Mountaintop Removal

In Appalachia, there is a growing struggle between two formidable forces – the coal industry that provides jobs in this impoverished region and the religious leaders who knit its rural communities together.

As with everything here, the mountains and the coal they hold are at the heart of the conflict.

When the mines were underground, faith and mining could co-exist. But then the coal giants found a cheaper way to get at the wealth: They began blowing the tops off mountains and scrapping out the coal, contaminating streams and ravaging the landscape in the process.

“God put humanity in the garden to care for and cultivate it. We forget that,” says Father John Rousch, who takes anyone willing to listen to witness the devastation.

Rousch's Catholic Committee of Appalachia is one of several religious groups that have begun speaking out in Appalachia's churches, communities and state capitols against a practice they see as an outrage against creation: mountaintop removal.

Half a dozen major religious denominations have issued statements opposing mountaintop mining in recent years, but the strongest voices in this fight are coming from the local churches.

Unlike activists who sweep in from the cities, these religious leaders belong to coal country. They have the trust of the people, and they understand that when it comes to jobs here, coal is still king.

The EPA put the coal industry on notice today: Mountaintop mining won't be getting a free pass from the federal government any more.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that her agency has serious concerns about the damage mountaintop mining is causing in the streams of Appalachia, and she said the EPA will be carefully reviewing mountaintop mining permit requests.

The move sends a strong signal that the new EPA will be steering the federal government back to the original intent of the Clean Water Act.

“It certainly doesn’t resolve the issue of mountaintop removal permanently, but it’s an enormous first step,” said Matt Wasson, executive director of Appalachian Voices.

“It restores hope that we can get past the legacy of the last eight years and really start working toward building a new green jobs economy in the region – that’s what we’re hoping is the next step the Obama administration will be taking.”

Follow the Appalachian Mountains by plane from West Virginia to Tennessee, and you’ll see the scars left by mountaintop mining – huge gray gouges where coal companies stripped away the trees and blew off the tops of mountains to get at the coal inside.

These once lush ridges are now bereft of economic resources. The natural vistas that could have drawn tourists are gone, and what remains of the mined mountains and filled-in valleys are too heavily damaged to support reforestation, communities or jobs.

Families who have lived in these valleys for generations have been left to suffer the consequences as unearthed minerals and heavy metals, dumped into stream beds as mining waste, leach into their drinking water and poison their wells.

"People around here are swiggin’ down contaminated water all day long,” says Maria Gunnoe of West Virginia. “Our soil’s contaminated. A garden that we’d gardened for all the 37 years that I’ve been there is now covered with coal slurry. You can’t grow food in that. My yard was completely washed out. My fruit trees are gone."

In three decades of mountaintop mining, coal companies have flattened more than 1 million acres of Appalachia. They pushed the “overburden” into the valleys, filling more than 700 miles of streams and degrading hundreds of miles more with traces of nickel, lead, cadmium, iron and selenium.

Yet, lawmakers in these states are heavily pro-coal and resistant to restricting the industry.

For the fourth year in a row, Kentucky ended its legislative session on Friday with a bill that could protect the state’s streams still sitting untouched in the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee. The committee chairman who decides which legislation goes to a vote, Rep. Jim Gooch, has been a member of the Western Kentucky Coal Association.

In Tennessee, Gov. Phil Bredesen has publicly said that he can't ban mountaintop removal.

Appalachia’s best hope for ending mountaintop mining may have to come from the outside.

Three states – North Carolina, Maryland and Georgia – are turning up the pressure this year with legislation that would ban or phase out the purchase of any coal from mountaintop mining operations.

Opponents of mountaintop mining are also counting on the Obama administration and Congress.

After all the bad news about mountaintop removal how about a little success?

Yesterday Bank of America, a lead financier of coal, announced that they will be phasing out financing for companies that practice mountaintop removal coal mining, a highly destructive and controversial method of coal extraction. Bank of America’s decision is a giant leap forward in the fight against mountaintop removal, which has devastated Appalachian communities and the mountains and streams on which they depend.

CitiGroup held its annual general meeting today under pressure from angry shareholders both inside and outside the meeting. Before it was over, Becky Tarbotton, the Global Finance Campaign Director of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), had extracted an unexpected promise from Sir Win Bischoff, the chairman.

He promised to accompany her on a flight over Appalachia to witness the effects of Mountaintop Removal Mining, financed by his bank, or to send the CEO, Vikram Pandit, in his stead.