Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal (18 page)

We've been oppressed for 150 years. Our people have had to deal with that. Remember I said that mountaineers didn't want to become miners? Well, what happened was, they become dependent upon the things they could buy. I think that was a conspiracy. Our state motto is “Mountaineers are always free.” Well,
I think that West Virginians in the coal areas have forgotten what that means. Mountaineers are always free because God gave us what all we needed to survive in these mountains. We didn't need no help from nobody. God made sure of that. But then them companies came in and said, “Here's ye some shoes from Sears. Here's ye some eggs from Connecticut.” And slowly they became addicted to that, they became dependent on that. Being addicted to that kind of lifestyle, it becomes hard to remember what it means to be free. The coal industry and the government decided to make these so-called free mountaineers into slaves dependent on the corporations. You can't discount that people just wanted to feed their kids. But there are also all these people driving this economy who wants a new tanning bed and a new truck, a new four-wheeler and a new boat. America has adopted this materialistic culture, and the mountaineer has adopted that too. Combine that with our mono-economy.

So what happens is that not enough of us speak out. It's complex. But there are those of us who are standing up and speaking out. There are those of us who are saying, “What can you do to me besides kill me? You're poisoning me anyway.” Those of us who are daring to speak out, we'll be able to stand before God on Judgment Day and I'll be able to say, “I tried.” And there are many who won't be able to say that.

There's a history of fighting back in Appalachia. We've stood up, we've been knocked down, we've stood back up. But not as much of that happens because of the modernization, the materialistic nature of Americans. I was part of that. Before all that happened at Marfork, I was just as asleep as anyone else. But that woke me up to how this is all connected, how this materialistic society drives this.

I saw this bumper sticker the other day that said “Live Simply So Others Can Simply Live.” I think that, as a culture, as a human culture, we all have to realize that. But Appalachia can be the poster child for how we have to change. That's why people are starting to pay attention to us at last.

We were pushed plumb out of Marfork. My family was the last ones to leave. The coal dust, the trains, the black-water spills, the constant traffic. There was an orange, grimy substance on everything that I later found out was a syn-fuel
¹¹
plant that they had up there. Marfork is known as the Super Tipple. Their plans was for a nine-billion-gallon sludge pond that they built up above me there. When the DEP
¹²
started testing our wells for sludge, I said, “Uh-oh.” I mean, that was our water. So finally, being the last ones up in there, I decided it would be best to get my child and my grandchild out of the way of danger. I knew that dam would give way eventually. The water was destroyed. And the dust was killing us. My grandson couldn't hardly breathe. We left there in 1999.

When I leave work here in Whitesville and drive home, I have to drive right through Marfork. And it's still hard. Sometimes I go up there to see the graves. I have to go through a guard shack to go to my family's graves. I go there—I drive real slow, sometimes with a guard right on top of me, following two inches from my bumper—and I remember things as a daughter, a child, a mother, a grandmother. I remember everything. But after I get to a certain point, it's like a strange land to me, although I lived there so long. Because it's gone. It's an alien land now. There's a big preparation plant up there, and I have to drive through that to get to where my grandparents and my brother are buried. It's hard. It's real hard, because that's where my heart is.

The graveyard is like a little island. It's the only green spot up there. I only go when the weather's cold so I won't notice that as much. There's periwinkle all over the place up there. That's a telltale sign of an old Appalachian graveyard because it keeps the grass down. It's real noisy up there now, with the trucks going in and out and the conveyer belt going through. There's coal dust all over everything on that little graveyard. I don't know how my ancestors carried caskets up that mountain. It's a little island, a little piece of green there amongst all that.

I noticed last time I was up there, AEP
¹³
had put up some new
power poles. They're putting in new substations everywhere here. There are no new people moving in, we're losing population. But they're putting in more substations for the company. They're using more electricity to make electricity. That's what my grandma would call chasing your tail.

People will say the landowner has a right to do whatever he wants to with his land. What about my rights? Sure, the coal company has that right until it encroaches on what I can do with my land, and my water. The coal company never wants to talk about that. We just had this big deal here in West Virginia about landowners' rights, but it works both ways. What about when my land is destroyed by them doing what they want? If I set a charge off on my property and it blowed over on my neighbor's land? I'd be in jail. But that don't happen with the companies. You can crap on your own land all you want to, but not on mine. No.

Women have always been at the forefront of Appalachian fights. Traditionally, women have held down violence. I think women like to talk. Women can speak out. Women are protective for their children. Go ahead and fight for a mommy-bear's cub, or go for that hen's chicks. Yeah, go for it, buddy. Women are protective.

Lots of these churches need to start fighting back. They should read Genesis 2:15.
¹⁴
God said he put Man in the garden to dress it and keep it. Not to destroy. He told us to use what was on this earth, but he also told us to protect it, to be stewards. We can use it, but we can't abuse it.

Look at nature. Creation shows God's creativity. He gave me something in my charge to take care of. I have to answer to him for it. Which one of these mountains would God blow up? Which one would Jesus store his waste in? We will be held accountable for what we've done to this land.

My faith was always there, always on the back burner, but I've depended more on it for the past four years or so. Because of all the stress I've been under, all the frustration, the only peace I could get is when I'm sitting in the backyard, or fishing with my grandson,
or playing with my dogs, or out in the woods. That's when God talks to me, through these hills, these trees. Over the last couple of years, talking to God has calmed me down somewhat. He restores my soul. I pray to God for the answers. I've looked for the answers in the Bible, and they're there. It's all there.

Everything God created points toward him. I look at that mountain that points me to God and I'm going to blow it up? Excuse me, that don't make sense. I heard this preacher one time—he called himself a preacher, anyway—talking at a stream buffer-zone hearing. He works on a mountaintop removal site. He said he'd been to the Grand Canyon and while he was there he thought, “Why, look at that. That's one of the Seven Wonders of the World.” And he said he thought about how, back home, he was creating that, too. I thought, Lord, how blasphemous. Oh my, may God forgive that man. I thought, “You think you can create. That you can do a better job than God?” I thought: “Buddy, you better think about what you're saying.”

Mountaintop removal is morally wrong.

Let's start with the fact that first they clear-cut the mountain and destroy all the trees that God's animals live in, all these animals that we need, that we treasure. Then the animals come down, and we have to fight with them. Bears and rattlesnakes. I've had to fight them.

Then they start the blasting and drilling, they're blowing up God's mountains. The dust comes down on the people, covers the air, the leaves, it gets in your lungs. The blasting literally makes you feel like you're in a war zone. My dogs will be walking across the yard and will stop, look around real confused, then, bam, you hear and feel the blast yourself. It shakes your house, damages your home. It's an insult to people, especially to people who don't have much of a home to begin with. But, by golly, it's my home. You feel like you're being attacked. It does something to your psyche. Because you
are
being attacked. Four million pounds of explosives a day. That's a lot of explosive.

Then you breathe that air, and the coal dust gets in your eyes
and nose and lungs. The kids breathe it and get sick. The elderly breathe it. You breathe it, you get sick. Then you have to look at the destruction they've done, knowing exactly what it's done to the mountains and the animals and the human beings. That mountain was something special. It's been there eons. Forever.

They can go through some mountains in a couple of months. Here in West Virginia they've tried to hide it for the longest time—they don't even try to hide it in Kentucky—but we can see it now.

The part that's really hard on people is the flooding. The kids here are sleeping fully clothed at night, plotting out escape routes, just waiting for the next Buffalo Creek. It's an attack on your physical self and your emotional self, too. It's morally wrong to do that to people.

I don't mind being poor. I don't mind living in a holler. I love living in a holler. But I do mind being polluted and blasted. I don't mind being isolated. I love being isolated. But I do mind being poisoned. That's wrong.

There are lots of people who won't hardly grunt to me, who won't associate with me. I walk into a little store and I can feel the tension. They've tried to intimidate me. If they smell fear, they come after you. I just ignore it.

I believe in the purpose-driven life. I believe there is a glimmer of hope. Even if we can save just one mountain, if we can save something for our kids. I believe there's hope. Even if there's not any hope, I'm not going to do like the rest of these yaller dogs and hump up in the corner and bury my head in the sand and say, “I can't do anything.” I'm not made that way. My mommy always told me, “Don't you hump up in the corner. You get a lick in so they know they been in a fight.” So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a lick in so they know they've been in a fight. Now ain't that what a true Appalachian does?

Whitesville, West Virginia, March 27, 2008

Called to Action

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee, and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?

     —Job 12:7–10

It's a cold Sunday morning in East Tennessee and the Church of the Savior is filled to capacity. The congregation stands; voices from across the crowded church harmonize and send the words of a nineteenth-century hymn soaring up to the rafters.

For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

As the organ swells with its last note, Pat Hudson and Dawn Coppock move to the lectern and invite the congregation to join them in the responsive reading.

It is by grace that we live among God's mountains.
You shall not defile the land in which you live, and in which
       I also dwell. (Numbers 35:34)

Pat Hudson, Knoxville, Tennessee. Photo by Silas House.

As the audience gives the response in a synchronized monotone, Hudson catches Coppock's eye. The look conveys what both women are feeling: This day has been a long time coming. It's the inaugural Mountain Sunday service, dedicated to “the spiritual value of our mountains” and to confronting the threat of mountaintop removal mining. They exchange a quick smile, a shared prayer of thanksgiving.

Looking over the congregation, the two women are pleased: a body of believers—men and women, black and white, gay and straight, young and old, Democrat and Republican—have come together to honor God and His Creation.

Where else could this happen?
Hudson asks herself.

After all, this is not a church of judgment. It's a house of freedom, open to all who enter, operating on the belief that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
¹
This flock—a United Church of Christ congregation—believes in promoting not only Creation, but also creativity: Appalachian poet Marianne Worthington stands to read a moving essay about mountaintop removal. Jean Ritchie's anthem “Black Waters” is sung. The pastor, the Reverend John Gill, a calming presence with hair a little longer than most East Tennessee preachers, leans on the podium and eyes his congregants. He is a man known for challenging the people of the church instead of offering them platitudes. Although the look on his face is serene, he is also a man who has seen the harsh realities of the world and remembers all of them. Perhaps the memories have taken up residence in his eyes, which are sad and concerned. Grief is in his hands, too, which occasionally drift up to emphasize a point. He chooses his words with care and passion, challenging everyone in the audience to be environmental stewards:

“It's time now, with our understanding of how we're related to the whole earth community, that we really need to extend our sense of our neighbor to the earth itself,” he says. “What we do to the earth directly affects our neighbor. If we allow this kind of destruction to happen, our human neighbors are affected. We ought to love the earth like a neighbor.”

His words wash out over the pews and settle on the people's shoulders, where they are considered with intelligence and patience. Once Gill finishes, it's clear that his sermon has been their mountaintop experience. Like others in the faith before them—Abraham, Moses, Elijah, even Christ himself—they leave the spiritual ridgeline changed. As they walk to their cars, many are moved to tears, some to righteous anger at themselves for their role in a culture of consumerism. Others are lost in silent reflection, thinking of both the issue and the woman who initially brought it before the church: Kathy Lindquist, a woman who greatly influenced everyone who knew her.

“We wanted to do something to memorialize Kathy,” Hudson recalls, barely rising above a whisper. She is someone who rarely raises her voice; she believes in the power of quietude. “We knew we wanted to combine her love for the environment with her deep faith.”

Lindquist was a civil engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority as well as a passionate Christian and environmentalist, who had lived with cancer for twenty years. As a member of the Church of the Savior, she led the senior youth group and wrote a column called “Earth Corner” for the church newsletter. Concerned about the alarming increase in mountaintop removal sites in Kentucky and West Virginia, and fearing that the practice would soon be multiplying in Tennessee, she addressed the issue in her final column before her death in September 2005. At her funeral, Hudson and Coppock decided to place a petition against the practice next to the guestbook. It was the beginning of their teamwork on the issue. After some initial prodding by a fellow church member, they founded the Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship (LEAF)—an organization they describe as “a Christian fellowship of Tennesseeans whose faith leads them to take action” for the state's environment. Once Hudson and Coppock announced the formation of a group that would stand up for stewardship in memory of Lindquist, they were overwhelmed by the outpouring of both moral and financial support from their church family.

On the surface, the two women's partnership might have seemed like a mismatch. Hudson is a soft-spoken freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications such as
Southern Living
and
Americana
. A poet, Coppock is a well-known adoption attorney in East Tennessee and never has to be asked twice for her opinion.

Such yin and yang often makes for successful working relationships. They quickly developed a packet of materials on environmental stewardship—the concept that “the earth belongs to God and we're only caretakers,” as Gill puts it—and mountaintop removal, which they have sent to churches throughout East Tennessee.

“The idea was to identify somebody in a congregation who was willing to lead the charge or the educational efforts in that congregation and just turn them loose,” says Hudson, referring to the way the packets were distributed. The packets contain written materials on environmental stewardship, as well as DVDs of the films
Kilowatt Ours
and
Mountain Mourning
and the book
Serve God, Save the Planet.
²
They include a note to forward the materials to another church upon finishing, a sort of “practice-what-you-preach” philosophy that promotes reuse of the provided information. According to Coppock, the packets have reached more than seventy churches within the region. Five congregations are now holding weekly creation care meetings as an adult study in response to receiving a LEAF packet.

Both Hudson and Coppock say that they have made a conscious effort to target churches of all theological stripes. “LEAF's been the beginning of building bridges,” Hudson says. “We didn't want to be simply preaching to the choir or talking to the converted. We wanted to plough some new ground and have it be people who hadn't heard this message before—people who wouldn't show up at a water quality hearing or hadn't heard about the environment as a spiritual issue.”

A critical step in that outreach was bringing in Dr. Matthew Sleeth, an evangelical medical doctor and author of
Serve God,
Save the Planet
. His effectiveness at recruiting other churches prompted Church of the Savior to join Compassion Coalition, a group of primarily evangelical churches in the Knoxville area. It also garnered them support from the local chapter of A Rocha: Christians in Conservation, an international organization dedicated to stewardship for which Sleeth was executive director of the North American chapter.
³

Another important step was joining with other religious leaders to view firsthand the damage caused by mountaintop removal. In 2006, Hudson and Gill participated in the Mountaintop Removal Tour for Interfaith Leaders, hosted by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC). During their visit to Montgomery Creek in Perry County, Kentucky, the diverse delegation made a twenty-minute hike up a steep mountainside to view an active site. Hudson and Gill were silent as they made the treacherous climb over rocks and along the rugged path, which was lined by wild orange azaleas that no one below had noticed before. Pausing by the flowers, Hudson put her hand out toward them as if they were breathing cool air. Behind her came a crooked line of people of various ages, religions, and ethnicities. Their faces were lined with sweat and determination; McKinley Sumner, the mountain's owner, offered an elderly nun a hand up onto a particularly steep natural rock step. Although the nun was out of breath and obviously tired, she refused to turn back. No one else did either.

Finally reaching the ridgeline, the group straggled out on a green wooded peninsula. What greeted them was a panorama of destruction.

Some ventured to the very edge of the cliff, staring a hundred feet straight down into the valley of dirt and rock. Others were frozen by grief in the middle of the overlook. Their shock seemed comparable to how Moses might have felt if, after climbing Mount Nebo, he had realized that there was no Promised Land. After a few minutes, they all came back together without a word and formed a circle.

Collecting themselves, they joined in singing “Amazing
Grace.” Down below, warning horns blared and sirens wailed. Everyone kept singing, sure that the site foreman was just trying to scare them off. Some closed their eyes against the devastation, many moved their mouths in silent prayer. Others raised their hands in the air as if in praise of this once beautiful place. The horns sounded again, a long, funereal drone. And then, once again, the sirens, shrill and high, as if the land itself was crying out. The song continued, louder, defiant. Suddenly everyone realized that these were real warning horns and sirens, because on the last verse of the song, a mountain just across the expanse of empty air from them collapsed in on itself, another victim of the charges set to bring it down.

“It felt like somebody had hit me in the gut,” Gill says, remembering the moment the mountain blew up before his eyes. But for Gill, something even more haunting than that was yet to come. “Hearing the stories of the people who lived there,” he says, “it started to connect the dots for me. My soul has been largely formed in the mountains of Appalachia. If you love your neighbor in Kentucky or West Virginia or North Carolina or Tennessee, you should care about how the earth gets treated in that place. If you love your neighbor downstream from you, you should care about what happens to the river in your region.”

He stood up in the pulpit the following Sunday and told his congregation in no uncertain terms: “This is sin.”

Hudson returned to Knoxville committed to doing more in the fight. She and Coppock began digging deeper, stretching their commitment:
What else can we do? Can we kick this up a notch? Can we be proactive?

One idea they came up with was following KFTC's lead and sponsoring Mountain Witness tours in which interested churches or individuals are taken to a mountaintop removal site in Tennessee. Both women believe that an up-close look at the devastation plays an important role in a church's decision of whether to take action. After Hudson and Coppock organized these tours, even more congregations began taking up the issue.

“When you figure this started just three years ago and that much has happened already,” Coppock pauses and shakes her head. “We didn't do it all, but I think we hit the first domino.”

Their efforts were not confined to churches. They soon extended all the way to the state legislature. After discovering that there was no legislative effort to ban or regulate mountaintop removal in Tennessee, Coppock decided to take matters into her own hands. An adoption attorney experienced in legislative matters, she's used to being blunt about what she wants. “I was in Nashville in a meeting with Bob Tuke, personal lawyer for the governor.
⁴
He said, ‘Legislatively, what can I do for you?' And I said, ‘Well, I'd like a ban on mountaintop removal.' Bob, who is very proactive and positive, said, ‘We can do that.'”

After receiving Tuke's pledge of support, Coppock contacted other conservation organizations for their input. All indicated their support. But when it came to actually writing the legislation, Coppock says she “had no idea how to do it.” Don Barger, senior director of the National Parks Conservation Association's Southeast Regional Office, came to her rescue. Along with his assistant, the three of them drafted the legislation.

“We came up with something pretty short and simple,” Coppock recalls. “We said there wouldn't be any alteration or disturbance over 2,000 feet for the purpose of mountaintop removal and that the federal stream buffer zone would apply to the state; you have to stay 100 feet out of either side of a stream unless it would improve water quality.”

Proposing the legislation, eventually known as the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act,
⁵
also required LEAF to incorporate in December 2007, as federal law restricts churches from overt political activity. Coppock registered as a state lobbyist, and along with Tuke, who also registered pro bono, set off to persuade Tennessee legislators to back the bill.