Demolishing Appalachia
Contributed photo
A “Coal Country” production crew interviews Kathy Selvedge, center, at her Wise County home.
A Wise County, Va., woman is among the stars of a controversial film on mountaintop removal mining that premieres today in Charleston, W.Va.
The film, “Coal Country,” looks at the negative effects of surface coal mining on Appalachian residents and communities in four states. Kathy Selvage, a Wise County activist opposed to mining practices used in the region, is among those featured in the documentary.
“I believe our hope is it brings international exposure to that and also that it furthers a conversation about where we go in energy policy in this country,” Selvage said of the film. “I hope it opens people’s minds to the problems that are the side effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. I hope it opens people’s hearts to the suffering that goes on in communities where this mining occurs right where people live.”
After the premiere in Charleston, more screenings are planned at film festivals and in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, said the film’s executive producer, Mari-Lynn Evans. The 90-minute movie also will be shown in thousands of smaller screenings around the country – including Bristol and Wise County, Va. – before it begins airing on public television.
Evans said she has worked to tell both sides of the story.
Barbara Altizer, executive director of the Eastern Coal Council, offered the same response she said she has given regarding other coal-related films in recent years: Viewer beware.
Evans, a West Virginia native, said she sought to put a face on those who are negatively affected by mining, but also on the coal industry.
“At the point we started working on this film four years ago, I had no idea it was going to come out in the most contentious, critical time in the history of the coalfields, but it has,” Evans said. “People need to realize what these coalfield residents are saying, and people also need to listen to these miners who say we
have three options: We work for coal; we work for a fast-food restaurant; or we leave the state. Because it’s a mono-economy, and that mono-economy has enslaved this culture of people.”
Altizer said that after looking at the film’s Web site she doesn’t think it really shows both sides of the story.
She said people need to look at the whole process of mining and reclamation – not just the way a site looks at a point in time – and consider that extensive state and federal regulations govern the process. She estimates that only 1 percent of the region’s population has been seriously affected in a negative way by surface mining.
“Anything you build you’ve got to mess up,” Altizer said, comparing a surface mine to a house under construction.
“It [mining] has provided areas for home sites, airports, shopping strips, golf courses … there’s lots of positive things out of it, and you just never ever get the opportunity to read about that. And when people see this movie, they’re going to be less informed about our industry.”
Altizer also said that in Southwest Virginia, where coal severance tax revenue has been used for two decades to diversify the economy, real development has taken place in industries other than coal, much of it on land flattened by mining.
“I hope you … will realize they’ve shown what it looks like at the beginning, and yes it’s not very attractive, but you can realize that after it’s been reclaimed there are a lot of beneficial uses and yes it can be attractive again,” Altizer said.
Evans said a divide has come to the mountains where coal is mined, between those who want more than anything to preserve their land and those who work for the coal industry to put food on the table.
“My brother is a coal miner. My sister is a rabid environmentalist,” Evans said. “This issue is so volatile, it really is brother against brother.”
She compares the situation to a 1921 march by West Virginia coal miners demanding better working and living conditions – a protest that turned deadly after law enforcement acted against the marchers.
“ ‘People that don’t understand the past are condemned to repeat it,’ is just a phrase that keeps coming through my mind,” she said.
“Why are these people [in the Appalachian region] the poorest in the United States of America when they are living on land that is the richest in the United States of America? It seems obvious from that alone that there is a problem. ... We’ve got to figure out how Appalachia is going to flourish in a future that does not involve coal.”
Like Evans, Selvage said she doesn’t have all the answers, but she’d like to see coal subsidies diverted to green energy projects and elected leaders in Richmond and Washington working on a solution that considers the region’s economic needs along with its environmental needs.
There is a need for technology-related jobs, she said, so the sons and daughters of the coalfields have a reason to return home after college, and so America can find the power it needs without destroying its mountains.
People here don’t need charity, Selvage said, they need empowerment and the means to earn a living while protecting the land they’ve cherished for generations.
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Reader Reactions
Coal isn’t the problem in Wise County, GREED is. We hear about the clean coal technology to capture carbon and sequester it underground. I’ve seen the prosperity of mountaintop removal in Pound and Appalachia. How would you folks like to have a clean coal mining operation in your front and back yard by an encroaching mountaintop removal mine site ? People’s homes in Exeter, Stonega, Roda, Andover and Derby have found their homes to be right on the site now. If coal was mined in a more responsible way, there would be more jobs. Our coal is shipped to China to power up their Empire yet here in Wise County the schools are so old and outdated they can’t even power up the technology our kids deserve to compete on a global scale, that’s a SIN. Our water is drying up or being poisoned with toxic heavy metals, the trade off is so we can go to walmart and buy cheap toxic crap. There’s a difference in coal and mountaintop removal. Appalachia is being bombed, blasted and bulldozed right into 3rd world America.
www.wisecountyissues.com
Bob Adkins is singing Happy Trails to you Wise County, his Golden Cow will turn St. Paul, Virginia into the next Appalachia and Pound in Wise County.
Now, as for the story, I can’t fully accept this:
“People need to realize what these coalfield residents are saying, and people also need to listen to these miners who say we
have three options: We work for coal; we work for a fast-food restaurant; or we leave the state. Because it’s a mono-economy, and that mono-economy has enslaved this culture of people.”
To state this is to state that people who work in the coal industry are too stupid to be trained to work in alternative energy. That’s simply not the case.
If coal plants are replaced by bio-diesel plants there’s no reason coal miners can’t be retrained, at no expense to themselves, to work in the new technology.
They’ll be healthier and probably make more money.
The real sad thing here is the greed of Desk Jockeys like Baxter Phillips and the rest who sit by and rake in millions while throwing their workers a pittance and ruining their lives with poor health in the future.
Better think about the future, coal workers. Beacause the reality is that coal is hanging by it’s last thread.
LINK
Instead of doing your employer’s bidding and banging your heads against the wall, prepare yourselves for career change. You’ll be much happier.
First, gather up Massey Energy execs and put them in prison for their crimes against humanity.
Second, Mike Crowder…
The BHC probably omits your posts, if they actually do, because you’re an idiot, and as you can see, we have more than enough of those here already.
“STAND UP AMERICA! Don’t be afraid to offend someone”
LOL, what a goof.
My main regret is that President Obama is failing to move fast enough to stop the poisoning of our future generations and the holocaust of the Appalachian region.
Yes, well said, Russ and others as well. The environmental lobby is desperate to find coalfield residents to use in their campaign, as 99% of their support is from way outside the area, from people who have no stake in our region and are ignorant of the importance coal plays in our lives and our country. The Herald Courier is just another liberal media tool to give uninformed & biased environmental coal-haters a platform to preach from. That’s why I stopped subscribing and only check this website to get local headlines. I am a “Friend of Coal” and proud of it!!
Thanks seawing. I think, from what I am seeing, that we are about to get a belly full of it. There’s already an organized boycott, by coal companies and miners, of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, because of Lamar Alexander’s comments at Senate hearing on mountaintop removal mining. Yet another windbag in Washington that needs to learn to shut-up. He’s probably going to cost Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg millions of dollars in business. It’s sad they have to suffer because of what a lame brain politician says, but as I said we are just about to get a belly full. The idea of stopping production altogether is even being discussed. Would that not be poetic justice, and it won’t hurt us, we’re country, and a country boy can survive, wonder what they’ll do in Washington, Richmond, etc.?
Russ; very well stated. I grew up in Wise County and my parents land was surfaced mined in the 1980’s. There was a large field created by the mining and after only a couple of years it had more wildlife in it than I had ever seen on the land before; two to three times as much.There was a water well at the home and it was not damaged by the mining. If you look at road construction or a housing project they are not pretty when they are being built. It’s time to point out the benefits of coal and stop putting it down all the time. Every industry has its downsides but you hear more about coal than any of the others.Our jobs; the ability to buy homes for our families and almost everything else in our lives come from mining coal in this area.
For nearly forty years I have been a participant in the coal industry. Some as a miner, but mostly in a support role.
I have worked all over this region, traveled up and down hollows and ridges in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. I have seen strip mining up close and personal. I care about the environment, and I did before it was cool, as the old song goes. However, I believe one can care about the environment without being foolish.
There are sites, in which very little reclamation was performed. There are sites that have been reclaimed to the letter of the law. I have walked along old benches, with hi-walls, and you can’t even see the wall for the vegetation. I have been on mountain top removal sites that are beautiful. Acres and acres of level land are now available in areas where there was very little level land.
These sites are used for housing developments, schools, airports, golf courses, and my least favorite, prisons. They are teeming with wild life. Just a few weeks ago I was on a site where more than a hundred horses where peacefully grazing. Earlier this spring I was on a reclaimed hollow fill,(yes one of those evil hollow fills) there were elk grazing and resting in the grass.
Admittedly, the process is not attractive, as is true with most anything during the construction phase. However, after the job is complete it will impress even the most sceptical, or I should say it will impress those with an open mind.
All that said, there is one overriding issue that is often ignored. Surface mining can not occur without the conscent of the landowner. This is private property, and private landowners have every right to extract their resources from that property. Most of those who are complaining would, if they owned the land, want the coal companies to mine every ounce and they’d have the coal company in court should they choose to leave an area unmined.
As for poverty in this area, there is some. As there is in any major metropolitan area in this country. We have some of the hardest workers in the country. Yet, and it’s unfortunate, we have some lazy loafers as well. They’d rather work the government subsistance programs than a job. When you do that, you subsist, and that’s basically their way of life.
Lastly, because this has gone on far too long. Mining provides good paying jobs and tax revenue. Without it, this area would quickly become totally dependent on the government. I refuse to be any part of that life. I will not fall victim to that lifestyle. So why can’t these meddlers just leave us alone!!
I once was very critical of mountain top coal mining, but in certain areas in addition to jobs it has provided valuable usable land after reclamation.
This is a great story. Too bad it’s about 3 years to late. Morgan Spurlock, a Beckley, West Va native addressed this issue on the show The Next 30 Days. He correctly portrayed both sides.. from the environmental standpoint, to the coal industry. He also gave a very interesting point of view as a coal miner.
If anyone else has the opportunity to see that episode, I would recommend watching it. It is complete with all 3 sides of the story. Instead of what just makes news at the time…
Virginia is one of the better if not one of the best economies in the U.S. (per capita) even through the hard times that we are in now. A major reason for that is the coal industry, hands down! Virginia is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and coal, like oil, is money. Get rid of the coal industry in Virginia and we end up like California, broke and begging Uncle Sam to bail us out… which is right where they want us… under their thumb!
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