all the plants are built, requiring additional mines and expanded railroad infrastructure to move the coal around the country. Mining additional coal would damage America’s land and water.

• According to the U.S. Department of Energy, currently operational coal mines have enough recoverable coal to supply the power industry for only 18 years at current levels of demand (and fewer years if demand increases).

• While the U.S. has enough coal supplies to sustain current levels of consumption for nearly 200 years, extraction of that coal is likely to damage wide areas of land now used for agriculture, housing and recreation, while fouling water supplies and harming wildlife.

• Between 1985 and 2001, “mountaintop removal” coal mining in Appalachia cut down more than 7 percent of the region’s forests and buried more than 1,200 miles of streams.

• In 2004, coal mines across the U.S. reported the release of more than 13 million pounds of toxic chemicals, including over 300,000 pounds dumped directly into streams and rivers. The “coal rush” would increase health-threatening air pollution.

Members of United Mountain Defense flying with Southwings shot this stunning video footage of mountaintop removal sites on Zeb Mountain, Eagan and other sites in TN & KY. Kim was on one of the flights and took a great number of still shots, which will be available on the site soon.

Mine drainage above a home on Toney’s Fork.
Photographer: Eiler, Lyntha Scott

As part of its American Memory project, the Library of Congress has a collection entitled Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia. The collection includes excerpts from sound recordings, photographs and manuscripts from the American Folklife Center’s Coal River Folklife Project (1992-99) documenting traditional uses of the mountains in Southern West Virginia’s Big Coal River Valley.

A search on “mountaintop removal” in the search box on the lefthand side of the page, where it says “search this collection,” results in 186 photographs. The librarians at the LOC have done a thorough job of providing several index terms for each photograph. Thus, you can customize your search for such beauties as “draglines”, “reclamation”, or “valley fills.”

DR: Is mountaintop-removal mining reaching the point of diminishing returns? Or are there plenty of mountains to go if no one stops it?

JG: They’re going to keep mining as long as they can, but there’s going to be real conflict there, because as I said, the easy stuff is gone. The stuff they’re getting is more and more destructive, closer and closer to communities, so it’s going to engender more and more conflict. It’s a volatile situation.

It’s not mined out, but of all the regions in America where coal production is declining, central Appalachia … That’s why they fight so hard against these mountaintop-removal regulations. If you put any restrictions on it, more and more of it becomes unmineable. They’re being done in by Wyoming, because in Wyoming it’s so easy to get to all this stuff, and the railroads are so good at shuffling it around.

Goodell raises doubt about the coal industry’s claims that there exists 250 years or 270 billion tons worth of mineable coal in the U.S. claiming these figures are based on studies from the 1920s and ’30s that haven’t been updated since the ’70s.

The problem with that number…is that it doesn’t take into account where it is and what it will take in environmental and economic terms to get it out of the ground. Vast coal reserves are buried under towns, under state parks, under forests. We’ve been mining coal for 150 years. We start with the easy stuff, and it gets harder and harder to get out.

Read the entire interview at Grist Magazine.

Jeff Goodell is the author of the just released:

Big Coal : The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future

Just recently, I was reminded that a story on mountaintop removal in Tennessee was featured in Project Censored. I got to thinking about the timing. Back in September of 2005, a story that appeared in the November/December 2004 issue of the Earth First! Journal was honored with the #10 spot in the listing of the top 25 censored stories of 2006. Huh? How can a story written in 2004 rate a listing in the top censored stories of 2006? So I called the folks at Project Censored. Trisha returned my call.

“So how can a story published in 2004 be announced in 2005 as the 10th most censored story of 2006?” I asked.

She laughed and acknowledged my bemusement and explained that the students of Sonoma State University, who compile the listing from stories published in independent journals and newsletters, had decided, some years back, to do it this way - yearbook fashion. Thus the Project Censored Book for any year will contain stories, not published in that year, but in the preceding 2 years. Actually, its more convoluted than that.

Here is the current schedule of timetable and what it means:

Censored 2006: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2004-2005
This is the current book. It was published in September of 2005. It contains commentary about stories published in independent journals from March of 2004 through March of 2005.

Censored 2007: The The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2005-2006
This book will be published in September of 2006. It contains commentary about stories published from March 2005 through March 2006. So, it is too late to nominate a story for the 2007 book.

Censored 2008: The The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2006-2007
This book is currently being compiled and will contain commentary about stories published from March 2006 through 2007. So, now is the time to nominate a story.

Here is a little about the nomination process:

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world. With the help of more than 200 Sonoma State University faculty, students, and community members, Project Censored reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance. The university community selects 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. Current or previous national judges include: Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally , Frances Moore Lappe, Norman Solomon, Michael Parenti, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, Mike Wallace and Howard Zinn. All 25 stories are featured in the yearbook, Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News.