MountainSaver

Good ole days

Mountainsaver — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:11:47 +0000

I’ve been writing posts for several months, and some people who have visited my site may read some of my posts, but doesn’t have a clue who or where exactly I’m from. So I decided that this is what this post will be about. I’m a Coal River boy, borned and lived my whole life in this river valley, and it takes mountains to make valleys. I’m a 52 year old, retired, 30 years underground coal miner. 22 years I ran a shuttle car, which hauls coal underground, and damn good I what I did. And the other years I did just about everything else in the mines. I remember working for Armco Steel, Montcoal #7 UMWA mine, which opened in 1956, and was bought by Massey Energy in 1994, and closed a year later. When I worked for Armco, in 1980, they sponsored us communities with a softball league, with uniforms, built us 3 nice fields, all with lights for night games, that was some good times, good games, and a whole lot of good partying. I don’t know why some of the miners didn’t choose to pursue careers as ball players, because there were a lot of great players. But that’s the way it was growing up in the coalfields. If you were a guy, it was about a 95% chance that you were going to work in the mines. And we played ball just like we worked, hated to lose, and wanting to be the best. I myself suffered a broken nose, both shoulders separated, and just stayed tore all to hell. I tell my wife Linda, that I’m to young to feel this old. Communities flourished, while families of the miners operated the bussiness in the small towns scattered up and down Coal River. Rivals of local high schools football games were big, and drew large crowds on Friday nights. Hunting was one of the most important thing in a lot of guys life. Everyone wanted the biggest wall hanger in the valley, you know, one of those record bucks. It was truely some of the best years of my life in the 80’s. Unaware what our beloved Coal River valley would end up like just a handful of years ahead. In 1980 the whole valley, like communities through out the coal fields was UMWA country. In 1982, Elk Run Coal, a Massey company made it’s first appearance in Sylvester, began mining, and building a coal processing plant within 500 yards of my home in 1985. Knowing that this operation stuck out like a sore thumb in union territory, we spent an entire year, everyday standing on picket lines, in hopes of organizing this one operation known then as A.T. Massey Coal, but because of terrible strategy by the international and the leadership of the UMWA, we failed to organize this operation. Little did the union know, that this very time in history, that the failure at Elk Run would open the flood gates for Massey Energy to continue their union busting take over of the coalfields of southern West Virginia. I just want to make it clear, I’m going to write several posts, but I’m going to do it in years, like one post will be of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s 80’s 90’s, and then up to the present time of my life living on the Coal River. It just happen that I started with the 80’s, they were on my mind at the time I’m writing this post. But now there are no softball teams to be found, the three softball fields have been covered in weeds, the high school football rivalries are gone, because two of the high schools have been torn down, rivalries which had been going on since the 20’s that I know of, it was a tradition, our tradition that is gone forever. The towns don’t flourshing anymore, one could call them run down ghost towns now. But not only are the high schools, the towns, and a lot of our communities are gone forever, there is a lot more that is gone forever that I will get to in later posts. But the 80’s were a good time, it’s just hard, if not impossible to see anything that resembles the good ole days. Mountainsaver.

A feeling of new found hope

Mountainsaver — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:40:20 +0000

First, I want to wish the best on this Labor Day, to all the people who go to work everyday and work their tails off, to make America a better place to live in, and securing a future for all genarations to follow. I just returned from a road trip, which took Lenny Kohm, campaign coordinator for Appalachian Voice’s, and me, throughout the state of Ohio. We made stops and gave presentations in Dover, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. We met some great people, and some great organizations, all like minded people working and accomplishing, on changing the direction of our communities and a new direction for America. I want to mention the Ohio Citizens Action Group, and what a great job they are doing, to bring about social justice for all. Dedicated and hard working individuals, building their organization from the ground up, who treated Lenny and I as one of their own. Of course, it wasn’t very hard for them to understand the atrocities that are happening throughout Appalachia. A few weeks before, they had made the trip from Ohio, to see mountaintop removal on Kayford mountain. I don’t have to tell you, that they, like everyone else who witness MTR, were shocked at what they saw and heard. So when Lenny and I arrived in Ohio, we were very excited at the work that they were doing to bring MTR into the spot light. Putting preasure on their congressial leaders to co-sponsor The Clean Water Protection Act, and demanding that a local steel mill, to quit using mountaintop removal coal in their steel mills. It was one of the best trips that I had attended. It was also the week of the DNC convention in Denver, CO., and Lenny and I didn’t miss a minute of it. For those who didn’t watch it, you missed history in the making. I was uplifted each and every night. Listening to speakers as Hillary and Bill Clinton, Bill Richardson, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Michell Obama, the next vice president of the United States Joe Bidden, and the next president of the United States, Barrack Obama. If you didn’t get the chance to hear Barracks speech, I encourage everyone to seek it out and listen to it. Whether you like politics or not, this I am sure of. This is a defining moment in our history. Barrack was put here for this special purpose, to rebuild our nation as a whole. A country that has been torn apart by eight years of a disastrous republican administration. I can’t help but continue listening to Barracks every word. One line in his speech, I will never forget, he said, and I quote, “change doesn’t come from Washington, but change comes to Washington.” And that’s exactly what were going to do. We will take our fight against mountaintop removal to Washington, but this time will be different. We will have an open door to the President’s office, not the close doors we’re use to seeing under republican administration. A President who will make time to listens and truly cares about people, and will not use the Constitution as a door mat. He’s very ready to take on all challenges to take this country back and deliver it back to the people. And he’s ready to take on the climate crisis, and to save humanization from extinction. So I arrived back home with a new found feeling about the future. Mountaintop removal are in it’s last days. It won’t be easy, Barrack needs the help of everyone to move this country forward. The Bush years has set us back many years. But with the determination I see in my travels, speaks very highly of Americans, and what we can accomplish, if we all bust our butts, and work as one, with the same common goal in mind. Yes my friends, our best days are ahead of us. God Bless all, and God Bless the United States of America.

CCS : Unproven and Scarey

Mountainsaver — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:10:51 +0000

Carbon capture sequestration is unproven technology, and no one knows for sure if it’ll even work. So I guess they will try the old trial and error act to see how this technology can be introduced. All CCS is, is carbon being injected underground. If they are successful in capturing and injecting this deadly stuff, who is going to montior this tuff, to make sure this CO2 is going to stay where it’s put. My assumptation is that we will be guinie pigs for this project. Just like coal slurry injections, this is not a solution to dispose of CO2. Like coal slurry injections, they’ll be unable to monitor this stuff, and how it will migrate underground. Just like coal slurry injections, it’s not solving the problem, just creating another. And the scary part is, that people’s lives might have to be sacraficed, in order to see if this technology even has a chance of working. And in the course of this testing, people’s lives will be sacaficed, They’ll be this cover-up, to put the blame everywhere except where it really belongs. If this Co2 ever escapes from where it’s injected, it will cost many people to lose their lives, just as coal slurry injections have done. These type of injections will also contaminate our water, which is our most precious resource, and will also contaminate our land, to a point it will be useless forever. In my opinion, CCS is identical to coal slurry injection. I was recently told by a high ranking DEP officer, that coal slurry injections is the worst thing that was allowed to happen today, the coal industry should have never been permitted to do these injections. But the DEP continues to issue permits for slurry injection. There is no doubt in my mine, that CCS injections will be a disaster. It’s a shame that people lives hangs in the balance of these deadly and foolish expeirments.

Clean coal starts with Extraction

Mountainsaver — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:40:14 +0000

While watching Decesion Makers with Bray Cary, and his host Peter Lilly, of Consol Energy, talk about clean coal, and how they have to consider the environment, while cutting down on green house gases. Mr Lilly talks of the new purposed CTL plant in Marshall county, and about that bullshit carbon injection, because, call it what it is, cabon sequestration is identical to slurry injection. taking it from one place, and putting it in another. It’s not solving the problem. And we all know about injections, and how great this system works. Mr. Lilly, as did Mr. Cary, said enviromentalists and the industry need to compromise, and find a common ground. Before there can even be a realization like that to possibly happen, since we’re talking about clean coal, and doing what’s right for the environment. you must end the dirtiest method of coal to the environment, and that’s the extraction process of mountaintop removal. If you are really trying to show the clean side of coal, it ain’t ever going to happen as long there is mountaintop removal, cross ridge mining, and contour mining going on throughout Appalachia.

Same Ole, is about to Change

Mountainsaver — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:16:18 +0000

What will happen to the coal industry when people start to see through the lies of their PR firm. What will happen to them when they are unable to steer public opinion in the way they’ve been doing for the last hundred years. What will happen to them when they finally realize that money can’t buy them everything and anything, which they’ve gotten use to. What will happen to them when people outside the coalfields, start finding out what we in the coalfields have known for a very long time. We are about to find out what will happen to them, because their clock is about to run out. Because people are not intimanated by outlaw regime anymore, and it’s because people are speaking out, and those that don’t know, are wanting to know more about, “what’s going on in Appalachia.” The coal industry are not use to the resistence that they’re running up against these days. I give a lot of credit to the young people of today. They know and understand that it’s their future that’s at stake here. I see it everywhere I go, that they want a safe and secure future for themselves, and generations to follow. They see, and are demanding a non-coal future. I’m am so impressed of the determination of todays youth. My hats go off to all of you brave people. The world greatest leaders are yet to rise to power. Our greatest leaders will come from the generations which now are our youth. Keep fighting for what you believe in, and never give up. Here’s to you and your future, NO NEW COAL.

Workmans Creek Sludge Pond being de-watered

Mountainsaver — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 04:11:07 +0000

Workmans creek impoundment being de-watered. Pics taken by Denny, 6/12/08.

“Coal Mining,” not all its made out to be

Mountainsaver — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:31:47 +0000

When I worked in underground coal mines, it was union, now days mostly non-union. It’s like day and night comparing them. I could go on for days speaking of all the difference between them, since I worked twenty one years as a union miner, and the last eight were non-union. But now days, with just a few union mines operating, union mines has changed too.Last week I was watching Morgan Spurlock’s 30 days series on the FX channel, and listening to the miners talking with Morgan, where he worked 30 days with these union miners, not one of them wanted their sons to follow in their footsteps, not one. When I choose to follow in my father’s footsteps, as my older brother did also, it was hard work, but we loved what we did, and the comorodity we had with are fellow workers. It not that way anymore. The industry speaks that miners make up to 60,000 to 70,000 dollers a year now, a good paying job. If it so great, then why are all of todays miners are not wishing the same for their kids. So mining is not what it’s made out to be. In a state where the only good paying jobs are coal mining jobs, this means that our children are going to be forced to leave the land which generations have lived for hundreds of years, to find other good paying jobs to support their famlies. We must make the transition to bring in other jobs, green jobs, because if we continue to destroy our environment, with such things as mountaintop removal, which I consider not mining at all, we will never be able to recover. That is why the windfarm, which is being proposed to the Raliegh County Commission, huge thanks to Rory, will supply jobs, while it will protect the evironment, and start diversifying our region, is of the utmost importance. Good enviromental policy is exactly the same as good economic policy. So which path do we want to go down. The same old path that’s got us to where we are today, or the alternative which will keep our kids here at home the way it used to be, and the way should be.

We need some major changes

Mountainsaver — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:34:05 +0000

I have to start by saying that I’m pissed off. After reading what Nick Rahall wrote this past week in the Register Herald, about wanting to listen to what the people are saying, and to serve them, by promoting coal to liquid, is just plain ole bullshit. What part of his family is he willing to sacrifice for this stupitity. You got it, none. He sure don’t give a damn about others, and the sacrifice that they’ll have to make in order to make gas out of coal. He’s messin with people’s lives here, and he acts as though it’s a game. He has no heart. He has no soul or meaning in life. His power rests on the blood money he gets from the coal industry. He’s a loser and a piece of shit. He ignores what the people are saying, and what is good for West Virginia. He goes where the money is. He is willing to continue doing harm to people in his own district, while sucking up with the baura crates in D.C. He’s been in office now for 30 years, and it was about then, as I recall, that our communities started turning into ghost towns. Now we are impoverished to a point that it will take a major overhaul if we will ever be able to recover from what he has let happened to our land and our homes. How in the hell can he continue to get re-elected time and time again, when West Virginia leads the nation in poverty, leads the nation in health problems, and all the same time is promoting blowing up some of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. This man has a big problem. He was borned without a brain and a backbone. He says he’s serving his state, there is nothing futher from the truth. All he serves is his coal whore buddies while living well behind his desk up in D.C., and all the same time people living in the coalfields has to buy their drinking water and deal with the ridicules health care costs, and he claims he’s serving the people. He’s got that right. He’s serving the people alright, just not the people of West Virginia. Thirty years ago we had the best water you could find in the world, right here, and it didn’t cost us a dime. I remember as a child, our well water was great, not anymore. Our wells now are either contaminated or sunk. Our communities that were protected by our beautiful mountains are being dismantled by mountaintop removal mining, and now with this coal to liquid shit, he wants to blow up every mountain to get every lump of coal, so he can say that West Virginia is serving the rest of the nation, even foreign countries. I say we tell him to keep his ass in D.C. or wherever, and not to let him return to West Virginia. Isn’t that what the coal industry offers people who have lived on their land for hundreds of years here in the coalfields. We’ll help you leave the state, but you can never return. If he leaves today, it won’t be to soon for the sake of OUR state. Just get the hell out, and don’t even think about coming back. And by the way, take all your suckass friends with you when you go. By the way, he’s against The Clean Protection Act, since this would throw a monkey wrench into mountaintop removal, and would prevent the coal industry from posioning our streams.

Building a Future

Mountainsaver — Sat, 24 May 2008 06:30:27 +0000

In order for West Virginia to build for the future, is to start now. We need to start the transition now. Already along the Coal River there is a study, and a possible option to be offered to a land company, to invest in a windfarm on top of a ridge, proposed to be permitted for a ”mountaintop removal site.” If tops of the mountain are removed, then the wind potential will be lost. Where as if the windfarm was to be there, it would have 260 wind mills, supply power to thousands and thousands of homes, suppy 60-70 lifetime jobs and an energy source that will be there for ever. Not temporary as the compared to the atternative, and temporary jobs and a world permantly destroyed the land. The need to come diversified can’t come to soon. We can set a standard for the rest of the country to follow in a new direction with alternatives. We should jump at these opportunities and encourage solar and wind to bring their bussiness to West Virginia and it will also supply good green jobs for our people who rightfuly deserve them. Hey this is the future, this is the way future generations will have to supply their power, so why not get started now and begin the transition right here in southern West Virginia

What are they waiting for

Mountainsaver — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:12:24 +0000

With global crisis getting worse every day, and time ticking down to do what we have to do to save our planet, our state and federal governments our still in a state of denial that there is no such thing as “global warming.” We continue to spew 70 tons of CO2 into our atmosphere everyday from coal fired power plants. As we stay on this path of “destruction of our planet,” our government is committed, (both parties), on all levels, continuing to invest in clean coal, or CCS. They have said that this won’t be readily available until 2030, and then again , they are’t sure this technology will even work. This CCS is just creating catostropic disaster, It’s the same thing as slurry injections with coal slurry. This is the waste from washing the coal at coal prep plants, that is stored in abandon underground mines located through the Appaiachia mountains. We now are experiencing this coal waste now leaching out and getting into peoples well water. Their water is now contaminated with chemicals, aresnic, sileneium, cadmium, and many other deadly chemicals, and filled with heavy metals. This is a very scarry situation that directly effects peoples health and lives. CCS is practically the very same thing they want to do with carbon. It’s not solving the problem, it’s just creating another. They are just taking it here, and then moving over there, and setting ourselves up for yet another problem to deal with. Now, not later, is the time to invest in renewables, this is the future we have to turn to, if theres going to be a future for generations to come, but that’s not what our leadership is doing, they are not willing to change, as some canidates have said that they are, same old bullshit. Scientist have proven that we must do something to reverse the climate crisis by 2015, so I guess we’ll continue to emitt more and more greenhouse emissions into our air, until CCS steps in to save the day on an already fried planet somewhere on, OR AFTER 2030. Renewable technology is already out there, and ready to start the transition to renewables, this is the only way to be sure that our kids, and their kids have a world to surrive in. But our government is playing the same old game. They don’t care about the future, they are only interested in today, and for greed of that almighty dollar. If they do give a damn about their kids, and their kids, then, what the hell are they waiting for.