Articles by Jeff Biggers

Coal River Mountain sit-in campaign blooms

As the U.S. Supreme Court continues to hear the Brent Benjamin-Don Blankenship case on the compromise of judicial neutrality from special interest lobbies -- read: Massey Energy's Big Coal grip on West Virginia courts -- five more arrests took place today in a growing campaign to stop mountaintop removal in the Coal River Valley.

If the local and nationwide momentum is any indication of a promised spring and summer campaign of civil disobedience, Coal River Mountain is destined for an extraordinary Appalachian Spring.

Earlier this week, a student campaign at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit-related school in California, won a successful victory in getting their university administration to agree to divest from their stock in Massey Energy.

Today's action took place at 1:30 p.m., at the Massey Energy Edwight mountaintop-removal site on Cherry Pond Mountain. Calling attention to the mine blasting taking place near the Shumate Dam, a mountain valley Class-C dam which holds 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge that sits a few football fields above the Marsh Fork Elementary School, five activists unfurled a banner -- "Stop Blasting, Save the Kids" -- and were cited for trespassing and peacefully escorted by the state police to jail at Pettus, West Virginia. They were released.

Reps reintroduce Clean Water Protection Act, aiming to curb mountaintop-removal mining

It's official: The first shot has been fired in the legislative battle to end the devastating practice of mountaintop-removal coal mining in central Appalachia.

With the quickly growing and extraordinary nationwide support of 117 cosponsors, including 17 members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. John Yarmuth (D) from the embattled coal state of Kentucky joined Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) in reintroducing the Clean Water Protection Act on Wednesday.

The act was introduced originally to challenge the outrageous executive rule change by the Bush administration to redefine "fill material" in the Clean Water Act, which has allowed coal companies to blast hundreds of mountains to bits, dump millions of tons of "excess spoil" into nearby valleys, and bury hundreds of miles of streams. An estimated 1,200 miles of waterways have been destroyed by this extreme mining process.

The end result: Toxic black waters and poisoned aquifers that have denied American citizens in the coalfields the basic right of a glass of clean water.

Urgent letter from Bo Webb on Coal River

Bo Webb, a Vietnam veteran and Coal River Mountain resident in West Virginia, just penned this urgent appeal to President Obama. His family's homeplace, dating back to the 1820s, is being rattled by explosives from mountaintop removal operators today. This letter bears witness to the terror of mountaintop removal on American citizens.

Every American should be forwarded this letter, and then they should go to ilovemountains.org, put in their zip code, and see if their coal-fired plant electricity comes from coal stripped from West Virginia. And then they should contact their member of Congress to support the Clean Water Protection Act.

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Dear Mr. President,

As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground. The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black top soil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The under-story thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root, and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls, and thousands of birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish.

Now it is all gone. It is all dead. I live at the bottom of a mountain top removal coal mining operation in the Peachtree community.

Mr. President Obama, I am writing you because we have simply run out of options. Last week, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court in Richmond, Va. overturned a federal court ruling for greater environmental restrictions on mountaintop removal permits. Dozens of permits now stand to be rushed through. As you know, last December, the EPA under George W. Bush allowed an 11th hour change to the stream buffer zone rule, further unleashing the coal companies to do as they please.

Ashley Judd, Silas House rally against mountaintop removal

While ABC-TV maven Diane Sawyer missed the bigger picture this week in her myopic portrait of Appalachian poverty in "Children of the Mountains," hundreds of Kentuckians converged on Frankfort to celebrate their mountains and call for an end to mountaintop removal. Led by actress Ashley Judd and author Silas House, the Kentuckians rallied behind a "stream-saver" bill slowly passing through the state legislature.

Eastern Kentucky native Judd pulled no punches in her speech on the state capitol steps:

"Make no mistake about it: The coal companies are thriving. Even in this bleak economy, they are thriving. What is dying is our mountains. And they are dying so fast, my friends, so shockingly fast."

Watch a video of Judd speaking, from the Kentucky Herald-Leader:

Bestselling novelist House, a native of the eastern Kentucky coalfields, called on Gov. Steve Beshear (D-Ky.) to have the courage to confront the dirty realities of coal: