WEBVTT - What is mountaintop removal mining? 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.840 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:07.560 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know? 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:16.319 From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:19.920 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.000 and that makes this stuff you should know? Right, that's right. 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:26.759 How are you doing? I am well, sir, How are you? 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:29.960 I'm pretty good. It's lovely here in Atlanta. It is. 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.960 It's like seventy five degrees beautiful. It's like San Diego 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:37.560 moved here. Hey. You hear that music? Josh? Yeah, Yeah, 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.000 that's Ben Sully, who will meet later. Right, that's right. 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:42.600 I could listen to that stuff all day. Man, that 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:49.200 chilling music. Macleagen awesome. Yeah, let's get into this one, 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:51.560 all right, let's do it. This is the shortest intro 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:54.480 how ever. Okay, okay, but it's it's it's telling. It's 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.560 a good one. And you would think that I would 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:58.600 have had it ready since it's the intro, you know. 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:01.680 But I like to play things fast and loose, kind 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:03.800 of by the seat of my pants. And I also 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:05.840 like to see how much time I can fill up 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.880 all I look for things, right, like I've done you, 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:14.000 But Chuck, I'm gonna give you a shocking statistic. There's 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:15.319 gonna be a lot of those in this one. In 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:19.640 the great state of West Virginia, which is next to 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:25.319 Virginia just west of it, though, UM since nineteen seventy nine, 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.560 the number of employed miners in that state, and mining 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:32.120 is the number one industry in West Virginia. It's coal 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.319 mine country. The number of miners um in since nineteen 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.360 seventy nine in that state has declined from sixty thousand 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:45.600 to twenty two thousand, according to the state's Senator Robert Bird, 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.560 but coal mining itself has dramatically increased over that time. 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.960 So how do you explain that Well, as a matter 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.120 of fact, the whole podcast that we're about to do 0:01:56.320 --> 0:02:01.559 explains it very clearly. A tie of mining process called 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:06.520 mountaintop removal mining or strip mining. What's a type of 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.440 strip mining? Yeah, apparently one person called it strip mining 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:14.560 on steroids. UM is very much responsible for the UM 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:17.600 the ability for coal mining to just go through the 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.920 roof in Appalachia while requiring fear and fear people. So 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.320 while coal has has increased, unemployment has increased as well. 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:29.600 And I guess let's just get right into it, because 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.760 this one is chock full of stats and stories and 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.639 this is an unusual podcast for us. And by the way, 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:39.080 this one is officially yours, given this one to me. 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.119 This you did the you did the legwork for this one. Yeah, 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:44.280 and we should add at the end of this podcast, 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.399 we're gonna have a interview with uh in our first 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:53.400 musical guest ever, with singer, songwriter and cello player Ben Soley, 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:58.079 who was an activist for against mountaintop removal coal mining 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:01.720 and uh it's on you know, the subpop label with 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.600 his music, and he's gonna interview with us and play 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.119 a song and it's gonna be pretty cool to stick around. Yes, 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:09.840 don't go anywhere in the middle of the podcast, all right, 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.160 So let's get into it. So, um, chuck. Traditionally, when 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.200 you think of mining, you think of basically a hole 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.600 in the side of the mountain held up with timbers 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.200 that UM men covered in coal dust are going into 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:27.760 with pick axes and headlamps. Extremely dangerous, um job, but 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:33.280 a job that's traditionally um been able to support families. Yes, 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:36.560 long has its roots in Appalachia, right, Um, this is 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.840 a totally different kind of mining. Mountaintop removal mining is 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:45.440 where traditional mining you bore into the mountain. With mountain 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:47.760 top removal mining, you blow the top off of the 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:51.080 mountain to expose the coal steam rather than digging in 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.840 to get it. Yeah, coal steams run horizontally through a mountain. 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.400 So what happens is and this is the how it 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.280 works portion. Yeah, and it's pretty amazing how they do this. 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.720 And even Ben has told me it's pretty amazing, even 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:07.880 though he thinks it's an awful practice, it's pretty amazing. 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.840 On the last they clear cut the forest. They scrape 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:17.600 away the top, soil, lumber, herbs, all that stuff, herbs, herbs, wildlife, 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:22.400 and habitat. The wildlife habitat is destroyed. Vegetation is destroyed. 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:27.359 And in their defense they usually customarily they send a 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:29.320 guy in with a machine gun who just fires into 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.000 the air like a full day and then he comes 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.600 down the mountain. Then they start clear cutting, so they 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.400 do all this. Once they've done all that, they blow 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.880 up the top of the mountain as much as eight 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.000 hundred to a thousand feet I've seen. The mountain is 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.120 just gone. That's why they call it removal. Yeah, and 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:51.680 it's flattened out and it looks like a barren moonscape 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:54.599 instead of a forest in a mountain. Yeah, that's the 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.920 that's the term that's used by just about anybody who 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:02.640 has anything to do with either um uh it's supporting 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:08.359 or opposing coal mining mountaintop coal mining. Moonscape is the 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:10.920 word that everyone always uses. That's what I was trying 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.039 to get out from that point. Um, they have these 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:15.480 big shovels that come and dig into the soil. U 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.520 haul that stuff away into the valleys nearby. Yeah, because 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:22.120 it's not like the stuff that s integrates this this um, 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:26.320 this thing that's called overburdened by the mining industry, which 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:31.160 is you know, rock, soil, dirt, trees. Yeah. Um, Like 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.400 it doesn't just evaporate. You have to get rid of it. Yeah, 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:35.440 you gotta put it somewhere. And then something called a 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.599 drag line, which is one of the more impressive machines 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.640 I've ever seen. Huge. How big are these things? They 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:45.040 said somewhere stories Yeah, um, and they way up to 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:49.040 eight million pounds and apparently they're they're um. Yeah, so 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.520 you saw that picture. It looks like an oil rig 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.480 on like tracks. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, So the drag 0:05:55.520 --> 0:06:00.520 line comes in to expose the coil, digs into the rock. Um, 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.239 these machines scoop out the coal. The machines that scoop 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.400 are the coal. Their buckets can hold up to twenty 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.919 compact sized cars. Wow, that's large. Is there are massive 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:15.400 operations and the result of this is, uh, the narrow 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:19.400 valleys have been filled. It's called valley fill. And one. 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.120 We got a bunch of stats. Here's one. Coal companies 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:28.359 have buried more than twelve miles of headwaters and streams, 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:33.080 rivers and streams buried underneath the stuff gone forever. Yeah, 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:35.200 with the overburn, remember the stuff that they blew the 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:37.200 top of the mountain off of may have to get 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:38.960 rid of it. There's two ways to do it. When 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:40.800 you truck it off of the mountain and dump trucks, 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.760 which is done, but it's also extremely expensive and time consuming. 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:47.719 Or you move bulldozers up there and you push the 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.760 overburden into the valley below in the in typically in 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.719 a valley there's going to be some sort of stream 0:06:54.960 --> 0:07:00.200 water supply. Yeah. And um, if you have a per mint, 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.960 if you apply for a valley filled permit, um, you 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.960 you can you're usually granted one and you just push 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.840 that stuff into the valley and then start getting to 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.480 the coal. Right, And so that's um. There's a lot 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:14.880 of problems with this and we're going to try and 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.760 hit on all of them, the myriad issues. It's not 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.120 what you think you can just stop right here's probably could. 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.320 Another one of the issues is something when they wash 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.760 the coal. It's called the result of of the wash 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.000 is what they end up was called coal slurry. Right, 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:32.640 And you wash coal because UM coal comes with a 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:38.560 lot of other organic and inorganic toxins metals compounds UM 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:42.800 like nickel, cadmium, mercury that keep it from burning as well. Right, Yeah, 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:47.160 and there's chemicals added to the wash as well which 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:49.960 end up in the coal slurry ponds. Right. So you're 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:52.600 you're you're washing it for market, but this water has 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.640 got to go somewhere, and it's extremely toxic. UM mercury 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.119 alone would make it extremely toxic. All those other heavy 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.880 metals just make it been worse. So you either inject 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.120 them into old minds all abandoned minds is one one 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.800 thing that we do with cole slurry, or you wash 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.600 them into holding ponds, which are basically earthen damns built 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.480 into the side of the mountain, which can be precarious, 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:19.440 as we'll find out. Yeah, and if you've seen cole slurry, 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:21.680 I mean, just type it into Google images, it looks like, 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:29.040 uh like soupy um black sludge is about the best 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.800 comparison I can make. So these ponds um. One of 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.559 these actually busted. The dam broken in nineteen seventy two 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.560 in West Virginia a Buffalo Creek and a hundred and 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.480 thirty two million gallons of this stuff rushed through the valley, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.040 killed a hundred and twenty five people injured, eleven hundred 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.080 and four thousand people were left homeless. And these by 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.200 and large are very poor people, which is one of 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.200 the keys here that we're gonna keep hitting on. Yeah, 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.319 I think Wise County, West Virginia. The um the average 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.800 income is like eighteen thousand for a family something like that. Yeah, 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:08.800 graduation rate is about six and the poverty level is 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:13.840 exactly what it was during the was it Eisenhower I 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.720 think so Eisenhower administration when he went there and said 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.040 we have to end poverty in West Virginia. It's the 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:24.360 same lb J. Yeah, Johnson, Sorry, UM. So once this 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.200 whole operation is done, there may be more than one seam, 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.400 and there's different ways to get into it. UM, Like 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:33.520 you can dig in from the side high wall mining, 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:35.600 or you can blow the top off the mountain where 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.680 you can do both. But once the mountains exhausted, and 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:42.240 these are massive sites. There's one in Virginia, I believe 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:46.560 that's like thirty five thousand acres, which that's one site 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:49.760 that Yeah, that's just one mining operation, or you could 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:54.760 also call it one former mountain. UM. When when the 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:58.000 time was when you left, that was that you got 0:09:58.000 --> 0:09:59.360 your coal and you got out of there in the 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:04.000 mining oper oration was abandoned. UM. Nowadays you were supposed 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:09.079 to most most mountaintop removal permits UH come with UH 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.160 an addendum that you have to do some sort of reclamation. 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:16.560 And the reclamation process typically is supposed to involve basically 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:22.320 piling rock and stuff back up, UM, regrowing this area 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:28.040 and UM trying to basically simulate a mountain again. Yeah, 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:31.319 and then was when that was first introduced, the Surface 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:36.440 Mining Control and Reclamation Act established standards. UH. They said 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:38.440 back then that the goal was just to get grass 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:42.960 to grow, anything to grow, and reclamation is a good 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.520 thing in theory, but one of the knocks that activists 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.079 like to point out is that what happens on paper 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.520 isn't always what happens in reality. And there's been studies 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.520 that show that the soil is still not the same 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.839 decades later. It's just not the same. You can't make 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:04.520 it what it was right. Um. There is one sterling 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.240 example of what can be done. It's called the Powell 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:13.400 River Project. So the Powell River Project is um in Virginia, 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:18.040 I believe, and it's acres. It's a former um mining site. 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:23.360 UM that was. It's just a leveled mountaintop and some 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.959 care was given to it and now it is basically 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:33.480 a wildlife preserve. UM. It has strawberries and blueberries growing 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.959 on it and sugar maples and cattle is grazing on 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.960 the turf. UM. The wildlife that's come back are screech 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:45.360 and bard owl's, coyote, bear, turkey. UM. They're basically this 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:49.559 this mountain is getting back to nature, right. Yeah. Primarily 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:53.600 financed by the coal industry. Must say to say that, UM, 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:56.560 And I think the deal is if everything went down 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.520 like it's going down at Powell River, there would be 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.400 fewer is shoes. But that's not the case. Unfortunately, that's 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:05.920 just a sterling example of what could be done. Well, 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:10.000 this is what happens when you spend like decades and 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:13.360 lots of money on this one particular site for the 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:15.360 most case. I think you told me that they just 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.000 like throw some grass seed down over the old site. 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:23.199 And that's that, right, And UM, I guess well we 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.280 should probably start now talking about the environmental impact. There's 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:31.360 basically two ways, um, you can you can classify the 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:36.520 impacts that this has three ways. One economic which looks 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:39.480 like it should be good, right, but if you look 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:45.040 at the rates of unemployment in the continuous poverty in Appalachia, UM, 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:49.520 you'll actually see that it's not so great. The economic impact, Um, 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:53.440 the environmental impact, and then the human impact. So let's 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:57.640 talk about environment We're talking about cold slurry, right, you 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.360 have to put that cold slurry somewhere the earthen damn 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:04.880 like you said, UM, at Buffalo Creek in nine collapsed, 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.000 spilled a hundred and thirty two million gallons and killed 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.520 a hundred people, right, that's right, and two thousand in 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:15.120 Kentucky there was another damn break two hundred and fifty 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:20.160 million gallons of sludge flowed into the Tug Fork of 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.880 the Big Sandy River and affected streams and rivers up 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.679 to a hundred miles away. More than a million fish 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.959 and other wildlife died. One of the biggest environmental disasters 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.240 in this country's history, and a lot of people probably 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.880 never heard of it. Yeah, it's apparently the areas of 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:43.480 exposure was twenty times that of the ex m Valdi's disaster. Yeah, 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:45.400 and I believe it was either this one or the 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.640 other one. Um. One of the coal company heads called 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:52.000 it because heavy rains is what eventually calls the damn 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.000 to break on top of the slurry. Called it an 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:57.720 act of God. Yeah, and I believe that's how it 0:13:57.800 --> 0:13:59.959 was left so sort of washing our hands of it. 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.360 It was because the heavy rains, and you know, that's 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:06.800 what happened. So you also mentioned Valley phil Um where 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:09.680 streams have been affected just by being buried, which means 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:13.640 no more stream stat for you. There sixty seven hundred 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:19.520 Valley Phill permits in the United States, six thousand, seven 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:21.960 hundred times this has happened. Actually, I think it's more 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:24.400 than I think it's um. Like in the seventy two 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.480 hundreds because it was between eighty five and two thousand one. 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.000 And we found another one. Chuck, that's um, there's been 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:33.440 about five hundred or so from two thousand one to 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:35.520 two thousand and eight. Yeah, things have really ramped up 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:40.160 here in the last decade. Stars so UM the back 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.480 to the streams as well. Apparently there was this um 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:48.040 this uh study in Science where UM twelve environmental science 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:52.520 sciencests got in Science magazine. Yes, you know, in Science 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:58.120 in January last this past you know, January twelve environmental 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:00.840 sciences got together and did a survey of the literature 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:07.560 of on the environmental impact of mountaintop removal mining and UM, 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.000 the valleys you said, I think something like twelve hundred 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:14.960 miles of valley valley streams and headwaters have been affected. Um. 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:19.600 These these guys sampled water and seventy three of seventy 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.680 eight streams. Um or, they did a study on this 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.400 and found that UM, seventy three of the seventy eight 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:32.320 streams they sampled had deformed fish carrying toxic levels of selenium, 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.120 which is a heavy metal, which is not good. UM. 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.920 And if your fish is deformed, that's not good. In general. Yeah, 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:44.080 the Simpsons, uh episode of Flanky how Many Eyes was three? 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.280 Almost sit four, we would have heard it about that. Um. 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.560 Drinking water is another problem because the cold slurry. These 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:56.360 earthen dams are temporary solution to begin with, um, but 0:15:56.640 --> 0:16:02.000 they can leak and that cold slurry can enter drinking water. Yeah. 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.320 And you know, just to recap real quick though on 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.760 the reclamation that I did find that study from earlier. 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:11.800 The study said that fifteen years after a mountaintop was 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.000 leveled at this one site, trees had still not regrown 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.320 because they just can't make the soil like it used 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.239 to be. And the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:22.680 and that's for the land. When it comes to the streams, 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.040 the Army Corps of Engineers said under oath in their 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.840 testimony um that there is not a successful stream creation 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.680 project in junction with this. Yeah, or they don't know 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:33.720 of one. Yeah. Like basically, all right, we can try 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:36.320 and reform the mountains to a rough assemblance of what 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.000 it once was, but you can't just make new streams 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:40.400 and we haven't found out a way to do that. 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:43.160 It's kind of like um, taking a sword and severing 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:45.760 someone's head and it just kind of balancing it back 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:49.120 on the neck again. It's there, but it's not really 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.280 working any longer. Right, Yeah, So that's some of the 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.600 environment and where you're also talking about, Uh, it's in 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.560 the drinking water. It is um, which kind of is 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:02.520 it's straddles um the environmental and the human impacts. Um. 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:06.600 There are people in this literature that we've been um 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:10.400 researching for this podcast whose families have lived in these 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:13.480 areas for like two hundred and thirty years or so, right, 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.919 Like these are straight up Appalachian folk, right, hillbilies they 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.960 call them, And um, the Hillbillies have been there for 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.040 a while and before I guess it was probably a 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:28.560 very quiet place. But as we've mentioned, with mountaintop removal, mining, 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.399 explosives are a major part of it. So when you 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.239 blow the top off of a mountain, first of all, 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.560 it takes a lot of explosives, but it's very loud. Um. Apparently, 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.080 in two thousand three, sixty seven percent of all explosives 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.680 produced in the US were consumed by the coal industry, 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.479 and in West Virginia alone, that figure led to an 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:51.720 estimated three million pounds of explosives being used a day. 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.120 A day to blow up mountains. People live on these 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.719 mountains still, the same mountains that they're blowing up, so 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:02.119 you've got the noise. Have a very dangerous condition called 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.320 fly rock, yeah, which is exactly what it sounds like. 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:08.800 When you blow a mountain top up. Rock flies everywhere, 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.480 and if somebody's living there, it um can go into 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:14.399 their house and kill them. Yeah, And that was the 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.119 case in uh two thousand four at two thirty in 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:21.000 the morning, bulldoz are operating without a permit. At two 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.320 again to thirty in the morning, because bulldozer was working 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.240 on mine site without a permit, it dislodged a thousand 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.959 pound boulder, rolled two hundred feet down and crushed three 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.639 year old Jeremy Davidson in his bed, who was sleeping 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:36.080 at the time. Yet and the company was fined fifteen 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.920 tho dollars for that, yeah, for gross negligence. Yeah. So 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:42.280 I don't even have a comment on that. We'll just 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:46.840 leave that to the listeners. Um. The have some more 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:49.000 deaths here if you want to be dark for another moment. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.040 In West Virginia, fourteen people drowned in the last three 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:55.840 years because of floods and mud slides, in Kentucky, fifty 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.200 people have been killed and five injured over the last 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:03.760 five years by cold trucks that were illegally overloaded. And 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.159 on the flooding thing, I think they said that in 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.120 this one spot in West Virginia that there were three 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.280 what they call a thousand year flood or a hundred 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:17.479 year flood in ten days, three year floods in ten 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:21.240 days in this one region. That's not supposed to happen. UM. 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.679 And you know you're talking about death's that's just directly 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.840 from drownings, UM injury, that kind of thing. If you 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.359 take all of the public health hazards into account, UM 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:37.040 as a public Health reports UM Journal study did UH 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:41.560 this year I think last year, I'm sorry, UM. Anywhere 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:46.040 between sevent hundred and thirty six and hundred and eighty 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:49.399 nine people die in Appalachia each year as a result 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:51.480 of the coal mining industry there, right, So there is 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:53.359 a lot of death, but there's also a lot of 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:57.720 potential death too. We talked about Buffalo Creek where the 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.720 slurry uh damn, a slurry pond damn broke and killed 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:05.320 a hundred and twenty people. That was a hundred and 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:09.960 thirty million gallons of coal slurry, right killed the people. 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:15.600 There is a place UM called marsh Fork, march Fork 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.240 Elementary School. I saw a documentary on the school. So 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:23.520 march Fork has UM I believe two hundred something students 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:27.439 going there every day. And just above the elementary school 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:31.600 there is a coal slurry pond above it on the 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:36.240 mountain side that holds three billion gallons of coal sludge. Yeah, 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.639 and there's a whole operation. There's a silo three hundred 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.359 feet from the school. Right, So rather than the hundred 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.639 and thirty two million gallons, we're talking about three billion 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:49.320 gallons poised behind an earthen dam right above an elementary school. 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:53.000 So there's a lot of potential for a disaster as well. Right. Yeah, 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:55.360 that's a Massy Energy that's one of the bigger coal 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:57.960 companies in the United States. And you might remember Massey's 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:02.040 name by UM the up for Big Branch mine explosion 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.120 that happened about a year ago from two days ago. 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:10.040 It was April five, UM that that explosion killed twenty 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:15.520 nine miners and leaving three others trapped. UM. So Massy is, 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.280 like you said, big in a traditional mining uh surface 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:24.600 mining and regulation. Actually one of their former executives was 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:30.200 named a Deputy Energy Secretary for fossil fuels a couple 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:34.240 of years back. That's right, President Bush named appointed uh 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:37.240 what was his name? His name was Stanley sue Bileski. 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:41.080 He was appointed in UM two seven December two thousand 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:44.480 seven to the Department of Energy. Yeah, okay, Uh. Back 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:48.439 to March Fork Elementary School. That that actually one of 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.159 the documentaries I saw yesterday was on that school specifically, 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:55.320 and uh, West Virginia activists Bo Webb, he's one of 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.480 the leading activists on this cause. Found of the parents 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:00.840 are saying that they're chill. Dren are coming home from 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:05.720 school with a variety of illnesses like nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:12.199 shortness of breath, wheezing, asthma, um long term effects, kidney damage. 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.399 There's been a lot of kidney damage in that area, 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:18.000 liver damage, spleen failure, bone damage, and cancer of the 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:25.280 digestive digestive track. And um Bo has uh Actually it 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:27.040 wasn't Bo, but one of the other activists there. They 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.399 were trying to raise money in this documentary to build 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.400 a new school not near you know, not threeet away 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:35.080 from a coal mining corporation. And they were trying to 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:38.280 raise it by donating pennies, and they in the documentary 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:42.280 they marched and had a rally at the governor's office 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.280 in West Virginia and it was hardcore. Man, it was 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.080 hard to watch. Like literally, the governor gave him a 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:50.400 minute and he's glad handing and talking to people, and 0:22:50.760 --> 0:22:52.720 you know, they bring out this little girl from the 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:54.800 school and he's like, well, what are you interested in? 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:56.800 And you sure are cute and what do you want 0:22:56.800 --> 0:22:59.679 to be when you grow up? And basically the kids 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:01.560 just like, I don't want to live under a coal 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:04.400 mine and I don't want to be sick anymore. And 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:07.040 they called this guy out, the governor out big time. 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.919 And it was really one of those uncomfortable scenes to 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:14.280 watch when politics gets when it's clear that this guy 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:18.240 has no answer and the big coal has their lobbyists 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:20.800 that are you know, on the on the side of 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:23.879 you know, big coal mining, and it was it was 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:28.320 just very uncomfortable and disturbing to watch, but you should 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:31.240 watch it nonetheless. And that was that was marsh Creek 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:35.360 Elementaries in West Virginia, right, yeah, okay, so um, yeah, 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:38.200 it's in Rock Creek. I see um chuck. One of 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:41.400 the reasons why the governor would have been embarrassed or 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:44.040 um felt awkward is because there is a ton of 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:48.359 money at stake here. That one UM Public Health Reports 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:51.800 Journal study. Yeah that that said you know, between um 0:23:54.119 --> 0:23:57.800