October authors tour helps grow momentum to stop mountaintop removal

    As some of their colleagues had done in April, a group of 17 writers, including several of the state’s foremost Appalachian historians and scholars, participated in KFTC’s two-day mountaintop removal tour October 20-21.

    The group visited the home of Daymon and Betty Morgan in Leslie County, flew over mining sites in Perry County, listened to citizens describe living with coal companies as neighbors, and visited the Eco-Village at Berea College where they learned of projects to create housing and lifestyles that dramatically reduce the use of energy.

    In the process they saw a healthy forest, active mining sites and reclaimed areas.

    Several of the authors had a particular interest in the reclaimed areas visited.

    Wildlife biologist Tom Barnes noted the habitat destruction and introduction of exotic species represented by hundreds of acres of reclaimed land.

    “The plant community is entirely invasive,” he pointed out, calling the reclaimed land “a permanent alteration to the environment.”

    While some compared reclaimed land to a desert, Chris Holbrook later noted, “At least a desert is a viable ecosystem.”

    This was in great contrast to the healthy forest Daymon Morgan had just shown the group, pointing out the great diversity of plants and describing the medicinal and culinary uses of many of them.

    Morgan’s home and the 100 acres he owns are threatened by mining operations that are coming increasingly closer to his property. His house already has been damaged by blasting, and a new operation is planned that will come within  a few feet of his property line.

    “I hate seeing what I love being destroyed,” said Morgan who grew up in an adjacent holler that has been destroyed by mining.

    As occurs with most people who have never done so before, flying over the coalfields had a major impact on the authors. So did hearing the stories of about a dozen coalfields residents who shared the lives and experiences dealing with the destruction of their homes, health, communities and local economies at the hands of the coal industry.

    “Coal may be a natural resource but the methods used to extract that resource are anything but natural,” Appalachian historian John Hennen reflected later. Coalfield residents’ “life, their liberty, their pursuit of happiness is under assault by the violent methods that are used to extract this natural resource. Just as serious is the violence that is done to the spirit.”

    “What we saw yesterday is a tragedy. My land is dying,” added Ron Eller, also an Appalachian historian and scholar.

    He recalled hearing Harry Caudill speak about strip mining and what needed to be done in 1968. “There was very little difference from what I remember hearing in 1968” and what he had just seen and heard, Eller said. “That’s the tragedy. We face not just the same problems today in the mountains, but believe me they’re worse.”

    “It scared the hell out of me,” added Chris Holbrook when asked about it later.

    While endorsing a statement issued by Kentucky writers after a similar tour in April, the recent tour members wrote their own statement calling for an end to all strip mining. They noted the failure of laws designed to protect coalfield residents and minimize environmental destruction.

    “You have to stop it because you can’t regulate it,” said Berry. “You can’t regulate an abomination.”

An evening at Joseph-Beth

    The authors concluded their tour with a reception and dinner at the Joseph-Beth Café hosted by KFTC and participants from the April authors tour.

    Afterwards, they presented a public program to a large audience that packed the bookstore. Two dozen authors from both tours shared their statements and reflections, and called for action.

    They also introduced their new book, Missing Mountains, that grew out of a desire by the April tour authors to do something concrete to let a broader audience know what’s going on in the coalfields. About 120 copies of the book were sold that evening.

    The authors emphasized to the central Kentucky audience that the problem is not an eastern Kentucky or Appalachian problem.

    “Because I have electric lines running to my house, I am part of what’s happening in eastern Kentucky,” said Jordan Fisher Smith who came from northern California. “What I’ve seen has chilled me.

    “When I got up in an airplane and flew over these places, what I saw was a tragedy of a kind of dimension I had not even imagined,” Fisher Smith added.

    “It’s not just an eastern Kentucky problem,” added Eller. “What we’re doing in eastern Kentucky is what our own future will look like in much of the rest of the country if we continue to develop it without care for our children, without care for what the land is going to look like.”

    Wendell Berry reminded the Joseph-Beth audience that everyone needs to be a part of the solution.

    “The people of the mountains cannot correct this by themselves, and shouldn’t be expected to,” Berry said. “They need the help of those who are included in their economy and involved in their fate. That’s us. Writers and readers. Consumers. The people downstream and those far away sometimes who are benefiting from the ruin of a whole region. We’ve all got to say that we won’t stand for it any longer.”