I am immeasurably grateful to Julia “Judy” Bonds, who died of cancer on January 3, 2011, and to whom this book is dedicated. Many people consider Judy to be the godmother of the anti-MTR movement, an indefatigable woman who made the fight against MTR the local, national, and international environmental justice issue it is today. Judy, who was very generous with her time and knowledge, impressed me with the great sense of urgency she consistently demonstrated while fighting Big Coal in Appalachia. I enjoyed our conversations over the years, and this book could not have been written without her assistance. To me, Judy was one of those people you meet in life who change you just by knowing them. While her loss is deeply felt by many working to end MTR, her life’s work will continue to inspire and challenge all of us.
I would like to thank my supportive colleagues at Hamilton College: Vivyan Adair, Vige Barrie, Donald Carter, Katheryn Doran, Peter Cannavo, Amy Gowans, Barbara Gold, Margaret Gentry, Jenny Irons, Chaise LaDousa, Heather Merrill, Onno Oerlemans, Bill Pfitch, Carl Rubino, Katherine Terrell, Julio Videras, Robin Vanderwall, and Steve Yao. I also want to thank my amazing students at Hamilton College, who consistently challenge me with their passion for learning and intellectual curiosity. Thanks also to everyone at the Hamilton College Library (particularly the interlibrary loan department) for your help with this research. I was fortunate to receive a National Endowment of the Humanities summer grant in 2006 entitled “Regional Studies and the Liberal Arts: An Appalachian Exemplar,” and I would like to thank the facilitators of this program at Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia, for their support of this project. In particular I wish to thank Peter Crow, Tina Hanlon, Susan Mead, George Loveland, Daniel Woods, and my fellow participant Gloria Goodwin Raheja. And I am deeply indebted to Phillip G. Terrie, who was there when I first became interested in environmental justice and the impact of MTR in Appalachia, as a PhD student in the American Culture Studies Department at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Finally, I wish to thank my mother, Viola Kathryn Barry, and my father, the late John Joseph Barry, for their love and support, and to other family members in West Virginia who, despite the controversial nature of this topic, had the courage to support this research. I could not have written this book without the emotional and intellectual assistance of my partner, Anne E. Lacsamana, who patiently read every word of the manuscript and served as my toughest editor. I am grateful for your love and commitment to this project and to me.
INTRODUCTION
I became aware of the process of mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) in late 1997 during a visit home to West Virginia. While visiting family, I read local newspaper reports on this controversial form of coal extraction. Many people were becoming more cognizant of changes in the coal industry that ushered in this highly mechanized form of coal mining, and some were horrified by its damage to the lush Appalachian Mountains, and the displacement of small communities in the coalfields. Other citizens defended the coal industry and its place in the state’s history and economy. Indeed, mountaintop removal coal mining has been controversial since its beginnings, and continues to polarize citizens in the “Mountain State.” When I returned to Ohio after my trip home, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other national publications were beginning to report this emerging story from the coalfields of central Appalachia.
In early 1998 I visited Larry Gibson’s camp on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia and saw an MTR site for the first time. Like many people who view the massive environmental alteration known as mountaintop removal, I was shockingly disturbed that MTR was legal and occurring in my home state. Four generations of my family have lived in the coalfields of West Virginia. My father worked as a coal miner, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom who raised six children in Eccles, West Virginia. Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains, I have a deep affinity for this landscape, as do many people from this region of the United States. Coming of age in West Virginia, the beautiful mountains that surrounded us were inextricably linked to our history, culture, and sense of place in the world. To learn they are now razed for coal extraction, left in ruins by heavy machinery and the technicians who operate them, is simply unacceptable, and far too much to bear for many Appalachians.
When I first began researching this topic, I quickly learned that many West Virginia women and their families were being impacted by MTR operations, and were forming or joining organizations designed to raise awareness about MTR and galvanize support in the fight to end it. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, coalfield women such as Freda Williams, Janice Nease, Pauline Canterbury, Mary Miller, Judy Bonds, and others began to speak out against MTR and its effects on humans and the natural environment of coalfield communities. These early participants helped put the issue on the political and environmental map. Women began monitoring MTR sites, attending state permit hearings, lobbying the state and federal legislatures, and engaging media to educate the public on coal-related issues. For example, many of these women frequently wrote letters to the editor in state newspapers; organized and participated in road shows such as Appalachian Treasures; and spoke at colleges, universities, and community groups throughout the country. Some women worked with scientists and members of the state EPA to collect air quality samples that demonstrated Big Coal’s impact on the quality of life in mountain communities. In short, women grassroots activists in this movement have taken a multipronged approach in their fight against MTR and Big Coal in Appalachia. Their presence in this movement has been vigorous and consistent, and women, in large numbers, still serve these vital roles today as the movement changes and progresses.
Central Appalachian Coal-Producing Region
I have spent more than a decade researching mountaintop removal through an environmental justice lens and conducting fieldwork in central Appalachia, primarily in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Over the years I have toured MTR sites, visited vanishing coal towns, met with ex–coal miners and families whose homes are at ground zero for MTR operations, drank coffee with professional environmentalists, talked with lawyers and policymakers, and of course met many grassroots activists working to end MTR and mitigate the deleterious effects of Big Coal in Appalachian mountain communities. Until the middle part of the 2000s, this topic was very difficult to write about. Academic resources were limited, and I frequently had to rely on journalistic accounts to support the research I was gathering on the ground in West Virginia.
Despite those early reports in the 1990s, and Ken Ward Jr.’s groundbreaking series “Mining the Mountains” in the Charleston Gazette, the issue of MTR was slow to grab national mainstream attention. National environmental groups had little to say about mountaintop removal, and academic analyses were rare. I published the first scholarly article on this topic, “Mountaineers Are Always Free: An Examination of the Effects of Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia,” in Women’s Studies Quarterly in 2001. At the time of this writing, there is only one other academic book on this subject: Shirley Stewart Burns’s Bringing Down the Mountains,
This book situates MTR and the environmental justice (EJ) activism against it within a particular time period, 1998 to 2012. Surface mining has existed, in some form or fashion, for decades in Appalachia.1 However, MTR operations increased in the 1990s, the mainstream press began covering this story in that decade, and organized environmental responses to mountaintop removal became more vigorous and focused during this decade.2 For example,