Mountain Justice Summer 2006

Plans are well under way for the Mountain Justice Summer (MJS) campaign against mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining in southern Appalachia due to escalate in the summer of 2006. Mountaintop removal and other large-scale strip mining for coal have destroyed a million acres of forested mountains in southern Appalachia and buried more than a thousand miles of streams. This destruction has accelerated in the past five years; in the next few years, hundreds of thousands of additional acres are targeted for destruction. MTR is obviously an ecological catastrophe, as it forever destroys not only the mountains themselves but also the biologically rich and diverse forest-and-stream communities that evolved there over millions of years. The human costs of MTR are awful as well: homes cracked by blasting, wells poisoned, communities depopulated, children exposed to toxic chemicals and pervasive coal dust, and people killed by speeding and overloaded coal trucks, by mining-related floods and by flyrock. Mountain Justice Summer opposes MTR through grassroots organizing, public education, nonviolent civil disobedience and other forms of citizen action. While the campaign focuses on the coalfield region directly affected by MTR–southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, northern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia–it also has reached well beyond the coalfields, sponsoring demonstrations at Massey Energy headquarters in Richmond, VA, and networking with activists throughout the country. MJS has had especially strong support in Asheville, NC, where the campaign's most recent overall organizing meeting was held this past weekend. Last summer in West Virginia, MJS concentrated on an elementary school in Coal River Valley located next to a coal processing plant and beneath an enormous "pond" filled with toxic coal sludge held back by a defective dam. Twenty people were arrested in a series of civil-disobedience actions at the plant and at Massey Energy's corporate headquarters in Richmond seeking closure of the plant and relocation of the school to a safe place nearby. As it did last year, MJS will launch this summer's campaign with a week-long training camp near Pipestem, WV, in late May. Through the months ahead, MJS in West Virginia will focus on two areas, Coal River Valley and Mingo County. In the Coal River Valley, MJS will continue to pressure government officials about the elementary school, challenge upcoming MTR permits, conducting door-to-door Listening Projects in neighborhoods concerned about the school and about nearby blasting, and supporting passage of the federal Clean Water Protection Act and legislation regulating coal sludge. In Mingo County, MJS will focus on problems with sludge disposal in old underground mines, which contaminates groundwater, and on King Coal Highway, for which the state is paying a coal company to do MTR to "prepare" a roadbed for the highway. In Tennessee last summer, 10 MJS activists were arrested at a blockade of National Coal Corporation's (NCC) mine site at Zeb Mountain, an hour north of Knoxville. In addition to targeting NCC, which controls extensive rights to mine coal in the New River watershed, MJS last year conducted Listening Projects and water testing of streams in areas affected by mining, demanded public hearings about mining operations and urged public officials to stop MTR in Tennessee. This summer, MJS in Tennessee plans to continue to focus on the New River watershed and on mining in the Eagan Mountain area, east of New River and near the Kentucky border. Volunteers are needed to do field work (water testing, mine monitoring, photography and scouting), to help pressure government officials, to take part in demonstrations, to attend hearings and to help with public outreach and education. Last summer, MJS in Kentucky focused mostly on hosting a backwoods training camp and a week of educational and fundraising activities culminating in a rally and march in Lexington. This summer, Kentucky MJS activists are planning to concentrate on blackwater spills from coal facilities and on opposing a plan to decapitate two mountains near Pikeville, which MTR boosters claim will foster economic development. MJS plans to go door to door in Pikeville and to hold protests and other actions opposing the planned MTR there. MJS will also participate in several service trips including a canoe trip on Kentucky's Red River to remove old tires from the stream, and take part in Appalshop's Seedtime on the Cumberland, a two-day music and film festival in Whitesburg, KY, near the Virginia border. Other actions and activities will be added to the agenda in the weeks ahead. Although the coalfields in Virginia are a relatively small part of the state–just a slice of the southwestern corner along the Kentucky border–MTR has been as intensive and devastating there as anywhere in Appalachia. Last year, MJS visited southwestern Virginia only briefly. Since then, local people have started Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS), a grassroots group focusing on MTR. SAMS from the beginning has worked closely with Sierra Club's environmental justice program. Early this year, SAMS was promised support by Asheville's faction of Katuah Earth First! (KEF!), which for some years now has been doing forest defense work near the Virginia coalfields. As a result of that promise, a house is being rented in southwestern Virginia to be used by anti-MTR and forest activists there this summer. As another result, Earth First! will be holding its annual national summer rendezvous there in early July, introducing activists from around the country to MTR. Plans for MJS in Virginia's coalfield region this summer include door-to-door Listening Projects and visits to convey information about MTR and local events, water testing, researching permits and other mining-related paperwork and scouting and documenting coal company abuses with an eye towards taking action against them. Elsewhere in Virginia, MJS enjoys strong support among several groups of college students and has built a network across the state that has hosted educational and fundraising events, has begun to put pressure on the state's governor to stop MTR in Virginia and is planning a rally in Richmond on May 16. On Earth Day, Apr. 22, at Warren Wilson College, Asheville's Katuah Earth First! faction will host a series of events to benefit MJS and other KEF! activities. For more information on these Earth Day events, contact mmockbee@warren-wilson.edu. For more information about Mountain Justice Summer, come meet and talk with MJS activists at Warren Wilson on Earth Day, or visit the MJS website, www.mountainjusticesummer.org.