The following piece was originally posted by Eric Blevins on It’s Getting Hot in Here.
We sat in trees at the edge of a mine site for 9 days in the middle of the Appalachian winter in West Virginia on Coal River Mountain. It was a divinely fun and empowering experience that I highly recommend to anyone who is physically able and properly trained.
We stopped blasting for 9 days within sight of the Brushy Fork toxic coal waste impoundment that holds over 7 billion gallons of black sludge above the Coal River Valley. Massey Coal says that if the impoundment’s dam fails it will kill approximately 998 people in that valley, and Massey impoundments have failed in the past.
