Fighting for mountain justice in Appalachia
As most of you know, the fight to halt mountaintop removal in Appalachia is an ongoing campaign. Just two weeks ago, Climate Ground Zero rallied forces together for a tree-sit on Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia, and independent journalist (and forthcoming AK Press author) Tricia Shapiro was there to help document the action, and spread the word. We asked Tricia, whose book on MTR resistance in Appalachia will be published by AK Press this fall, to write a report on the action for Revolution by the Book. Please feel free to repost & republish, but please contact publicity@akpress.org to let us know. We’ll be asking Tricia for regular updates on the situation in West Virginia over the coming months; if your journal or newspaper is interested in on-the-ground coverage of the CGZ actions, and other MTR-resistance fights in Appalachia, please contact us. You can also find a wealth of information on the Climate Ground Zero website.
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Before dawn on Thursday, Jan. 21, a dozen heavily laden activists headed for the edge of a strip mine site on Coal River Mountain, in southern West Virginia. The hikers approached three trees, oak and poplar, previously selected by scouts as suitable in several ways: The trees were not far apart, about 50 or 60 feet between them. Each tree was suitable for installing a person on a platform high enough up to make removal difficult. They were in undeveloped terrain where it would be hard for mine workers to bring in heavy equipment. And they were close enough to mining activities to prevent blasting if the trees were occupied.
Working quickly, the three prospective tree sitters and their supporters hoisted plywood platforms, tarps, food, water, radios, batteries, and other essentials up into the trees. Finally, the sitters—Eric Blevins, Amber Nitchman, David Aaron Smith (also known as Planet)—settled on their platforms and pulled up their ropes.
Setting up traverse lines—ropes that would enable the sitters to move themselves and their supplies from one tree to another—was about the only thing that did not go as intended. Too many branches were in the way for lines to be set between the trees, especially in the dark, so they would have to do without. The sitters had planned to share certain supplies: They had only two cellphones and one battery-to-phone charger between them, for example. If one sitter came down early, he or she wouldn’t be able to pass unused supplies to the others. Still, each of the sitters had at least a communications radio, spare batteries, and enough food and water for a week or more. Eric, who had the cellphone charger, would be the primary contact with the outside world. Amber would minimize use of her cellphone, and the three of them would communicate as needed by radio. They would make do.
Two supporters remained on the ground by the trees. Several others would hide in the woods, too far away to see the sitters but close enough for radio contact: If the sitters said they were in danger, these off-site supporters would run to their aid. Others who helped set up the sit left and began a long hike back toward base camp, several miles away, at the headquarters for Climate Ground Zero (CGZ).
(Slideshow from the Climate Ground Zero website. Many, many more images, press releases, etc. there …)
CGZ supports the use of nonviolent civil disobedience by activists seeking to end mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining and similar sorts of large-scale strip mining in Appalachia. In 2009, anti-MTR activists affiliated with the CGZ and Mountain Justice campaigns launched 18 civil-disobedience actions in West Virginia’s coalfields, incurring more than 130 arrests. Some of those actions, like this tree sit, were on mine sites; others took place at the front gates of mine facilities or in the offices of government officials. Most took place in or near the Coal River valley, and many focused on Coal River Mountain.
Coal River Mountain is the last intact mountain bordering the valley, with thousands of acres of continuous forest and healthy streams. It has excellent potential for a large-scale wind farm that would produce more jobs and higher local earnings and tax revenues than would strip-mining the site. In addition, a wind farm would leave nearly all of the mountain’s forest intact, allowing local people to continue to hunt and forage there, as they have done for generations. All those benefits could be sustained as long as the wind blows. MTR operations would end on the mountain in 15 years or so, leaving a flattened, treeless landscape with much-reduced wind potential and insufficient stability for installing large turbines.
Massey Energy, whose subsidiaries run most of the strip mines near Coal River valley, has long planned to strip-mine some 6,600 acres of this mountain, divided into four contiguous permit areas with a total of 18 proposed “valley fills,” where miners would dump rubble from mining nearby. Massey has not yet obtained permits for any of those valley fills. Instead, Massey’s subsidiary Marfork has permission to dump rubble from the Bee Tree permit area around the edge of the adjacent Brushy Fork sludge pond.
Such mining at the Bee Tree site would require blasting quite close to the huge pond, first for building a haul road then for the mining itself. The pond covers hundreds of acres, is held back by an earthen dam 900 feet high, is permitted to hold up to 9 billion of gallons of sludge (liquid waste from processing coal), and is located above a honeycomb of old underground mines. Blasting nearby thus runs the risk of causing a catastrophic flood by cracking the pond’s floor. That is exactly what happened a decade ago at another Massey site, in Inez, KY, where more than 300 million gallons of sludge spilled into tributaries of the Ohio River—30 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But Brushy Fork is a much bigger pond than the one at Inez, and its failure could result in a much bigger catastrophe: Massey’s own disaster contingency plan, required of it after the Inez spill, supposes a wall of sludge 40 feet high moving down the Coal River valley, mile after mile after mile.
Blasting for construction of a haul road at Bee Tree had begun several weeks before the tree sit went up. As long as the sitters remained in their trees near the blast site, further blasting would be halted. “Our trees were right near where they were blasting,” Eric later recalled. “We could see blast holes from our trees, really close to us, and we could see the [Brushy Fork] impoundment just a few hundred feet away.”
During the morning of the first day of the tree sit, the two on-site ground supporters were arrested and taken away. Massey workers felled several saplings near the sitters’ trees, but Eric, in a phone call to base camp, confirmed that the sitters felt safe.
That afternoon, workers set up bright lights and an extremely loud array of noisemaking machinery, including both airhorns and pulsing sirens similar to those on emergency vehicles. Fortunately, Eric and Planet had earplugs. Unfortunately, Amber’s had been left out of her pack. (She plugged her ears with toilet paper.) Even more unfortunately, the noise was so loud that earplugs were only partly effective: They “kind of knocked the bass out,” Planet later recalled, “but the high-pitched sounds were coming through clear as a bell.”
Friday morning, amid the continuing noise, workers began erecting a 10-foot chain-link fence around the trees, apparently to deter any attempt to resupply the sitters. On Saturday, the chilly mist-and-rain that had fallen since the tree sit began stopped, allowing the sitters a welcome opportunity to dry out a bit.
Meanwhile, a plan was being hatched by off-site supporters: One person who’d been hiding in the woods within radio range of the sitters would creep up during the night to get a good look at the fence, the noisemakers, and the security set-up, then come out of the woods to brief supporters at base camp. One or two of those supporters would attempt to resupply the sitters and would presumably be arrested, but others would remain in the woods nearby, listening to the sitters on radio. Whoever made the resupply effort might also try to get a decibel-meter reading of the noise near the trees before passing the meter on to one of the sitters in a resupply pack. Those packs would also include better ear protection as well as items (such as batteries) intended to make up for the sitter’s inability to pass supplies from one tree to another.
The reconnaissance mission went smoothly, and the person who did it briefed folks at base camp on Sunday: The chain-link fence around the trees was completed, except for a gap of maybe 20 feet along the side of it nearest to the mine site’s haul road. Security guards had attached a tarp to the fence, to give themselves some shelter from the rain. The fence was close enough to the trees that the resupply scenario being planned seemed plausible, though far from certain to succeed.
The most disturbing information brought out of the woods that day concerned the noise-makers. In addition to the sirens, there were three separate airhorn rigs: As many as four of the kind of very loud airhorns used on big trucks were ganged together and hoisted up beneath each tree-sit platform, where they blasted away continuously.
“We were able to handle it OK,” Eric later said, “but it was a really cruel and unusual way to attack somebody who’s doing something nonviolent. [It] was just uncalled for, when our actions were completely nonviolent and in defense of the community of people living below and the mountain … and water supply being destroyed by the mining.”
It was obvious that exposure to this kind of noise could cause permanent hearing loss. Supporters at base camp got busy with legal research, seeking grounds to compel Massey to stop the noise. That afternoon, they advised Eric to call the police to file a formal complaint. Shortly thereafter, the noise stopped–but only for a few hours.
The following morning, Monday, Jan. 25, Planet came down from his tree. Rain had resumed, and wind had blown open his tarp so that his sleeping bag got soaked and he could no longer keep himself warm.
Workers turned off the noisemakers when police arrived to arrest him, but the noise resumed after the police left. Eric and Amber remained in their trees, and CGZ stepped up its efforts to stop the noise. At CGZ’s request, hundreds of people called the Marfork subsidiary’s headquarters, Massey’s headquarters, and WV Gov. Joe Manchin’s office to demand that the noise be stopped.
On Tuesday morning, a CGZ activist was arrested while attempting to resupply the tree sitters. On Wednesday, another person attempting resupply was arrested. No resupply packs reached either of the remaining sitters.
Still, Eric and Amber had enough supplies to last for yet a while, and remained in good spirits. Eric was amazed by “how much the trees were swaying, because it was so windy up there most of the time–which just goes to show it would make a lot more sense to put windmills on the mountain, rather than to destroy the mountain for the coal.”
That Wednesday afternoon, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward blogged that Gov. Manchin was planning to meet with a county prosecutor and state police about the noise. Around 5 PM, the noisemakers were turned off. The next morning, following a meeting with CGZ activists at his office, Manchin declared a “moratorium” on the noise pending determination of its legality and health effects.
By this time, Eric and Amber had been up in their trees for eight days—longer than any previous CGZ action. The weather for much of that time had been unpleasant, but not nearly so bad as the noise. Now, with the noise turned off, the weather was poised to take a turn for the worse: Snow was forecast, half a foot or more, followed by single-digit temperatures over the weekend.
On Friday, Jan. 29, Eric and Amber came down from their trees and were immediately arrested. Their sit was over, but the campaign to end MTR was set to continue unabated. “It’s not over until the blasting is stopped,” Amber said shortly before leaving her tree—not stopped just for nine days, but permanently.
“This is a large movement that we’re a part of,” Eric later added. “People are trying to do legislative work, and provide economic alternatives, and do all kinds of stuff to get us away from the destruction that the economy of this area has become so dependent on. Hopefully with all our combined efforts we can put a stop to this as soon as possible.”
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Tricia Shapiro has been covering anti-MTR activism as an embedded freelance writer since 2005. Her book about efforts to end mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia will be published by AK Press this fall.