New Generation Bears Witness to Appalachian Destruction
July 25, 2008
To get involved, contact Restoring Eden at www.restoringeden.org or e-mail us at info@restoringeden.com. Peter Illyn is the Executive Director of the ministry Restoring Eden.
Not many students go on Spring Break hoping to get their hearts broken. But when ten students representing seven states and three Christian colleges stood on an Appalachian ridge and stared at the barren remains of a mountaintop dynamited out of existence, their hearts exploded with compassion for everything, and everyone, in the arc of destruction. Yes, this was a six-day trip to blow the lid off an extreme form of coal mining—and find hope in the debris.
In April 2008, Restoring Eden led an educational road trip to West Virginia to study mountain top removal (MTR). Students from Eastern University, Calvin College, and Corban College piled into a van and toured around this historic coal region in order to get a handle on MTR, or “strip mining on steroids,” and its social, political, and economic costs.
From meetings with advocacy groups to homestays with affected residents, students learned the history and process of MTR. Since the 1970s, this devastating method has been exposing coal seams for quick extraction by first completely denuding mountaintops and then blowing them up, layer by layer, often altering the elevation by as much as 800 feet. What remains is shoved into adjacent valleys. Concerned only with short-term profit, the mining process buries streams, destroys forests, and decimates wildlife habitat on the mountains and in the valleys. Loss of vegetation naturally triggers erosion and landslides, contaminating streams with sedimentation and mining waste. Companies must do “remediation,” but it is often riddled with loopholes and does little to truly restore the moonscape it leaves behind.
MTR blasts people too. Residents are forced to deal with everything from muddy brown tap water to the possibility of floods and toxic slurry run-off from often precariously-situated earthen dams. Debris from explosions is also a threat, and lung ailments from asthma to cancer are found in high concentrations in nearby communities. Illnesses among children are particularly pronounced. Proponents of MTR cannot even claim it creates jobs: compared to traditional deep underground mining, jobs have been steadily lost through MTR. In West Virginia alone, the transition from hundreds of miners underground to a small team equipped with a dragline and dump truck has meant 125,000 jobs in 1950 narrowing to 16,000 jobs in 2004. With fewer jobs and greater health risks for the larger community, parts of the region are emptying out and property values are plummeting.
As part of their journey, these students traveled from the hollows of Appalachia to the halls of power in D.C. in an effort to connect coal mining and environmental justice. Lobbying followed over HR 2169, the Clean Water Protection Act, which would halt the dumping of mining waste into waterways, thus restoring the Clean Water Act’s original intent. In addition to policy shifts, students also realized that education of the public is crucial—most people probably don’t know about tragedies such as the 2000 Martin County slurry breach, which according to the EPA was the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Southeast. Another part of the solution is practical lifestyle shifts— energy conservation and research into and increased use of renewable energy sources.
Throughout their tour, the students reflected on Christians’ responsibility in light of this violence—in total, the amount of explosives used during one week of blasting in Appalachia is equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb). One evening they were even able to attend a prayer vigil and scripture reading with local believers on Gauley Mountain.
Herein lies the hope in the heartbreak. Faithful Christians have the opportunity to respond to a biblical mandate to care for people and the earth, and with prayer and participation, help ignite a movement for shalom in this historic and beautiful part of North America.
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