Surface mine foes, supporters jam Mountain Empire Community CollegeBy Steve Igo
BIG STONE GAP More than a thousand people swamped the Goodloe Center at Mountain Empire Community College on Thursday to voice support or displeasure over the Obama administrations proposal to target surface coal mining in six Appalachian states by an intent to suspend a certain mining permit.
Displeasure rocked the Goodloe Center far more than environmentalist supporters could manage, the environmentalists literally swallowed up by an army of coal miners and other supporters of the industry.
First implemented in 1982 to regulate mining activities in regard to assuring the protection of streams, Nationwide Permit 21 (NWP-21) is the focus of a memorandum of understanding between the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers concerning potential modification of the permit, and possible suspension of the permit in the meantime.
Those actions would apply only to Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. The Obama administrations proposal accompanies a recent decision by the EPA to yank for further review nearly 80 surface mining permits already issued in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
The maneuvers targeting the coal mining industry in the Appalachian region have riled local officials and, as evidenced Thursday evening at MECC, many whose livelihoods depend on the industry.
State Sen. Phillip Puckett, D-Lebanon, said Southwest Virginians love their home environment and want to protect it, but want to make a decent living and provide for their families, too.
If you put it before me and make me choose, I choose the jobs (over excessive environmental protection), Puckett said. Cheers accompanied Pucketts assertion that if the Obama administration continues its current path against the mining industry you are going to devastate this area.
State Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, said he is in favor of keeping NWP-21 as is and tinkering by the Obama administration is unneeded and unwanted.
We know what the rules are and we are able to follow those rules, Kilgore said. Mining shouldnt be a dirty word. We dont want to be like those northern states where their electricity (rates are) high.
Members of the Wise County Board of Supervisors also slammed the Obama administrations proposals. Board Chairman Robby Robbins not only read a resolution passed just last week demanding the administration back off the coal industry, but other resolutions from other local government entities pretty much demanding the same thing.
Wise County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman J.H. Rivers said there is no scientific reason why such drastic steps are needed and reminded federal authorities that federal courts have upheld the provisions of the NWP-21 process over the years.
An individual identified as Donnie Wright said the Obama administration is mounting a war against Appalachian peoples and targeting them to be killed by friendly fire.
Were pretty clear about this in our region, said Wise County Supervisor Ronnie Shortt. We stand behind our coal business. If you change this permit process, and Sen. Puckett said it best, it will be entire (economic) devastation.
Outnumbered and outshouted, environmentalists still got their points across in what was, for them, a hostile environment.
John Wade, who described himself as a canoeist, said he supports the suspension and modification of NWP-21 and that mining permits should not be rubber-stamped by agencies that are supposed to regulate the coal industry. Pete Ramey of Big Stone Gap said surface mining is the most destructive method known to man to extract coal and as a retired coal miner himself, I never pushed a bulldozer over a mountain and never killed a child.
Laura Miller of Wise told the coal miners, many of them wearing Friends of Coal T-shirts and caps, that were not trying to take some jobs away. What wed like to see is constructive, not destructive, jobs. Miller asked if coal is so wonderful why the region is one of the poorest in the nation. She also said clean coal is a myth, a reference to clean-coal technologies.
Such comments werent received well by the massively pro-coal crowd that packed the Goodloe Center, filled the lobby, and overflowed onto a lobby balcony and two outdoor plazas.
Douglas Fleming, a third-generation coal miner, challenged environmentalists to stop using electricity and if they dont, said they are hypocrites. He said he found it ironic that while the nation battles terrorism around the world, coal miners and their families are fending off an assault against their livelihoods, homes and families.
These so-called environmentalists have launched a terrorist war against us in Appalachia, Fleming said, eliciting a huge roar of approval.