West Virginia Strip Mine Plan Revives Environmental Debate
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
BLAIR, W.Va. -- Sylvia Weekley's family has lived here, in Pigeon Roost hollow, for so many decades that the 84-year-old matriarch no longer recalls precisely when her ancestors first arrived.
Like other hollows tucked into the folds of southern West Virginia's mountains, Pigeon Roost is a lush and woody haven that appears much as it did centuries ago. A whispering creek, 6 feet wide in some places, passes close to Mrs. Weekley's front door. Her son, daughter-in-law and a grandson live in a house nearby.
It is a place largely untouched by time and technology. Until now.
For all its rustic charm, Pigeon Roost is about to be obliterated.
The hollow lies at the foot of two mountains whose tops will be blasted away by Arch Coal Inc., a mining company in search of the valuable low-sulfur coal that is abundant throughout the region and is sold all over the world as a major source of electricity. When the work begins, the hollow and the surrounding terrain will become become part of a 3,100-acre strip mine -- the largest in the state's history.
In strip mining, mammoth machines remove coal from veins near the surface by stripping away the land and vegetation. In mountaintop strip mining, the remaining rock and earth are usually dumped down the mountain, burying hollows and streams, erasing whole communities and polluting rivers and streams.
Strip mining is hardly new to West Virginia and other coal-producing states. It was a hot environmental issue in the 1970s, when mining companies began using it as an alternative to underground mining, which is costlier and more dangerous. Because of the moonscape-like terrain it left behind, strip mining become so controversial that it led to federal regulations aimed at protecting the land and waterways.
Mountaintop removal, a form of strip mining, is not new, either. Over the last decade it has become favored by many mining companies as the most efficient kind of strip mining, allowing them to remove coal faster and with fewer workers than any other process because the coal generally lies close to the surface at higher elevations.
Recently, however, the debate over strip mining, which receded through the early 1990s, has been reinvigorated by a measure signed into law in April by Gov. Cecil Underwood, a Republican who is a former coal company executive.
The law would allow companies to dump even more of the stripped land into the hollows and waterways below the mining sites before they would have to compensate the state for the damage.
Companies say they need the law to lower costs. West Virginia has a stake, too. Coal production has always been a major source of employment and tax revenue in a state with few comparable options.
But the law has frightened residents of Pigeon Roost and places like it, and has renewed old and bitter complaints that strip mining is an environmental disaster, destroying scenic vistas and a small-town way of life. They say the law is another in a long line of concessions to coal companies at the expense of the environment.
Anger over Arch's pending operations in Blair, where mining has already driven out many families, led to a recent hearing where local residents and environmentalists expressed opposition to the magnitude of the operation.
Fighting for Life 'We Hold So Dear'
This is our culture, life in these small hollows," Patricia Bragg, a resident of Pigeon Creek, said in an interview. Pigeon Creek is in Mingo County, the state's leading coal-producing county.
"We know that the quality of life we hold so dear is weighed against progress of the country," Ms. Bragg added. "But we're paying for that progress. People raise millions to save whales and walruses and birds, but the state doesn't lift a hand to save the most precious thing in the world, a person's way of life."
The law has also touched off a bitter dispute between state and federal officials who disagree over whether West Virginia is doing an adequate job of protecting the environment.
One local group has already notified the state's chief environmental officer that it intends to sue, contending that the state has violated the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. The law, which was passed in 1977 after years of debate, sets standards for granting permits, inspecting mines and reclaiming land damaged by the mining process.
The new state law, which is retroactive to June 1996, increases to 480 acres from 250 the number of acres of valley waterways, like the creek running along Pigeon Roost hollow, that mining companies can bury before they have to compensate the state.
Under the old regulation, mining companies paid the state $200,000 for each acre of stream buried above 250 acres. Under the new law, they pay up to $225,000 per acre of stream buried after 480 acres.
Although residents have focused on this latest development, it is mountaintop strip mining itself that is at the core of the dispute.
In mountaintop operations, workers use explosives to blast away rock so that giant machines can scoop out coal from the rich veins that lie just below the surface. The process can take months before all the accessible coal is extracted.
It is only then that the companies, under requirements of the 1977 federal law, begin their reclamation projects. Typically, tons of debris are placed at the head of the hollows, then contoured and seeded to approximate land and streams that were obliterated, and ponds are built to replace the creeks.
Over the last three decades, mining companies have reclaimed millions of acres. But critics maintain that too many sites are left unfinished and that ecological systems fed by waterways, now buried under debris, are changed forever.
Technological Gains Accelerate Change
And with recent technological advances and 20-story machines that cost as much as $100 million, mountaintop mining has accelerated, enabling companies to produce record amounts of coal in West Virginia, far more than was possible through other forms of strip mining.
Mountaintop mining now accounts for nearly a third of all the coal produced in the state, a 50 percent increase in 10 years. It is a major reason that coal prices remain far cheaper than gas or oil as a source of energy.
In 1987 surface mining accounted for 29.7 million tons of coal produced in West Virginia, just 21.6 percent of the total mined. By 1996, the last year for which statistics are available, the total had reached 54.9 million tons, or 31.6 percent of the state's total production.
The data also show that West Virginia ranked second only to Wyoming in overall coal production, and fourth behind Wyoming, Kentucky and Texas in the amount of coal extracted from surface mining.
Most of the largest coal companies operating in West Virginia supported passage of the new law. Industry executives, as well as elected officials who voted for it, contend that it levels the competitive playing field with neighboring Kentucky, where compensation starts at 480 acres.
Proponents also insist that the law will have little if any adverse effect on West Virginia's environment.
"I do not think you will see any degradation of the environment in West Virginia," said William Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, a trade group "If you do, I'll be the first in line to call attention to it."
Proponents Cite a Stable Economy
Raney and other industry officials also say increasing sales of coal help stabilize the economy of a relatively poor state where the coal industry accounts for 16 percent of the state's revenue in a $2.5 billion budget this year.
But those arguments wear thin on federal officials who believe the state acted hastely in passing the new legislation.
In a letter that had urged governor Underwood to veto the measure, W. Michael McCabe, a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, protested that streams as long as a mile could be buried by debris without compensation to the state. He also questioned where the money would go. Before, the money went for water projects. The new law allows the money to be placed in the state's general fund.
Not that the old regulations were particularly expensive for the companies. According to EPA records of mining applications from 1991 to 1997 in West Virginia, 65 mining sites that affected more than 250 acres of valley waterways brought the state 24 projects and 41 "monetary commitments" of about $7 million.
McCabe warned the governor that if the measure passed, "we would regretfully have little choice but to increase our reviews" of all mountaintop mining applications -- delays that industry officials assert are unwarranted and expensive.
After Underwood signed the bill, he lashed out at McCabe, saying, "I resent officials from the Environmental Protection Agency making threats in an effort to tell West Virginians how to do business in our state."
Concern Over Effect on Buried Streams
The planned lawsuit by residents against the state cites many of same issues the EPA raised, but more broadly. Challenging the overall consequences of mountaintop mining, particularly its effect on streams, the plaintiffs told John Caffrey, director of the state's Division of Environmental Protection, that they are concerned about the "loss and degradation of West Virginia's waters" that have been affected by mining.
"There is no science on this," said Joseph Lovett, a lawyer in Charleston who is representing the group. "Nobody really knows the effects of filling valley streams. Before, the state had an informal policy. I think the policy was illegal, and now they have put it into law."
Robert Kiss, speaker of the West Virginia House of Representatives, was a leading proponent of the new law, which passed easily in the House and the Senate. He said that legislators always try to balance economic and environmental considerations, but added that if the new acre limit proved detrimental to the state he "would not be adverse to revisiting the issue."
At the same time, McCabe of the EPA said that several federal agencies have begun talking about a comprehensive study of the potential consequences of valley fills.
But people like Larry Gibson, a retired auto worker whose family settled in Kayford more than 150 years ago, do not need studies to confirm what they see. Since returning to West Virginia about 10 years ago, he has been fighting efforts by the coal companies to expand their strip-mining operations.
At one time, he said, 30,000 people lived in Kayford, about 20 miles from Blair. Now the only permanent residents are the 100 or so members of Gibson's family who are buried at the top of Kayford Mountain. Mining on nearby peaks, which once were taller than Kayford Mountain, forced the remaining residents to leave, he said. Gibson and his relatives resisted selling the cemetery and adjacent land, on which they have built a small park.
"It's emotional for me, walking around here," he said, moving about headstones that had been broken by flying rocks from the blasting. "My target is to slow or stop the devastation coal is doing to this state. It used to be a showcase around here."
For Many Residents, a Difficult Choice
Dynamite explosions that cause flying rocks as well as cracks in walls and ceilings far from the blast site are a constant problem for people living near mining operations. They have caused many residents to accept buyouts from the coal companies, who offer $100,000 and more for some homes. While the price may seem generous, many residents say it barely compensates for the cost of moving to a new community, finding a new job and buying another home.
But the Hobson's choice of enduring months of noise, dust and rocks or abandoning towns where relatives have lived for generations is beyond reasonable for many residents of southern West Virginia.
"The bottom line, whether they offer you a fair price or not, is why do I have to move?" said Ms. Bragg, a plaintiff in the proposed lawsuit. "As an American, I can choose where I want to live. If I choose to live in a hollow, call me a hick or a hillbilly, but that's where I want to live."
For the Weekleys it is no longer an issue. Unlike dozens of their neighbors, they have refused all offers from Arch. Even in the face of thunderous blasting and a reconstructed valley that could come within 300 feet of where they live, they have vowed to stick it out.
James Weekley Jr., Sylvia Weekley's 57-year-old son, walked up the creek to a point several hundred yards away, where the replacement pond is planned. Along the way he spotted "crawdads and other varmints" in the creek.
He looked around a place he knows well. "I'm not leaving," he said defiantly. "This is my home, and they are destroying what God created. I'm beginning to know how the Indians felt, and I've told the coal companies that the only way they'll push me out is with a bulldozer. I'm too old to change my life style."
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
Louis Proyect
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