Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice

5. "It's Just a Part of Who I Am": Maria Lambert and the Movement for Clean Water in Prenter

chapter 5 “It’s Just a Part of Who I Am” Maria Lambert and the Movement for Clean Water in Prenter Maria Lambert enjoying a warm spring day in Boone County, West Virginia. Photo by the author. Maria Lambert is a lifelong resident of the community of Prenter in Boone County, West Virginia. Born in 1958, Maria lived most of her life in Prenter “Main Camp,” which is one of the former coal camps situated in Prenter Hollow. In 2000, she and her family moved a few miles down the road to a piece of family land in Sand Lick, another area of Prenter, where they had hoped to live in peace. This vision was shattered when they—like the residents of Rawl—learned that they and their neighbors had unwittingly been drinking, cooking with, and bathing in well water that was contaminated with coal waste from an underground slurry injection site. For many years, residents in Prenter—including Maria and her family—suffered high rates of various rare illnesses. In 2008, some of the residents realized that the health issues in their community could be tied to the water problems and began to organize. Since the first community meeting, Maria has been at the forefront of the struggle for water justice in her community. I conducted this interview with Maria in July of 2008. From 2008 to 2009, she was also one of the participants in the Photovoice project I organized in Southern West Virginia, and a few of her photostories appear in this chapter. “It’s Not Just Us—It’s the Whole Community” We moved down here in 2000. My uncle had just passed away and he left my father the property. So when we moved down here, we thought that the kids—our grandkids—would be able to play in the creek. I think I had it in my mind that this is where I wanted to grow old and relax with my grandchildren , and when my husband retired we could just travel and, you know, not worry about anything. Because at that time, I didn’t have anything in my head that anything was going to go wrong—I just knew that this was hid away and it was quiet and peaceful and pretty, a beautiful place. We had well water, so [we thought] we didn’t have to worry about having dirty water. We knew that they were mining back up there in the hollow, but it just didn’t seem to be a bad thing, you know, because it had always been kind of clean and everything here. And Mommy started noticing that—she has a nose for everything—she noticed that her water didn’t seem right, and she really hated using it. She had to clean her coffee pots really often, and she would have to go and buy new coffee pots often because they’d kind of quit working. So last fall, I don’t know where they saw the flyer at, but somehow [my parents] found a flyer that said they were having a water meeting. And [my mom] said, “Maria, I really think that some of us needs to go to this meeting, because there’s definitely something wrong with our water. It’s not right, something is not right.” So, she and my dad and I, we went to the water meeting. maria lambert and the movement for clean water 71 Everybody was showing [samples of] their water. Different people stood up and told about their water and told about what they believed was happening , and told about the different illnesses—the brain tumors, the gallbladder problems, stomach problems, children’s teeth falling out, and all of these things. . . . And it’s like a light bulb going off all here, there, yonder, everywhere. And it’s like my whole life flashing before my eyes, because my children had lost their teeth, my parents had had cancer, we’d had our gallbladders removed, and all of these things was, it’s just like, oh no, it’s not just us—it’s the whole community, and we’re not even blood related. There was Jennifer Massey, who had lost her brother to a brain tumor; Kathy Weikle who had a pituitary tumor; Terry Keith who has the triplets and another grandchild who has to bathe in the water, and they were having a rash and everything...