8 Activists Arrested at Kayford Mountain Lock Down
Antrim Caskey
Kayford, WV — Eight activists with a coalition of groups including Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero walked on to the Patriot Coal mountaintop removal coal operation on Larry Gibson’s Kayford mountain in the early morning hours of March 23, 2009. Six of the protestors locked themselves, in groups of three, to a piece of massive earth moving equipment–referred to as a Yuke–with tires 24′ tall and hung a banner reading “Never Again” on the machine. The activists locked down for five hours. Ten officers from three different state and county authorities responded to the protest on Kayford, the largest number of people to be arrested during this sustained campaign of non violent civil disobedience that began in February, 2009.
The eight activists arrested include Kim Kirkbride, Ash-Lee Henderson, Tanya Turner, Jared Story, Willie Dodson, Will Wickham, Mathew Louis-Rosenberg, and Glenn Collins.
The activists were arrested and taken to Boone County seat at Madison, were processed and released on their own recognizances.
Maria Gunnoe, of Bob White, WV, wins the Goldman Environmental Prize today. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Bob White, West Virginia — Maria Gunnoe, renowned Appalachian activist, has received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize today, awarded each year to grassroots activists working on community environmental issues from each of the world’s six inhabited continental regions.
Gunnoe has spent the last seven years of her life fighting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. Gunnoe’s activism began when her family home-place in Bob White, southern West Virginia, was flooded in 2003.
During an interview in May, 2005, Gunnoe described the June, 2003 flood, the largest of seven floods the Gunnoes endured between the years 2000-2005, to this reporter,
“There was a 30 foot wall of water washed down from this mine site and destroyed not only our property but our lives. The water took a swath 20 feet deep and 67 feet wide right through the middle of everything we owned. It filled my barn full of rock and debris so much that we can’t even open the doors. It washed through the barn and continued down to where our family dog was tied and ripped him right out of his collar as we watched helplessly. Then it took out our only access bridge blocking in the equipment we needed to make our living. After the water took out the bridge, it then washed out the septic system, contaminated our ground water, and washed away about 5 acres of our property including our orchard. We were trapped in with no way out and the emergency services could only get within yelling distance. We came back to the house and went inside. The water was now about 20 feet from the foundation of our home and it wasn’t stopping. I dropped to my knees and begged for God to stop this water. ‘Please God, don’t let this water take our house and our lives, it’s already taken our home.’ ”
“It was like a ragin’ river coming out of there. We sat here all night long listening to trees and tin, you could hear it but you couldn’t see it. It was pitch black. It was an eerie sound. I can’t explain it. You’d have to have been here to understand. you could hear it all night long…There was water washing underneath the concrete floor in the garage. The garage was poppin’ and crackin’… What we’d done through the evening, We got the kids dressed. Plastic bags in their pockets. Coats. Hats…”
“We were haulin’ all that stuff outta the garage. It was five am, I fell asleep sitting up on the couch. Daylight came. I woke up. I looked up and I lost it.”
“I went straight up to the mining company. I told that lady guard that I wanted to talk to Bob Cline now.
She said to me, ‘I’ll give ‘em the message but they are busy men.’ “
“That made me even angrier.”
Fifteen minutes after Maria got home, Bob Cline, the chief mining engineer from Patriot coal, which operated the 2200-acre mountaintop removal site behind her home arrived at her house.
The first thing Cline said to Maria was, “you know we are not liable for this. This is an act of God.”
Soon after the horrendous 2003 flood, Gunnoe met face to face with Joe Manchin, III, who was campaigning for Governor at the time. Maria described the encounter this way,
“Joe Manchin looked me and my daughter in the face and said, ‘We’ll see if we can get you some help up there.’ Three days later someone calls promising help, but we need you to sign a waiver to release the coal company from all liability,” Gunnoe recalled.
Gunnoe’s resolve to stand up for her rights only intensified in the face of such callousness — it fueled her fight for justice. Gunnoe’s life has been “turned upside down” by what the coal operators above her were doing to the land, all in the quest for the dirties fossil fuel, coal. Patriot Coal decapitated Big Island mountain–removing the top 400 feet, this is mountaintop removal– and buried Big Branch creek, an Appalachian headwater stream that meandered through the Gunnoe home-place, providing fresh mountain water to drink and play in. Today, Big Branch creek is a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) stream, or in layperson’s terms, “a pollution spillway.”
Thousands of miles of these vital headwater streams have been buried by valley fills, giant plugs of crushed mountaintops that are dumped into Appalachian valleys after the mountaintops are blown up with explosives, which according to Dr. Benjamin Stout, a biologist at Wheeling Jesuit University, has put the drinking water source for the southeastern United States at risk.
Virtual Flyover of Maria Gunnoe’s home produced by Benji Burrell and ilovemountains.org
Mike Roselle and James McGuinness shut down massey Energy on Cherry Pond mountain in southern West Virginia, February 25, 2009. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
ROCK CREEK, WVa — The gig is up on mountaintop removal coal mining. The Obama administration has spoken out on the issue for the first time. Today, Lisa Jackson, director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced plans to place a hold on hundreds of permits for mountaintop removal coal mining, for review, to determine the “effects on streams and wetlands.”
It’s an excellent first step towards ending the appalling practice of obliterating the ancient, forested Appalachian mountains and running out her people who’ve lived and depended upon the bounty of these hills for centuries.
But what about the hundreds of permits that have been granted already? It will take at least five years for active permits to run their course of destruction. With only 3% – 5% of post-mined lands reclaimed, cleaning up after Massey Energy in Appalachia is a shovel ready proposition.
Today’s announcement is certainly a harbinger for positive change but today’s announcement does not stop the three million pounds of explosives used in mountaintop removal operations every day in West Virginia. Today’s announcement does not stop the blasting on Cherry Pond mountain and the toxic aftermath that rains down on Bo, JoAnne, Danny and Rosa.
We now need to halt all mountaintop removal operations. Shut them down.
Ed Wiley is concerned for the safety of the children at Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, WV, above which sits 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2005
Coal Town Crusade
by Antrim Caskey
CHARLESTON, West Virginia—Tired of being ignored by a rapacious coal company and indifferent politicians, Ed Wiley of Rock Creek, West Virginia began a hunger strike on July 5. It was barely past lunchtime when he got what he wanted: a face-to-face meeting in the state capitol with Gov. Joe Manchin.
“I do believe we’ve opened up quite a can of worms,” says Wiley, who came to press his demand that the students of Marsh Fork Elementary be moved to safety from its current site, which Massey Energy has made toxic.
“You will see some changes in West Virginia, and I believe you’ll see some people shifted around,” adds Wiley, 47, whose 10- year-old granddaughter attends Marsh Fork Elementary, which lies directly beneath an earthen dam holding 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge. Wiley refused to leave until Manchin spoke on the steps of the capitol. The governor promised television cameras that he would make sure the Marsh Fork students were safe. His impromptu press conference with Wiley came four days after the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved a permit for Massey Energy to expand its coal operations in Sundial.
TAKING AIM AT KING COAL
Wiley’s hunger strike was the latest challenge to the state’s political establishment, which traditionally has had a cozy relationship with the coal industry. 16 people were arrested on May 31 at a protest outside of Massey Energy’s coal preparation plant in Sundial, West Virginia. Four more people were arrested at a June 30 protest at Massey headquarters in Richmond, Virginia.
Perhaps no one’s attitude toward the coal industry has changed more than Wiley’s. Six years ago he was helping Massey build roads, slurry lines and sludge ponds – the infrastructure of the devastating practice of mountaintop removal. “I was blinded by the $13.50 an hour I never had,” he says.
“I was blinded by the medical card I never had. I didn’t realize that I was setting up something that could one day kill my granddaughter. They’re putting a price on their own children’s head. Anybody who tells me these [dams] are not supposed to leak – that’s bullcrap. That is a lie.”
In Sundial, locals like Wiley and out-oftown activists are demanding not only that the children be moved to a safe school but that Massey shut down its preparation plant, coal silo, 1,849-acre mountaintop removal site as well as the 2.8 billion-gallon coal sludge dam.
“Massey wants it all. They are a cruel people. They don’t care what they do to you,” says Jackie Browning, of nearby Horse Creek. “They make this place so ugly.”
“THE GOVERNOR IS DRAGGING HIS FEET”
Two days after his meeting with the governor, Wiley and his supporters met with the heads of all the relevant state regulatory agencies to discuss the Massey plant’s harmful impact on the health of the community.
The newly attentive group of government officials also toured a proposed new site for Marsh Fork Elementary students. Wiley and his supporters gave Manchin five days to respond to their demands before returning to their campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience. Wiley’s initial hopefulness waned. “I’m about tired of waiting on them. The governor is dragging his feet,” Wiley told The Indypendent on July 15, after not hearing from Manchin’s office for a week.
Hours later, the governor’s office announced that the permit for Massey to construct a second silo at the site had been revoked. Manchin’s made his decision following a meeting with activists including Jack Spadaro, a whistle-blowing mining engineer. Spadaro dug up information to prove that both the existing and the proposed silos were illegally close to the school – within the 300-foot buffer zone guarding schools from mining operations. Massey had begun construction on the foundation for the silo in April, three months before the DEP granted a permit. “The governor is an ex-coal operator,” Spadaro said. “He’s not an environmentalist. Because it involved children, he had to get involved.”
For more, see mountainjusticesummer.org and sludgesafety.org
this article originally appeared in the New York City Indymedia project, The Indypendent, a bi-monthly newspaper, July 2005
“We don’t feel like our trespass is nearly as serious as what they’re doing to West Virginia,” Roselle says. “We want this stopped. And we’re going to do whatever we can.”
Mike Roselle and James McGuinness halt the movement of coal off Cherry Pond Mountain in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Very close to this MTR site sits 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge, precariously perched above the Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, WV. This Massey Energy-owned MTR site puts the lives of Coal River Valley residents at risk. Residents contend that blasting will further destabalize the sludge impoundment, while fly rock and rock dust shower the neighboring hollows of Naoma. photograph by Antrim Caskey
“This is a crime against nature”, said James McGuinness, “It is not only illegal, it is immoral.” “They have no right to destroy this mountain.”
Mike Roselle and James McGuinness of Climate Ground Zero protest on the Massey Energy-owned Edwight MTR site. They were cited for criminal trespass by WV State Police and released without incident. photograph by Climate Ground Zero
Blasting at Clays Branch, Cherry Pond Mountain, Raleigh County, West Virginia
On Monday, February 16 2009, at about 11am, two members of Climate Ground Zero were arrested for interfering with MTR blasting on the Massey Energy-owned Edwhite mountain top removal site near the Shumate Dam on Cherry Pond Mountain. The Shumate dam holds back 2.8 billion gallons of toxic sludge, the waste by-product of chemically cleaning coal, and sits above the Marsh Fork elementary school. Since 2005, local citizens have demanded that Marsh Fork Elementary School be moved to protect the children from a massive dam failure like the one that happened in Kingston, Tennessee on December 22 of last year.
“This is a crime against nature”, said James McGuinness, “It is not only illegal, it is immoral.” “They have no right to destroy this mountain.”
“Massey Energy’s plan to destroy this mountain for coal threatens the health and safety of the residents of Clays Branch and the Hunter Addition of Naoma. This is a serious threat to the ecology, the economy and the future of West Virginia.” Said Mike Roselle, of Rock Creek.
“If the blasting continues, and the Shumate Dam was to fail, the lives of thousands of West Virginians would be at risk.”
Clays Branch is part of Cherry Pond Mountain, which stretches east along Rt 3 to Bolt Mountain (Rt 99). Clays Branch is located above Marsh Fork Elementary School, above the 2.8 billion gallon sludge pond at Shumate and up the left hand fork of Shumate hollow. There is massive MTR blasting currently ongoing –next to an unstable sludge dam, above an elementary school and surrounded by mountain communities.
