My name is Kathy Selvage, and I live in Wise County, Virginia. I am blogging for the first time as part of DevilsTower’s "30 days to save the mountains" series. He has asked me to come and speak a little bit about what’s it like to live in a community where MTR and other radical forms of strip mining occur.
25% of all our land in Wise County has been destroyed by strip-mining and mountaintop removal. So, it’s very difficult to describe but I’ll try to tell you briefly some of the ways it affects our daily lives, families, and our communities here. I'd also like to share some ways you might be able to help.
It is the constant washing of your car to remove the grey refuse that covers your wheels, your tires, and half way up the vehicle.
It is the ghastly smell from hell, a sulfuric kind of smell that can only be described as being churned up from deep in the earth and whirled around in the air and permeates, at times, even your taste buds.
It is the dust that invades your home even though your windows are shut and locked and your view through the window is strangely cloudy. Once, after the coal operator moved to an office offsite, I responded "See, even he can’t stand the dust and the noise". Recently, I heard that the coal operator’s $969,000 home in the green zone (Powell Valley—where they don’t mine) is for sale. The coal operators can’t or won’t live in the communities they destroy. Will we finally be shed of him? I hope we never have another person like him in our midst. Good riddance!
It is what your eyes see when you walk out your door or look out your window—the utter destruction of the earth, the watersheds, your community.
It is what your ears hear: not chirping birds or children laughing, but the sound of sirens, blasts, and bulldozers, that mask the normal sounds of nature; sounds that never cease and makes for many sleepless nights. Coal operators like to work 24 hours a day—but I don’t. Human beings actually like to sleep sometimes.
It is the mental effect it has on a person who enters and remains in a constant state of not peace but great turmoil.
And so, we must find a way to send this message with people wherever they go, so that all American citizens not only know of the loss of our Appalachian Mountains but have a burning desire to put an end to it.
In 2005, a coal company named Glamorgan Properties LLC came to my community in Stephens, Wise County, VA. Our community was a narrow valley sitting between two high lush green mountain ridges. They decapitated and rearranged one of those until it was not recognizable through blasting the mountain away from the coal. Occasionally, rocks and debris are thrown offsite and a rock about the size of a hardhat did go through the roof of a home in our community. What they left behind was heaps of rubble and a large barren hillside. On the face of these steep hillsides lie the boulders, rocks, and soil that are blasted from the top and then shoved down slope. Then, the company left abruptly and filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Texas, leaving their environmental disaster behind. Even recently, after the permit had been revoked and the state was in supervision of the reclamation, the blasting continued. Reclamation is essentially complete today and I still see the barren, rock covered and gullied steep slopes spray painted with an icky color green that will probably provide some small degree of vegetation for some small degree of time but I have no degree of confidence that it will someday transform itself into a useful area because I do not believe we can replace mountains nor restore streambeds that have been damaged beyond repair. The most recent development is the land along with other tracts is up for public auction on November 19, 2007. I wonder who would be foolish enough to buy this property.
Perhaps our local governing body because both parties there full endorse the new coal fired power plant (proposed) and I wonder will environmental liabilities fall on the backs of the local tax payers?
Someday, I may be forced to leave because my mind and my eyes can no longer stand to look at the disaster I see every day.
Virtual flyover of Wise County, VA:
The County where I live is the one covered in red.
We are in this fight with all we have, but we need your help.
Please, call your Representatives and ask them to co-sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169).
This is an important bill that will help slow down the destruction of our community.
To learn more about what we are doing on a grassroots level in Virginia, please visit WiseEnergyVA.org, as well as the website for the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS)