Students plant trees on Black Mountain surface mine site

APPALACHIA, Va. – Normally, they’d be at school. Instead, they were planting trees on top of the world.

On a wind-blown mountaintop of about 3,500 feet, on a surface mine site that straddles the Virginia-Kentucky line on Black Mountain, children from Appalachia Elementary School in Wise County, Va., and Arlie Boggs Elementary School in Letcher County, Ky., planted a Forest Without Borders on Friday.

The tree-planting event, held in honor of Arbor Day, brought together educators, researchers, industry and state and federal agencies to get the kids involved in restoring their environment.

“Sometime down the road, we would like for you to come back to this site and bring your kids and show them what you planted,” Butch Lambert, deputy director of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, told the students.

Mielei Phipps, 11, plans to do one better: she’s going to bring her grandkids.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” said the sixth-grader, of the way the site will look by then. She pointed out one tree that she named: Martha.

“I like to name stuff,” she said. “That one’s Oscar.”

Gaither Frazier, general manager of Cumberland River Coal Co., which hosted the tree-planting, said it’s important to educate the younger generation about the mining process from start to finish.

“We have to put everything back,” said Frazier, whose company is a subsidiary of Arch Coal. “The tree-planting is the final stage in reclamation of surface mines, putting back the trees that were taken out as mining progressed.”

The ridges of Black Mountain are also being studied for a wind farm that would be built by BP and Dominion, the same Richmond-based power company building a coal-fired power plant in Wise County.

Richard Davis, who organized Friday’s Interstate Arbor Day event for DMME and the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, said the forest that grows back here should actually do better than the forest that was here 150 years ago.

He said science shows that the deeper soils left behind by mining are actually better for growing trees than some of the thin natural soils – and many environmentalists critical of mining would be hard-pressed to tell 30 years from now that the site had been mined.

“Not only is this effort about planting trees and getting forests re-established and helping make sure we have a productive forest going forward, it’s about working together,” said Tom Shope, regional director of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, who traveled from Pittsburgh for the occasion. “It doesn’t matter your perspective, everybody loves a tree.”

The trees planted Friday included some blight-resistant American chestnuts, trees developed in hopes of restoring the chestnut, which once dominated the forest but was almost wiped out by blight in the early 20th century.

This method of planting trees on former mine sites is called the Forestry Reclamation Approach and was developed by researchers at the Powell River Project in Wise County.

Jackie Davis, director for the DMME’s Division of Mined Land Reclamation, said the process, which plants surface mine sites in native hardwood trees instead of compacting the soil, came into use in 2002 and is now used on more than 80 percent of sites.

“There’s balance,” he said of reclamation. “There’s balance in all of these things that we do.”

Another aspect of Friday’s project involved creating wetlands, a feature U.S. Forest Service Wildlife Biologist Tom Biebighauser said is important to wildlife. Biebighauser said that when the ground was turned up to help the trees grow, certain areas were left alone so water could collect and wetlands could form.

He said the wetlands, essentially big mud puddles, have already attracted frogs, toads, bugs and at least one newt; tadpoles were swimming in them Friday, and aquatic plants were growing that he said were brought by wind and waterfowl.

He had the students throw sticks in the water, plant plants and build “toad houses” with rocks to help attract the wetland critters.

“It’s a very cool thing to do,” said Markus Sizemore, 12, a sixth-grader at Appalachia Elementary, as he stared at the tadpoles wriggling in the muddy water.

“This is the foundation right here,” said Biebighauser of the mountaintop site, which now has about 1,300 tree seedlings and a few wetland areas. “This is like building a house, and you’re looking at the foundation.”

Matt Dysart, principal at Appalachia Elementary, said the best learning experiences are the hands-on variety – and he saw a lot of excited kids.

“This is their home, and this is what they relate to,” said Dysart. “They see the changes that coal mining brings to the area, but they’re now also seeing the good that can come from that.”

He also said planting trees and building wetlands helps them understand what’s going on in the broader world when people talk about going green.

“This whole thing is the students get outside and make a contribution,” said Joe Metzmeier, also a Forest Service wildlife biologist. “They get to help build a forest and wetland. That’s a good day for anyone.”

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