Virginia Tech Students Witness The Scars Caused By Mountaintop Coal
Mining At Kayford Mountain, W.Va.
Story by Don Simmons Jr. - Photos by Matt Gentry
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
www.roanoke.com
The Roanoke Times Betsy Bernard stared at the scarred landscape in
disbelief as dump trucks two-stories tall carried away load after
load of what used to be a mountaintop.
"I don't understand how that can happen in the first place," said the
Virginia Tech senior, staring out over terraces striped in yellow
ochre dirt, black coal and gray rock that stretched for at least a
thousand acres 200 feet below.
Piles of rocks as big as a Volkswagon Beetle lay at points along the
open pit. Peaks that used to soar above her vantage point in
45-degree angles had been flattened. The refuse was tipped into the
valleys below and sprayed with gray-green hydro-seed grass, all
according to federal reclamation guidelines.
Larry Gibson had warned the 18 Virginia Tech Appalachian Studies
students about the view as they neared the finish of a three-hour bus
trip from Blacksburg to Kayford Mountain, W.Va. Gibson still owns
about 50 acres on one of Kayford's peaks.
The view from his family cemetery reveals 360 degrees of ruin caused
by what the coal industry calls the most modern and efficient means
of harvesting the Appalachian coal crop.
Gibson, 58, came to Blacksburg last week to tell Tech students about
the human and environmental costs of coal, which supplies slightly
more than 50 percent of the nation's electricity.
"I used to have to look up in every direction from my mountain to see
the sky," Gibson told professor Sam Cook's class last Thursday
morning. "Now it's the highest peak for miles."
On Saturday's bus trip, the students got to see for themselves.
Expressions of shock began to voice themselves soon after the bus
pulled off the turnpike at Sharon and began its run up the hollow
along Cabin Creek. Rundown houses gave way to wooded hollows haunted
by trickles of sulphur-yellow water. Peeks at yellow dirt cascading
over edges that should have continued upward hinted at what was to
come.
Around one bend, the entire busload craned their necks to the left as
an 800-foot-high valley fill - where what was once a V-shaped hollow
was suffocated in waste material from the mines above - came into
view.
As the bus snaked its way up Kayford Mountain, slowly climbing above
some of the operating mine sites, the scenes became more frequent,
more unnatural, more brutal. For five years Cook has taken his
Appalachian Studies students on this field trip to Gibson's
homestead. It's part of his goal of trying to build their
consciousness, open their eyes.
"I want them to see the human cost of mining, but also how we're all
dependent on it, too," Cook said. "It's a chance for my students to
hear voices they won't otherwise hear and think about the future."
Bernard is thinking about it. After the trip, the aspiring English
teacher said she would definitely be willing to go on an organized
lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., to try to influence votes on a
bill that could help lessen and slow the impact of what the coal
industry now euphemistically calls "peak reduction" mining.
"Seeing it was shocking and appalling and I don't want something like
that happening here," said Bernard, a Blacksburg native who enjoys
hiking in her down time. "The people who have the money are really
making the decisions about what's allowed and that's really scary and
wrong."
Not every student left Kayford Mountain with such passion, but most
seemed to feel they had seen something intrinsically wrong.
"I don't see you could keep living here without constantly fighting,"
said Drew Harrison, a Tech freshman from Bedford, noting the bullet
holes in Gibson's camper at the Stanley Heirs Foundation Park.
Though the trip made Gibson's fight more personal, Harrison called it
ultimately a losing battle.
"If the coal company can make $450 million from his mountain like he
says, in 20 years it will be 300 feet lower and nothing will be
left," said Harrison. "You might slow it down, but there's no way to
stop it. There's too much money involved and for a lot of the
families here it's about food on the table."
Kristine Bronnenkart, a Tech freshman from Pearisburg, said the trip
convinced her that mountaintop mining was "terrible for the
environment," but she remained skeptical about her ability to have an
impact.
"If I was him [Larry Gibson], I just don't think I would want to
stay. It's all been ruined."
Undeterred, Gibson told the students there are more important things
in life than money and peace of mind.
"Why not let it go?" he asked, then answered himself. "Because in
that cemetery up there are buried members of my family as far back as
the 1700s.
"Y'all aren't just students," he implored. "One day some of you will
be in positions of power. It might not be in time to save my
mountain, but maybe you can bring attention to this cancer on the
land and prevent it from happening somewhere else."
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