West Virginia

Allen Johnson rallies Christians to fight against mountaintop-removal mining

Allen Johnson. As its not-at-all euphemistic name would indicate, mountaintop-removal mining makes no effort to disguise its impact. Coal-mining companies brazenly invade Appalachian communities, blow the tops off mountains, send massive coal trucks careening up and down narrow roads, spew coal dust into the air and mining waste into the water, and terrorize residents who […]

A project on the effects of coal mining in Appalachia

Photographs and oral histories from Coal Hollow -- a project on the effects of coal mining on poor Appalachians in West Virginia -- will be on display at the Southeast Museum of Photography on the Daytona Beach campus of the Daytona Beach Community College from August 31 - October 29.

Whether or not you make it down to Florida, check out the book and DVD. The kind of poverty that wouldn't be out of place in the most desolate developing nations exists in the hills of our own American Southeast, and very few people seem to give a damn. Every American citizen should have to look these people in the eye.

In coal country, mining is destroying cemeteries and faith

James Bowe, a lifelong resident of Whitesville, W.Va., knows the mountains around his home better than he knows himself. He’s seen friends and family buried there, and has devoted countless hours to protecting his loved ones’ resting places and the Indian burial grounds that stand alongside them. So when Bowe pulled up on his four-wheeler […]

Mountaintop-removal mining is devastating Appalachia, but residents are fighting back

This article was originally published in Orion Magazine. Not since the glaciers pushed toward these ridgelines a million years ago have the Appalachian Mountains been as threatened as they are today. But the coal-extraction process decimating this landscape, known as mountaintop removal, has generated little press beyond the region. A mountaintop no more.Photo: Vivian Stockman/SouthWings.The […]

The faces and voices of West Virginians battered by mountaintop removal

These photographs were originally published in Orion Magazine. In May 2005, photographer Antrim Caskey encountered Maria Gunnoe in Manhattan. Gunnoe had come to protest the practice of mountaintop-removal mining at a Massey Energy shareholders meeting. Two days later, Caskey left for the Cumberland Plateau, where she made these images. “People are scared,” Caskey says. “I’d […]

West Virginia activist Julia Bonds takes on mountaintop-removal mining

The ancient mountains of Appalachia are corrugated with deep, narrow valleys, some of them no wider than a football field. Coal-mining families, who have lived in these valleys for generations, are now being driven out of their homes by the latest innovation of the very industry that has sustained them for so many years. That […]

Order in the Court

With a staunchly anti-environmental White House and a Republican-dominated Congress, environmentalists are turning to the third branch of government to fight their cause. Happily, the courts have presented a relatively safe haven for greens, upholding strict clean air standards the Bush administration sought to water down, blocking oil and gas exploration in the West, limiting […]

Chamber of Horrors

You’d think the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t have much free time on its hands these days, what with the raging debate over permanent normal trade relations for China. But the industry-friendly group recently managed to cobble together a charming volume called The Environmentalists’ Little Green Book, a compendium of off-the-wall quotes and blistering bon […]

Fire on the Mountain

Enviros in Washington are apoplectic over what they fear will be a pre-Earth Day cave-in by the Clinton administration over mountaintop-removal mining in West Virginia. This used to be a mountain. Photo: David Miller, www.mountaintopmining.org. Readers may recall this battle from last year’s appropriations season, when powerful Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) introduced a rider that […]