Before I get into the reason for this post I want to post a video from an action that took place at the West Virginia State Capital yesterday where 7 activists were arrested.
The main thing I want to point out about this video is the reference to the state as being an “extraction state” by Governor Manchin.
Personally I’ve always thought/heard/seen on billboards/postcards/been taught that West Virginia was the Mountain State. It would seem as if some folks have conveniently forgotten that. West Virginia Extractioneers… hmm, that just doesn’t work. We are the Mountain State although in some areas of the state that is no longer quite as evident. Which brings me to the rest of the story.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume these sites are for future economic development. Forgetting, if we can, for a second about the lack of infrastructure to support any kind of development. The size of the majority of these sites are large enough to fit the towns they surround on the site many times over. Case in point, Kayford Mountain and Dorothy, West Virginia.
(click photos for larger images)
In the photo, the mountaintop removal site stretches off into the distance as evidenced by the lighter shades of green and the brown naked landscape. To say the site is huge is an understatement. What kind of development could you put on that site that would benefit the small community of Dorothy, West Virginia sitting right there at the base of the mountain? I would say a shopping mall is out of the question simply due to lack of patrons. I would say an airport is out of the question unless of course every single person in Dorothy is in dire need of air transportation… 3 to 4 times a day. I think we can rule out a jail complex unless of course we finally do the right thing and arrest those responsible for the destruction to begin with. Only in that case would we need a large amount of flat land. But we still don’t need multiple huge expanses of nothing.
So my argument always comes back to two questions really. 1) How much flat land do we need in the extraction mountain state? 2) When are we going to start to develop the land? To claim future development of these sites is absolutely ridiculous. To include such a statement in any type of post land use agreement is to assume everyone involved is just plain ignorant and that is… well… just plain ignorant.
The next couple of photos are not Kayford but they are sites in the flight path from Charleston to the last site in this post. I think it would definitely not be too far-fetched to say that a large portion of Charleston itself would fit on this site. With that in mind, who could possibly be the targeted patrons for any type of future development located here? The entire eastern US? Again… can you say infrastructure?
The next site is the one which first prompted me to start fighting this atrocity. The Edwight* mountaintop removal site behind Marsh Fork Elementary owned and operated by Massey Energy, hopefully the first inhabitants of our new mountaintop removal jailhouse.
I didn’t realize it when I took these photos but a couple of them shows the school, the coal silo, Goal’s Coal prep plant, the slurry pond w/dam and the huge mountaintop removal site topping it all off.
If you can honestly look at the following photographs and still maintain this a healthy learning environment for children without any dangers then that would cause me to write a short note to self… short note to self, the new mountaintop removal jail requires padded cells… lots of them cause these people are nuts.
The school is just out of view in the second photo. However you can see the corner of it directly to the right of the silo. The following photos are of the MTR site behind the school.
From the friends of coal coal fact sheet, in 2007 there were 271 surface mines in West Virginia. Can you imagine? In all of my photos if you will notice one significant fact, and no it’s not the fact mountain ranges have been wiped out although that is significant but there is a strange lack of development even on the so-called reclaimed sites. And how many more of these monstrosities are permitted with future economic development in the post land use agreement?
I have to wonder most of all… just how gullible are we?
gul-li-ble: adjective – easily deceived or cheated. Synonyms: credulous, trusting, naive, innocent, simple, green.
Nuff Said!!
Stop mountaintop removal coal mining or come up with a more believable lie.
