To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia (review)

Nothing can be more damaging to the environment than surface coal mining. The topsoil is scraped away to reveal coal veins underneath, making the land infertile and worthless. Often, reclamation of the land does not occur or is inadequate. Runoff and erosion poisons the underground water table or kills off streams through siltation. Blasting coal veins sends "flyrock" into the sky, creating a hazard. Bulldozers sometimes push unwanted rock and debris (overburden) off the site onto a neighbor's land. People claim that surface mining companies destroyed their private property. And, some argue strongly, surface coal mining has a negative and lasting impact on an area's economy and culture.

Chad Montrie examines the efforts of people affected by surface coal mining in Appalachia in the post-World War II era to control or ban surface coal mining altogether: to end what they saw was the destruction of nature, community, and their legal rights to private property. He concentrates on the anti-surface mining forces in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Montrie provides background information on the social and natural history of the region. He outlines the emergence of popular opposition to surface coal mining in Ohio and Pennsylvania and the efforts to push through strip mining legislation in Kentucky and West Virginia. He also covers the increasing support in the 1960s for a total ban on surface coal mining.

Montrie concludes his study by examining the success of anti- surface mining advocates to push through federal legislation. In 1974 and 1975, federal legislation was vetoed by President Gerald Ford. But in 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. It was a victory some environmental groups believed was spoiled by compromise. These groups argued that the federal-state partnership was too weak to effectively monitor and control strip mining operations. Montrie also gives some attention to the efforts of strip mining opposition groups in Tennessee. The push for regulation or an outright ban of surface mining in Tennessee began later than that of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, because an opposition force was slow to develop in that state.

Anti-surface mining forces utilized different tactics to achieve their goals. Their efforts focused mainly on creating meaningful legislation and actual enforcement. Sometimes, when legal measures failed, some local residents used the American tradition of protest—blocking access to land, shooting at mine workers, and destroying private property. Montrie points out that most of the time the sanctity of private property was respected by both sides in the dispute. Violence was rare during anti-surface mining campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. But it was an option used when people believed that legal measures were being subverted by the special interests of surface coal mine owners.

The villain throughout the book is, of course, the surface mine owners. Their "greed and their lack of concern for the environment" (p. 46) is unwavering. The heroes are more elusive: politicians and legislators, union groups, and other supporters of regulation or "abolition" of strip mining who were less committed to the campaign. Montrie argues that it was the grassroots activists, farmers who lost their land to strip mining or local merchants who lost their businesses, who remained steadfast in their efforts to control, or stop, surface mining.

Although Montrie portrays the opposition to surface coal mining as a grassroots movement, it was aided by people outside the area, and even the region. Groups such as the National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Ohio Farm Bureau, Women's Clubs, Garden Clubs, various sportsmen's organizations, and even the United Mine Workers Union lent their support to the campaign. And area and regional organizations such as Save Our...