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This article originally provided by The Herald-Dispatch
March 17, 2007
Protesters arrested at Capitol
Group is opposed to construction of a coal silo near a Raleigh County elementary school
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Police arrested 13 protesters Friday afternoon after they invaded Gov. Joe Manchin’s reception area at the Capitol to protest Massey Energy’s plan to build a coal silo near a Raleigh County elementary school.
The demonstrators were handcuffed and carried to paddy wagons after police say they refused orders to clear a security area in the back of the governor’s reception area. All 13 were charged with obstructing an officer.
Ed Wiley, a grandfather who walked 455 miles from his home in Raleigh County to Washington, D.C., last fall to draw attention to pollution near Marsh Fork Elementary School, was among those arrested.
Also arrested were Hillary Anne Hosta, 34, of Naoma; Larry L. Gibson, 61, of Dawes; Michael Morrison, 48, of Barboursville; Wendy Ross, 56, of Charleston; Charles Price, 49, of Charleston; Abram G. Racin, 24, of Morgantown; Abraham Mwahra, 26, of Huntington; Franklin D. Young, 61, of Ripley; Matthew Christian Stiefel, 21, of Morgantown; Colin W. Cascia, 22, of Philadelphia; Charles Edward Nelson, 50, of Glen Daniel; and Sarah Melissa Kidder, 24, of Fayetteville.
Several protesters refused to walk, and were carried and dragged by state and Capitol police.
“I was surprised,” said Kim Teplitzky, a demonstrator who was not among those arrested. She remained in the Capitol after the arrests.
A small crowd of protesters surrounded police as they arrested demonstrators, filming the arrests on camcorders and threatening to file charges of police brutality.
Capitol police said the arrested demonstrators were taken to Kanawha County Magistrate Court in downtown Charleston.
About 50 protesters took their fight to the Capitol on Friday morning, vowing not to leave until Manchin agreed to sign a pledge to relocate the elementary school.
Accompanied by musicians and carrying a cardboard replica of the school, they marched into the governor’s outer office following a midmorning rally in the Capitol Rotunda.
Minutes before the arrests, Manchin Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Martin read a statement from the governor to the crowd. The statement said Manchin will encourage the Raleigh County school board to put the decision of building a new school at Marsh Fork to a countywide vote, but stressed that decision is out of the governor’s hands.
“Before the state can get involved in issues such as whether a school should be moved or if a new school should be built, a decision must first be made at the local level,” Martin read.
During occasionally tense exchanges earlier in the day, Martin tried to persuade the protesters to stop chanting and singing.
At one point, Wiley shouted at Martin, “Enough of this whispering in my ear, telling me to settle this down. We’ll raise the roof off the dang place,” which was met by cheers from the protesters.
Many of the protesters were from West Virginia’s southern coalfields but a substantial number were college students, who said they were from Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Maine. Others came from colleges throughout West Virginia.
The protest appeared organized at least in part by a group called Mountain Justice Summer, which on its Web site bills this week as “Mountain Justice Spring Break” in Charleston.
After the arrests, some protesters lingered at the Capitol until around 5 p.m., when they left without incident.
The protest follows Tuesday’s ruling by the state Surface Mine Board that reversed the rejection of a permit for the silo.
Massey Energy Co. subsidiary Goals Coal Co. is seeking a second storage silo for its preparation plant next door to Marsh Fork. Manchin’s Department of Environmental Protection filed an appeal Thursday challenging the mine board’s ruling.
The DEP initially issued a permit for the 168-foot-tall silo but revoked it in July 2005, saying a Massey engineer had enlarged the submitted map’s permit boundary from previously approved permits. Goals Coal then submitted a new application, which was rejected last year because federal and state laws prohibit new mining operations within 300 feet of a school.
In addition to closing the school, the group wants to shut down Goals Coal’s preparation plant and a 1,849-acre mountaintop removal mine site and a 2.8 billion-gallon coal sludge dam about 400 yards from the school.
Don Blankenship, Richmond, Va.-based Massey’s chief executive officer, said the second silo would enable the company to make additional environmental improvements and cut down the amount of coal dust at the site.
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