Staff editorials
2011
The 2011 Powering a Nation staff has spent the last 10 weeks developing a project that shows the complexities of our relationship with coal. We hope that you will see how coal powers our lives and get a sense of what that means for people on different sides of the issue.
2010
Ten weeks of reporting and research have resulted in the UNC News21 team understanding U.S. energy needs to undergo sea change. Industry, government and consumers must redefine their roles, actions and relationships with one another to deliver us from the fossil fuel era.
Witnessing the "subversion of democracy of West Virginia"
GUEST EDITORIAL BY ANTRIM CASKEY, DIRECTOR OF THE JOURNALISM ADVOCACY PROJECT AT APPALACHIA WATCH
As a resident of the Coal River Valley in Raleigh County, West Virginia, I sat in a meeting with a handful of Appalachian Ambassadors at Congressman Nick Joe Rahall’s office on July 13, 2011 in Washington, DC. It was stunning to see the 18th-term Congressman stare in silence -- his only real reply -- as Bo Webb, Maria Gunnoe and Vernon Haltom described the horror and the heartbreak of living with the long-term effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. Armed with the latest Hendryx report, which cites the connection between increased chance of birth defects in newborns with living near mountaintop removal operations, these Power-Hillbillies put this latest evidence in front of a distracted Rahall and announced their demand for an immediate moratorium on mountaintop removal. Rahall had nothing to say other than trying to pass the buck, first to, Alpha Natural Resources (Massey Energy's new name), then Office of Surface Mining (OSM). What we witnessed in Representative Nick Joe Rahall's office is what Bobby Kennedy Jr calls the “subversion of democracy in the state of West Virginia,” and we stared back in silence, in anticipation, as Rep. Rahall, stone dead in the eyes, the dome of the Capitol filling the large window behind him, said nothing to us West Virginians demanding to be represented.
This is what the subversion of democracy looks like in West Virginia, where sprawling corporations have woven their money-hungry tentacles all throughout the Appalachians in search and removal of coal, seizing more that 550 mountaintops and 5000 miles of headwater streams; annihilating hundreds of mountain hamlets, so many treasures, spurned with contempt. All of the normal paths to correct injustices like Massey's chronic corporate nuisances, like the courts and regulatory agencies, have been compromised beyond belief. Instead, West Virginians face a state Supreme Court where the Chief Justice Brent Benjamin was elected with 3 million dollars of help from the local coal company, Massey Energy.
Finally, it was Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio who heard us during the House Oversight Committee hearing where Rep. Kucinich proposed a visit to see the atrocities he's been hearing so much about, especially in the brilliant new documentary, The Last Mountain. Kucinich repeatedly demanded that he "wants to view specific sites in the Coal River Valley." We anticipate Congressman Kucinich's visit and we would welcome Congressional investigations into the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. It is imperative that you act on this issue. Is your electricity generated by coal from mountaintop removal? Check here.
Photos by Antrim Caskey, Appalachia Watch
Editor's note: Learn more about the source of your electricity here.
Antrim Caskey is a photojournalist based in Rock Creek, W.Va., who has been chronicling the nonviolent fight against mountaintop-removal coal mining. She is embedded with Climate Ground Zero, a pressure campaign to stop mountaintop-removal coal mining.