Road Show Tartgets Mountaintop Removal Mining

“Every day it’s like 1,000 Oklahoma City Bombings going off.” - Dave Cooper, in his one-man Mountaintop Removal Road Show

BRISTOL, Va. – To mark the 39th Earth Day, a group of Virginia Intermont College students hosted the Mountaintop Removal Road Show, which travels the country to spread the word about the downside of strip mining.
“Here’s a simple explanation of mountaintop removal: There are layers of coal in a mountain like icing in a layer cake … they blow the top of the mountains up,” said Dave Cooper, whose one-man “road show” consists of a slideshow presentation with commentary.
“Every day in Appalachia, coal companies use 4 million pounds” of explosives, Cooper told a couple dozen people attending the event at the college Wednesday. “Every day it’s like 1,000 Oklahoma City Bombings going off … if people in America knew a thousand bombs were going off every day, you’d think people would be talking about it.”
Cooper, originally from Ohio, said when he saw the tops being blown off mountains in West Virginia, it changed his life – and he quit his job to work full-time on telling people about death, destruction and “incredible devastation” for the environment and the folks who live near surface mine sites.
“Earth Day 2009, the rivers aren’t catching on fire anymore [like in 1970], but we’re blowing up mountains, and in my opinion that’s even worse,” Cooper said. “When you blow up a mountain, it’s gone forever.”
Those who work in and with the coal industry said coal mining has an upside too – and not just by providing more than half the nation’s electricity.
The road show “paints a picture of the devastation while mining’s going on, and I guess we all understand that mining does create a disruption during the active stages of it,” said Bill Bledsoe, executive director of the Virginia Mining Association. But there are a number of benefits to the big picture, Bledsoe said, including the tax dollars paid by the coal industry, the economic well-being of the area, and the restoration of the land.
Jonathan Belcher, executive director of the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority, said reclaimed surface mine sites create marketable property for economic development – as well as jobs in related industries.
More than $100 million in severance tax revenue has flowed through the authority for economic development projects that diversify the region’s economy, Belcher said. Although, he said, Southwest Virginia would still be devastated if it were to lose its number one industry.
The students who attended the event – and even those who hosted it – said mountaintop removal is a new issue to them.
Lauren Fay, president of the college’s International Issues Club, which organized the event, had never heard of mountaintop removal – but now that she’s heard of it, she’s against it.
“People wouldn’t stand to get their mountains destroyed,” Fay, 19, said of those living in her hometown of Shelburne, Vt. “Especially with it practically in her backyard.”
Kate McManis, 20, of Dallas, Texas, said she had no idea what was happening.
“It’s definitely something that I’m opposed to,” McManis said after hearing Cooper’s presentation. “I definitely agree that the cons overweigh all the pros. It’s something that should be stopped. … It seems that it creates nothing but waste.”
McManis said it would be possible for people to conserve energy to eliminate the need for the electricity produced from mountaintop removal.
Cooper said less than 5 percent of the nation’s coal comes from mountaintop removal – and the nation could definitely conserve that much electricity, especially with industries shutting down from the recession. Meanwhile, he hopes the Obama administration will get the practice stopped – and coalfield localities will seek other means of economic development.
“To me, having grown up in Ohio, Appalachia is just such a wonderful, interesting, beautiful, clean, nice, mountain spring water kind of a place, and it is really something that I think we need to do a better job of appreciating,” he said.
“I would encourage folks to look at a place like Asheville, N.C. or Gatlinburg,” Cooper said. “These towns and cities have taken the beauty of the mountains and used them to lure people to the area. … Look at the economic development that’s been brought to that area by marketing the beauty of the mountains to outsiders, tourists and second-home builders.”

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