Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal

Larry Bush: The Gathering Storm

larry Bush The Gathering Storm Now the rich, they get richer, and the poor mine the coal And the lights must keep burning the cities we’re told But where will we turn to when the boom turns to bust And the once-living mountains turn to rockpiles and dust —Anne Shelby, “All That We Have” The road over Black Mountain winds about like a coiled snake, poised to strike at any moment. At 4,145 feet above sea level, Black Mountain is one of Appalachia’s highest mountains. The view from crooked Highway 160 is nothing less than breathtaking on this July evening as a storm front moves in on over the Cumberland Plateau in Harlan County, Kentucky. The seemingly endless acres of trees are dark green beneath the graying sky, a pristine forest that seems untouched by humanity. From up here this looks like a wild, primal land. After dozens of stomach-churning curves, a small sign announces that the Virginia state line has been crossed. And suddenly , everything changes. Now there is a moonscape below, a barren wasteland of dirt and exposed rocks and yellow bulldozers. From near the summit of Black Mountain can be seen a mountaintop removal site that stretches itself brazenly above the town of Appalachia, Virginia, and it looks like a scar on the face of the earth. The Kentucky side of Black Mountain was saved, thanks to the public outcry that followed when it became known that a coal company was seeking a permit for mountaintop removal mining on the Commonwealth’s highest peak.1 Things are different on the Virginia side. There the mountain larry Bush, Appalachia, virginia. Photo by Silas house. lARRy BuSh  is mostly owned by Penn Virginia, a huge corporation based in Philadelphia that routinely leases out land to coal companies. The mineral rights to these border-straddling mountains were bought up by such corporations as far back as the 1890s. Where once there was a mountain here in Virginia, now there is a deep, dead hole. Even far past the mine, coal dust and dirt cover the huge kudzu leaves that crowd close to the road. The kudzu has crept onto the houses and trailers, too, as if this place is being devoured by two nonnatives: a plant from Japan and corporations from a place that locals call “Off,” a land whose inhabitants don’t have to see the damage they’re doing, or just don’t care. The road rolls on, through the little community of Inman, the site of one of the most tragic chapters in the history of mountaintop removal. It was here on August 20, 2004, at 2:31 a.m., that a boulder weighing half a ton crashed through the side of a double-wide trailer and two interior walls and rolled over the bed of three-year-old Jeremy Davidson, killing him. The rock went on to rip through two more interior walls and finally came to rest against his older brother Zack’s bed. The boulder had been dislodged by a bulldozer that had been operating illegally to widen a road for eighteen -wheel coal trucks on a mine site above the family’s house.2 Today, the empty lot beside the Looney Creek Memorial Baptist Church, where the Davidsons’ double-wide used to sit, is being overtaken by weeds and kudzu. It is haunted by silence on this Sunday, even though most days people in Inman never get a moment’s peace because of the constant roar of machinery that is slowly eating away the ridge above. The eerie silence is punctuated by a burned-out trailer home, an abandoned tricycle in the ditch, and a young woman—her shoulders tired, her face hollow—walking down the road with a baby on her hip. She considers the passing car and then eyes the sky, watching for rain. The gathering storm has moved on to unleash itself elsewhere for the moment, leaving behind the gray clouds that are a disconcerting mix with the humidity seeping out of the woods. SOmEthIng’S RISIng  After a turn onto the Virginia Coal Heritage Highway, suddenly there is the town of Appalachia. Past the North Fork of the Powell River, Appalachia’s downtown spreads itself out over a couple of gentle slopes, divided by the railroad that was once the lifeblood of the town. Appalachia used to be a boom town, back...