My name is Kathy Selvage, and I live in Wise County, Virginia. As part of DevilsTower’s "30 days" series, I’d like to speak about what’s it like to live in a community where mountaintop removal occurs. 25% of all our land in Wise Co. has been destroyed by strip-mining and mountaintop removal. I hope you’ll also read part one of this account "Butterflies to Caterpillars".
This story is about a woman of deep faith and great strength (a mountain of a woman) - my mother.
She is 90 years old and has spent more years of her life getting to know this Lord than not. He has been the guiding force in my mother’s life and principles. She has advocated and taught those principles to others for a large portion of her life.
In the wintertime, she sits in a chair by the window in the early morning, curtains pushed back, sunlight perhaps shining through, with her Bible and her coffee
From springtime until late fall, it has been her practice to enjoy that "morning with the Lord" out on her porch, alone. Birds chirping in the trees or at a nearby feeder were practically the only background sounds she heard. She’d sip and continue her journey to get to know this Lord. When she lifted her eyes perhaps to ponder what she had just read, she could see and hear His creation. She could see Him in every plant, tree, flower, and even in the tiniest of creatures. And it was good.
Now, though, she has been robbed of that! She no longer enjoys that outdoor "morning with the Lord." It has been taken from her. She no longer spends her morning on the front porch with her Bible and her coffee. The smell in the air is not pleasant. The sound of the trucks, bulldozers, and drills preparing for the next blast, the sirens, the blasts themselves cover up the sound of the birds chirping. But the most pain comes when she looks across the way now, and sees the destruction of God’s creation.
She wonders what Bible they read.
Mom and I live in Stephens, a community just two miles outside the Town of Wise. Glamorgan Properties, LLC came to their community to mine and then filed for bankruptcy in Texas in May, 2006. The site remained a desolate wasteland in September, 2007 and with reclamation moving toward completion, it is no testiment to "good reclamation". Mountains simply cannot be put back.
"I often wonder by what miracle this land and this mountain could be restored. I do not believe it can be. It’s just another one gone--gone forever. If the new coal-fired power plant in Wise County is built, I know that many more of the beautiful lush mountains will give way to heaps of rubble in order to supply the fuel for the plant."
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)
Kathy Selvage 2007