Lexington, KY - There's a combativeness in the air these days in the vast coal fields of mountainous southeastern Kentucky. The dialogue about the pros and cons of coal mining and burning is beginning to resemble entrenched encampments lobbing barbs at one another over fortress walls.
"This industry is under attack,"
declared Rocky Adkins of Sandy Hook, majority floor leader in the state House of Representatives.
Adkins' audience at a country club dinner in Pikeville was a group of 65 business people from central Kentucky. They had come to town on October 12 as part of a two-day whirlwind bus tour of the region to offer and seek cooperation and collaboration on common issues.
Adkins, public affairs director for Appalachian Fuels, an Ashland based coal company associated with the politically powerful Addington family had come to Pikeville that evening to solicit their support for efforts to reverse or defeat major coal-related regulatory and legislative developments in Washington, passionately pointing out that the mining of coal is what finances life in the mountains.
"It's where our people work. It's our Toyota. It's our UPS," he said.
Organized by Commerce Lexington, the two-day "Eastern Kentucky Appreciation Bus Tour"
began encountering the coal discussion early on and the subject dominated for the remainder of the trip. The excursion came on the eve of a public hearing in Pikeville about proposed changes to a 1982 federal regulation allowing valleys to be filled with the dirt and rock removed from mountaintops to make way for the mining of coal.
At every stop along the way, the message was the same: Coal is our livelihood, and Washington and environmentalists are direct threats.
"We're under siege!" exclaimed Lexington public relations executive Phil Osborne, whose Preston-Osborne agency is under contract to burnish the industry's image (see OpEd in the Parting Thoughts section of this issue.) "This (Obama) administration has arbitrarily decided
that they don't like coal," he told the group at a morning gathering in the Pikeville Library.
A certain defensiveness is a common feature of the eastern Kentucky character. The region has long been on the business end of the most negative media stereotyping (Diane Sawyer's recent 20/20 portrayal of eastern Kentucky's ills, with little mention of the region's hard-won successes, drew repeated scorn.)
But the testy mood in the mountains these days is more an odd cocktail of fear and hope.
The fear is all about a proposal by the Army Corps of Engineers to eliminate the use of "Nationwide Permit 21," which has allowed exceptions to the Clean Water Act for mining operations to remove mountaintops, filling adjacent valleys with the displaced soil and rock. Surface mining accounts for roughly half of mining operations in the 80 named coal beds in parts of 37 eastern Kentucky counties. And nearly every economic asset in the region is financed by dollars that can be traced to the mining of coal.
Others who live in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky have been raising concerns about damages to their homes, contamination of their drinking water and the disruptions and even destruction of mountain ecologies when terrain is altered in such massive volume. Research of more than a thousand segments of Appalachian streams affected by "valley fills" found high levels of certain minerals thought to negatively impact human health. And because the reclamation process compacts topsoil, forests were found to recover at a slower pace.
Citing a need for further environmental study of these concerns, the EPA recently placed on hold 79 valley-fill permits. Of those, 49 are for operations in Kentucky. Many coal operators who had invested in costly preparations to mine the affected sites are now sweating.
While coal mine operators await decisions as to which, if any, of those permits will be released, a parallel issue pervades the discussion.
Representative Adkins and House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who sits on the board of Energy Coal Resources, parent company of Adkins' employer, are frank about the region's mountainous topography and why, in their way of seeing things, mountaintop removal is a win-win for industry and the well-being of the region they represent.
Both men raise hopes of literally "leveling the playing field" - creating more flat land to make way for improved highway access, space for industry, land to house an expanded workforce and make schools, and more accessibiity to hospitals and shopping opportunities. These are amenities that have long eluded the region, in part because of its topographical isolation.
The point of their argument was not lost on Keeneland Government Affairs Director Judy Taylor, who was among the central Kentuckians who made the stop at Stone Crest Golf Course, situated on a former mountaintop near Prestonsburg.
"Something that we forget in central Kentucky is that what we take for granted are still luxuries in some of those counties: running water and sewers. I have running water and a sewer system. Many of those people do not," Taylor said.
"There are several parts of the country, notably Vermont and Asheville, North Carolina, that have mountainous terrain and they have wonderfully vibrant economies," countered Elliotville carpenter and woodworker Doug Doerrfeld, immediate past chair of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. (An Op-Ed sharing the perspective of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth on this subject is also included in the Parting Thoughts section of this issue.) "So the notion that you have to somehow create a large amount of flat land for economic development simply isn't true," he said.
The Commerce Lexington itinerary concluded with a tour of Booth Energy mining operations near Prestonsburg, something of a showcase for the most efficient and effective reclamation programs in the region. The group was taken to view sites that had been stripped of coal, the topsoil returned, the hillsides restored to their original contours and then replanted with native vegetation. Had it not been noted beforehand that these had once been strip mines, no one among the visitors would have been the wiser.
"I take issue with the idea that they are reclaiming the land," said Doerrfeld. "You have to stretch the definition of reclamation to a degree in order to accept what they're doing as a reclaimed mountain. It has nowhere near the elevation; the functional values of the streams have been destroyed and the forest is gone. The vast majority of it, over 98 percent, has been turned into unnatural plains that have exotic plants growing on them that can't be used as pasture or fodder for deer, elk, cattle, horses or anything. It's just put on there to stabilize runoff so there are not as many sediments reaching the streams."
"Do
you remember the commercial, 'This is not your father's Buick?' Well, this is not your father's coal mine," noted Keeneland's Taylor,
taking exception with the term, "mountain top removal."
"It's mountaintop development," she asserted. "I think many of the coal companies that are there today are doing three things: they're providing employment for the local people; they're helping keep our electricity rates low so we can attract more business to this state; and they are performing an economic development service. When they're finished removing the coal, they're making the land suitable for development, whether that be a housing development, a sports complex or a school."
The divide on this issue is particularly sticky, and no doubt grating to pro-coal eastern Kentuckians, because Lexington and central Kentucky have long reaped the benefits of the state's coal production, and not just in terms of cheap and abundant energy. Although it would be difficult to quantify the exact amount, coal industry profits have flowed into Lexington to fuel significant investments in central Kentucky's retail, commercial, and overall business development over the years. Lexington's economy, after all, seemed to hold promise for higher returns than many struggling eastern Kentucky communities. Add to that the fact that Lexington itself has its own environmental misdeeds that the city has just begun to address, and it's not difficult to see why many eastern Kentuckians bristle when they are told they need to change the way they conduct their business.
There is little doubt that eastern Kentuckians would prefer a more diversified economy. So far, however neither side of this polarizing debate seems at all interested in compromise in the interest of settling for a truly viable economic plan for the region's future that features at least something for everyone.
Environmentalists who hold that investments in tourism or alternative energies can make up for the billions of dollars generated by the coal industry are not being realistic.
"There's a lot of wishful thinking that somehow we'll replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources, but they remain far from reality," noted James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century in an interview in the Oct. edition of The Sun magazine. "We're not going to run Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system on any combination of alternative or renewable energy - solar, wind, algae oils, ethanol, used French fry grease, you name it. We'll try them all, but we're going to be disappointed in what they can actually do for us, especially in terms of running things in the U.S. as it is currently set up."
While not yet ready to call himself an advocate of nuclear power, Kunstler does argue for a robust public debate about its costs and benefits.
At the same time, eastern Kentuckians who hold that flattening the topography through mountaintop removal will attract business investment seem somewhat in denial about the region's very real long-standing struggles with poverty, sickness, addiction and education.
Among those on the tour who had grown up in the towns and hills of the region, there was a recognition that the narrative about eastern Kentucky has not yet been influenced by the new and positive realities seen and heard at stops in places like Irvine, Hazard, Whitesburg and Pikeville.
"I was filled with pride to see vast improvements accomplished in the areas of
economic development, education, tourism, health care and
drug
prevention, downtown development and revitalization, trash
collection, modern mining ingenuity, and a ribbon of modern, four-lane highways that are truly inspiring to behold - especially for those of us who remember the once narrow, winding US 23 and 460
routes of the '60s, '70s and
'80s," said Paintsville native Marc Whitt, now associate vice president for public relations at Eastern Kentucky University.
"What we saw was, in
one word, impressive," he continued. "A region once dotted with poor, rural schools now features some of the most technologically advanced educational facilities around. A region where poor housing was once as common as the kudzu that lines many of the hillsides continues to be
replaced by modern, attractive houses and subdivisions. And nearly every community we visited is busy working toward revitalizing their downtown business districts."
Recalling the time spent in the tastefully revitalized coal country capitol of Pikeville, Whitt said he was captivated by the spirit of the people he encountered.
"They believe in what I would call the 'New Appalachia,'" he said. "They
now seem more than ready to shed the worn out stereotypes media and ignorance have labeled them for generations.
New downtown restaurants, a performing arts center, modern hotels, a fine public library, new streetscapes and an impressive regional medical center are all a part of this regional shopping and business hub of eastern Kentucky."
Although it was very evident that much has been accomplished, there still remains much work to be done across eastern Kentucky.
Despite the often defensive and sometimes combative tones they encountered, those traveling with Commerce Lexington through eastern Kentucky
heard loud and clear: the Bluegrass and Kentucky's Highlands need one another.
"I came away from the trip wondering when the people of Kentucky will finally end this bickering, make a serious effort to understand all aspects of the coal industry and not focus on past negative issues," said Jessamine County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Nancy Stone. "I would very much like to see us concentrate on developing this unique
natural resource and economic engine for the commonwealth, while continuing the work on improving the process of mining and finding ways to use coal in an environmentally responsible way."