Behind Enemy Lines

One of my favorite quotes of all time – “A bold onset is half the battle” – that is the truth in the battle against mountaintop removal coal mining. I think just facing those that feel threatened by a voice has been half the battle. The other half of the battle is as difficult. I sometimes feel like one of Hogan’s Heroes, I’m trying my best to get a message out from behind enemy lines but I just can’t tell if the message is getting through.

I’m going to ramble a little.

Lately I’ve been talking a lot about clean coal technology (CCT) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). I’m nowhere near an expert on either one of those subjects. I get my facts the same way everybody else like me does – I look for it on the internet or I use common sense – like carbon neutral coal. As a matter of fact, before starting this fight, I was blissfully ignorant of all the fancy terminology. Now I can tell you how much CO2 a 450 megawatt coal-fired power plant produces in a year (5 to 8 million tons). I think that is just crazy, and I mean, myself knowing that is just crazy.

I started this battle basically in rant mode and it happened for a few reasons. When I first came back to WV from Ohio I went to work almost immediately with an out-of-state electrical contractor. The very first place I was sent to work was on a mountaintop removal site just on the outside of Whitesville in Boone county. The site is called Progress and that name immediately struck me the wrong way. The biggest reason for that is because every morning the sun would come up on a barren wasteland. Looking to the west you could see nothing but flattened mountains. I thought to myself, you call this Progress?

The office trailer we were using on-site was setup in the area where the workers park the heavy equipment – dump trucks, front-end loaders and water trucks. We were never at the trailer when they were refueling because it happened between shifts. The parking lot is roughly the size of a football field.

One morning I was at the trailer getting some parts for that days work when it started to rain. It was raining pretty good and when I looked down through the parking lot all I could see was diesel fuel. The whole parking area was covered in it. I actually remember wondering if they got any of it in the equipment.

It is kind of hard to see it with this photo but basically the darkened earth from the right side of the photo all the way to the water truck is diesel fuel and oil. The puddles are rain water sitting on top of the fuel saturated dirt.

The first thing to irritate me about it is, if that amount of diesel fueled had been spilled anywhere but there, there would have most likely been a major effort to get it cleaned up to minimize the environmental damage. Especially during a heavy rain. But nobody seemed to care about it. I could see water puddles that had a good coat of the diesel fuel floating on top and just getting carried away with the flow. In my opinion there should have been some kind of containment area for refueling and greasing the equipment. But since there wasn’t – then the next thought to cross my mind is that all of the fuel that had already been soaked into the ground would eventually end up in a valley fill. I just couldn’t believe they were allowed to get away with that.

Even if that stuff is pushed into a valley and the stream system was brought back 100% it would have diesel fuel and other oil based products seeping into it for years to come. Then comes Walker Machinery with their cartoon bug commercials.

First of all, I thought those commercials were ridiculous even without knowing what I knew about the spilled fuel. But after seeing the commercial for the first time and with the knowledge of the spills, that was too much for me. Every time the bug would say how wonderful the habitat was – a picture of the parking lot of diesel fuel would flash through my mind. Not only was Walker being ignorant with the commercial to begin with – but they had to fill it full of blatant lies as well.

I didn’t love Massey Energy enough to keep my mouth shut. That little cartoon bug sent me straight in to rant mode and I’ve pretty much been there ever since. I know in my heart the parking area full of fuel is going to be buried right along with everything else and it makes me sick to my stomach. Do you think I dislike the WV DEP? I most definitely do.

Since working at Progress I’ve seen too much, talk to too many people, and have felt too many explosions. I couldn’t stop my battle now if my life depended on it.

Before, I would have never considered myself any kind of activist. I didn’t get involved in politics. I didn’t care who bought who. If it wasn’t happening between home and work, then I paid no attention to it. Mountaintop removal coal mining has turned an otherwise peaceful soul and a resident into an activist. I could look around and at that time I could see no one else fighting the battle. I felt like somebody had to say something. Obviously I’ve since discovered there are quite a few people like me. With more joining the fight every day.

Coming full circle… now I talk about all the different negative aspects of coal hoping to pick up allies that are disgusted with one aspect or another. I don’t care if it is global warming or acid mine drainage, whatever will get us closer to ending mountaintop removal coal mining works for me. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to see the planet heat up. But right at the moment I’ve got my plate full with trying to stop Appalachia from getting blown up.

Much like the war in Iraq – I don’t see this battle ending anytime soon.

I think I’ve rambled here sufficiently and I’m not really sure if I said anything but I’m going to leave you with a couple of paragraphs from WV Coal Association’s website. I just wonder if you can read between the lines.

American Electric Power executives believe that about 18 months from now they’ll be able to point to a $70 million project here for proof that carbon dioxide can be captured from a coal-fired power plant’s exhaust and permanently, safely stored underground.

Although the project will only take carbon dioxide out of about 20 megawatts’ worth of the 1,300-megawatt plant’s exhaust, that will amount to up to 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. The project is designed to operate for three to five years. Alstom will operate it for the first year. www.wvcoal.com/content/view/260/61/

The first paragraph – I wonder if they have a time machine. How in the world can you provide proof something stays somewhere permanently? You can provide proof that it was there the last time you checked. But permanently?

The second paragraph – their proof amounts to a drop in the bucket. I think it has already been proven to work in small quantities. The point is, it has never been proven on the scale of a power plant. This test will be the same. Only 20 megawatts out of 1300, that’s a big difference and a lot of missing proof.

Until next time – from behind enemy lines.