Rick Handshoe

Floyd County, KY

    For about two years we’ve been having, when the mines went in above me, the coal company haul down past my house. We’ve gotten extreme dust, fast moving coal trucks, blasting damaging to our property, dust damaging our property. The coal trucks are extremely hazardous. We’ve grouped together as a neighborhood trying to solve some of the problems. We have gotten a little help, but we are waiting to see if that is going to fix the problem. They’ve agreed to do some things, but we’ve yet to see that. We have worked with the coal company and that didn’t work, so we had to go to the state and file complaints on blasting, water, destroying the stream, pollution. We’ve called vehicle enforcement about fast driving trucks, coal falling off, breaking people’s windows. The dust is extremely bad, you can’t use your porch. You cannot raise a garden the way it is. We’re hoping it is going to get better, but we’re yet to see that.

    It was quiet. Now, the trucks start at two o’clock in the morning and they don’t quit until way after eleven o’clock or later. We didn’t have the dust problem or the noise and the danger on the roads from coal trucks. It was a clean community.  Now it is nasty, dusty and muddy.  They’re destroying our roads. You can’t keep your car clean. Before it was just a quiet community. They’re destroying the mountains. The scenery is gone. The water especially has been really affected- the streams.  Letting this coal water out- sludge- is filling up the streams. It’s also draining out the water. I’ve seen a reduction in the amount of water coming out of the streams from when I was a little boy. It’s probably half of what it was when I was a little boy. No fish. Even rust colored, the creek is rust colored in spots. At times it runs gray. And that’s been the problem we’ve had with the water part.

    On the short halls where they are going from my house to the tipple,  approximately eight miles at the most, those trucks load extremely heavy because vehicle enforcement.  They don’t have to get out on the four-lane. But I am seeing it on the four-lane now. They are tarped, but coal is falling out from under the tarp because they are so heaped up- breaking people’s windows, coal all over the road. When you get behind a truck, you have to get way back, because it sand-blasts your vehicle.  At times it’s worse, the mud from these coal trucks will just cover you up when you meet them. And they take more then their fair share of the road.  It’s just extremely dangerous.  I’ve seen them just lately here coal just falling off every side of the truck, but it’s tarped.

    We’ve all got together and filed against a permit they have. If we would have known how we were going to be treated, we would have filed against the original permit. We didn’t know this was going to happen until now. We’ve contacted the state and we’ve had them bring things in to check for blasting. Everybody has grouped together.  They just got fed-up with what is going on, you can’t use your porch. You can’t plant your garden without having dirt and dust on it.

    They need more help from the state to stop this from happening. They shouldn’t be able to put this in the water and destroy the streams. We don’t get a whole lot of help from them. They come out, as soon as they come out, the coal trucks of course slow down, the loads go down, and when they leave it goes back to like it was before. I’ve took a lot of pictures to show the state this happens every day, not just one day a week.

    It needs to be below the bed level, to keep this from all falling off. They all should be tarped, because a lot of this coal is fine coal and even though it’s below the bed level it still blows out onto our cars and onto our community.  The coal company has to be made to not load these things over. That is one thing I’d like to see. They shouldn’t be able to load it to where it’s falling off the truck.