Photo courtesy of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
By Bob Weaver
There was an old 1950s TV game show called "Who Do You Trust?" which asked participants and viewers the question.
If West Virginians ask the question regarding public officials looking out for their public interests, they likely know the answer.
WV environmental regulators allowed the construction of two coal silos near the Marsh Fork Elementary School to move forward, once in 2003 and again a few months ago, based on carefully producing map changes that would benefit them.
Parents and prudent people have objected to such construction. It only makes sense. They have also objected to a violation of the actual rules by public officials and Massey Coal.
Here comes the trust part.
The slight map changes which allowed the silos to edge closer and closer to the school, violating an already bent federal-state 300 foot rule, were accepted by the state's DEP.
The violations were discovered by a Charleston newspaper reporter, not by the public agency looking out for the public interest.
The Department of Environmental Protection denied any problems until last week, when they suspended the latest permit, following months of demonstrations and after being told the silos were a problem.
Marsh Fork parents have been chastised for being incited to action by environmental groups like Coal River Mountain Watch. Bad guys, holding up progress and making miners lose jobs.
Judy Bonds, a former waitress in WVs coal fields and international award-winning environmentalist, said Massey ignored the rules as the company pushed closer to the school, raising health and safety issues, let alone the noise.
Joe Lovett, who runs the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, alleged that the silo approval "is part of a pattern and practice" by DEP Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer of "promoting the interests of coal operators at the expense of the state's citizens and natural environment.
"Secretary Timmermeyer jeopardized the public health, safety and welfare, by unlawfully subjecting the children of Marsh Fork Elementary School to increased levels of coal dust, coal processing chemicals, noise and increased traffic in very close proximity to the school building," wrote Lovett.
Timmermeyer is one of several former corporate executives who the state of WV has appointed to oversee the publics interests.
Former DEP Director Jack Caffrey use to open his comments by saying "We in the industry...", when dealing with DEP issues, forgetting he was working for the public.
Timmermeyer formerly worked for DuPont, representing the company on issues related to C8 contamination. While Timmermeyer says she has stayed out of DuPont's C8 problem, the implications are anything but slight with her agency dealing with the giant corporation, including allegations DEP has a record of letting DuPont make decisions for them.
In the coal silo case, whatever happened to "For the Sake of the Children," a transparent organization created by Massey's CEO Don Blankenship with his millions of dollars, used to unseat a Supreme Court justice who had a rep for ruling against Massey.
Lurking on the mountain above the Marsh Fork school, is a multi-billion gallon sludge pond, which some residents claim is risky business, and may indeed have some signals of being unsafe.
So it goes in the world of king coal, as hundreds and hundreds of miles of WV streams are being filled with debris from mountaintop removal, with the coal industry claiming it creates "fields of dreams."
Quick, cheap and easy - mountaintop mining - which has caused thousands of miners to lose their jobs, at the same time the industry is blaming those nasty "tree-huggers" for the problem.
Somehow, we ignore that God and the natural forces of nature create mountains and the children who dwell on their slopes.
Forbid, we should trust that.
| 
