This letter to the editor originally provided by The Herald-Dispatch

November 18, 2008

Julian Martin: Coal industry can't be trusted to be responsible

Perhaps D. Steven Walker, in his op-ed column of Nov. 14, was looking into a mirror when he called "extremists" those of us who oppose the massive destruction of our mountains. For what could be more extreme than blasting the mountains away, filling in the valleys with the leftover waste, injecting coal waste sludge into the water table, forever destroying wildlife habitat and eliminating any future renewable hardwood timber industry and its permanent jobs? And what could be more extreme than building a coal waste sludge pond above a grade school?

Walker rolls out "clean coal," the ultimate oxymoron, and includes "environmental opportunities" as one of its benefits. What could he possibly be talking about? What opportunities are in store for the increased mountaintop removal that will be made possible by irresponsibly dumping gases from burning coal into our earth, into our water table? There is no way to know what horrible side effects will appear after pumping that waste material into the ground. It is the madness of "we can't continue to pollute the air and survive, so let's pollute the earth." That's the ticket.

The West Virginia Council of Churches falls into Walker's definition of "state and national extremist groups." On Sept. 11, 2007, it issued a statement on mountaintop removal coal mining. These state religious leaders proclaimed that, "Mountaintop removal mining blasts the tops from our mountains and obliterates healthy streams, filling them with waste material. The damage done is permanent and irreplaceable. Once the top of the mountain is removed, it cannot be put back. The streams cannot be replaced, and the native hardwood forests and diverse understory do not grow back. The animals, birds, and people are deprived of the welcoming environment that once nurtured their minds, bodies, and spirits and provided food, water and shelter for them."

Walker says the way to sustain West Virginia's economy is to "responsibly grow the coal industry." He has been forced by the terrible coal industry reputation of death and destruction to add the qualifying word "responsible." This is obviously an admission that they haven't been mining coal responsibly in the past. And from what I see, that past comes right up to this very day. Just how do you "responsibly" decapitate mountains and bury a thousand miles of streams?

So is the coal industry irresponsibly extreme or extremely irresponsible?

Julian Martin is a resident of Charleston.