here is my final copy of my thesis. yeah.
Erin Stanforth
The United States Government has stated time and time again that we are not a nation that discriminates based on race, class or socioeconomic status. If you ask people living in areas of the country affected by Mountaintop removal or Hurricane Katrina, they would severely disagree. Although both the Ohio River Valley area and the Gulf Coast region and the events that have recently affected them differ greatly, there are also many similarities. Governmental funding and treatment, specifically FEMA, of the people who live in both of these areas is extremely similar, possibly based upon race, class or socioeconomic status. Water contamination has also been an immense factor in both areas of the country leading to possible thoughts of more sustainable ways of clean-up which is addressed within the Millennium Goals established in Agenda 21.
Chapter I: an overview
Mountaintop removal, as defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal. Mountaintop removal can involve removing 500 feet or more at the summit to get to the buried seams of coal. The earth from the mountaintop is then dumped in the neighboring valleys. (www.appvoices.org) Legally, this is allowed. There is no law against mountaintop removal, nor is there a law against putting sludge or “fill” into the streams and rivers that people of Appalachia drink from. In 1977, the Clean Water Act was passed not allowing strip miners to dump the “fill” from the tops of the mountains into the valleys down below. Recently, in 2002, the term “fill” no longer applied to the remains from the tops of mountains and the strip miners were allowed to dump the waste into the streams and rivers of the valleys below. “West Virginia lies at the geographical center of this mountain area, (Appalachia), and for many years it has been the nation’s largest coal-producing state. At the peak of production the industry employed in excess of 125,000 miners. These workers and their families made up a population of 750,000 people who huddled in he grimy mining camps, and lived in company owned houses, which were little better than cow stables in many camps. These deplorable living conditions, starvation, wages, illegal, oppressive and often dishonest practices of many of the early coal operators frequently brought on bloody uprisings that bordered on civil war,” (Lee ix). The people who live in these areas of Appalachia have long been oppressed, since coal was first discovered as a possible fuel. With the rise of industrialism, coal became a hot commodity. There was money to be made and jobs to be had. Once the process of mountaintop removal was discovered to be more efficient than mining and less costly to the payroll, the number of jobs began to rapidly decrease.
These people of Appalachia are mainly members of the working class of society. Most of them have lived in their homes for their entire lives and now, because of the coal industry and lack of public knowledge, are being forced to either sell their homes to a company or leave their homes because there is no hope to continue to live in a valley surrounded by coal and coal dust. If a person continues to live in a house that is within a community continually surrounded by coal and coal dust, one could acquire many different health problems because a very distinct cause of respiratory problems within adults today is air pollution, not to mention the affect air pollution has on children. For example, in Laurel Creek, West Virginia “it's hard to say which problem has caused the most concern among the residents of Laurel Creek, like Johnnie Bailey and Esau Canterbury. Was it the rocks--some more than three-feet high--that sailed off the mine site, the dozens of dead fish in the stream, the silt runoff that filled in one end of Laurel Lake, the half-mile wide coal sludge lake looming over the valley, the well water that turned orange, the loss of access to the mountain land, or the mere sight of their mountains being chopped off?” (www.wvcoalfieds.com) If a person was faced with environmental problems such as those, one would think that the United States Government would intervene, but unfortunately that is not the case. An estimated one million acres of mountains within West Virginia have been strip mined for the sake of mountaintop removal from 1939 to 2005. An estimate of over 100,000,000 board feet of new growth timber is lost every year to mountaintop removal strip mining (www.ohvec.org). Every year there is more pollution emitted into the atmosphere in and around Appalachia, more natural resources are torn down by the process of mountaintop removal and more people who live in and around Appalachia are put out of a job and the monetary value of their house is lowered dramatically.
Environmental degradation is a major factor threatening West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia today. West Virginia is one of the most biodiverse areas in the country. There are species of animals and wildlife that are not prevalent anywhere else in the country. Not only is the environment affected, but communities within these states are also affected by the removal of the earth from the actual mountains. The environment within Appalchia as well as the communities that weave the colorful quilt that is Appalachia is directly affected by the removal of coal from the tops of those mountains. The process of mountaintop removal not only involves taking tops off of mountains, it also involves extracting and processing coal, which leads to cleaning the coal, adding further waste to the site. Coal washing can, often times, end up in large ponds of toxic waste or slurry that contains antimony, beryllium, cadmium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, lead, manganese, nickel, selenium, arsenic and mercury (www.appvoices.org). Coal processing plants can emit sulfur dioxide, causing environmental degradation; nitrogen oxide, which also causes environmental degradation such as acid rain, but can be liable for the influx in the cases of asthma amongst our children today and ozone, which is also responsible for the influx of asthma in the population of children but can also be attributed to the degradation of the agricultural system within areas that are primarily exposed to high levels of ozone (www.appvoices.org). The Clean Air Act established in 1963 was established to regulate emissions that occurred within the atmosphere, specifically the 15 or more chemicals that are emitted through pollution as a direct result of mountaintop removal. A man by the name Stewart Burns Shirley wrote a dissertation on mountaintop removal and the affects of mountaintop removal on local economies, local environment and the people of West Virginia. When Mr. Shirley took a trip to West Virginia to see first hand the environmental, physical and emotional damages directly related to mountaintop removal, he made these observations: “Today the town has a consistent film of dust all over the entire area. While (Mary) Miller and (Pauline) Canterberry, the author accompanied them on a tour of their town. The pair showed the author the extent of the dust problem in Sylvester. The author used a camcorder and camera to document the day. The first home Miller and Canterberry visited was out of sight of the preparation plant. At first glance, dust could not be discerned, but upon further inspection a definitive film of coal dirt blanketed the home's back porch furniture. Even furniture that had been covered had coal dirt underneath. The owner of the home stated that she had paid men to come with a power hose and spray down the entire house a few weeks before our visit. She showed the author where the coal dust had already gathered on the home. All of the women stated that the coal dust problem, while not as bad as it had been before the lawsuit, still there was a problem. All were concerned about the possible health hazards the coal dust presented （Shirley 86）.
Hurricane Katrina cut through the Gulf Coast like scissors to a piece of tissue paper on August 29, 2005. New Orleans was not hit head on by the hurricane, but the breaching of the levees surrounding the city caused a massive flooding of the city that lasted for more than a week. People living in southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi were told to evacuate three days before the hurricane was supposed to hit, but considering the fact that over 50,000 people in New Orleans alone do not have means of transportation to leave the city, there was no way for them to get out. New Orleans is a predominately black city with around a 35% unemployment rate amongst African-Americans as opposed to 11% amongst whites. The area of the city that was hit the hardest by the hurricane was St. Bernard Parish, an area of the city that is 90% black. Almost the entire area was destroyed immediately upon the flooding from the breaching of the levees. Therein lays the question of “why was the federal government not assisting the people of the Gulf Coast?” According to the office of House leader Nancy Pelosi, “the number of national guard and reservists that have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 is 416, 990,” (www.speaker.gov). These figures are according to today’s numbers within the military; there are 34,593 people in the active military and 350,000 people in the national guard currently (www.military.com). There is something to consider when speaking of New Orleans specifically; New Orleans is completely surrounded by water. Lake Pontchartrain and the Intracoastal waterway flows to the west, the Mississippi River flows to the north, 17th street canal, London canal and the industrial canal flow all over the city, and the Gulf of Mexico flows to the south. If there was ever a city that needed an efficient levee system, New Orleans was it.
When the storm hit the Gulf Coast, it was around 3am on August 29, 2005. Both Louisiana and Mississippi were declared states of emergency by their governors two to three days before the storm made impact; interestingly enough, there was no immediate federal response from the government. FEMA, federal emergency management agency, was directed to take care of the Gulf Coast after the storm had hit. Before Katrina hit, Bush had demoted FEMA to a non-cabinet level position and even considered privatizing the entire agency (www.worldcantwait.net/av/callpresentation.ppt). The people of the Gulf Coast waited four days for food, water and enough shelter for all of the people displaced by the hurricane to be temporarily housed. The head of the department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, was quoted as saying “I’ve not heard a report of thousands of people in the Convention Center who don’t have food and water,” by a reporter from National Public Radio. Chertoff did not declare Hurricane Katrina’s arrival to the Gulf Coast “an incident of national significance” until 36 hours after the storm hit (South End 10). Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was quoted by Wolf Blitzer as saying “considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well,” (South End 10). How can the head of a program that is supposed to provide people that are going through a national disaster, not know what is happening in a major city such as New Orleans? It appeared that people who watch the news everyday were more informed than the heads of FEMA as well as the department of Homeland Security.
With the government appearing to knowingly ignore an entire city of people that are being affected by a national disaster, one may raise the question “How can our supply of national guardsmen and army personnel be dispatched to Sri Lanka and arrive within a day and a half, but they cannot be on the Gulf Coast for four days?” As un-politically correct as it is, I believe the reason it took the government so long to respond was because the United States Government prefers to focus more on situations that benefit the actual government such as helping the people in Sri Lanka, making the government seem as though they are a good-hearted bunch. But in reality, in a predominately black area of the country where unemployment reaches as high as 11.4% in November 2005, directly following the storm, the government does not really care about an area of that nature of the country. Mike Davis observes “as a result (of the disaster), not just the Black working class, but also the Black professional and business middle classes are now facing economic extinction while Washington dawdles. Tens of thousands of blue-collar white, Asian and Latino residents of affected Gulf communities also face de facto expulsion from the region, but only the removal of African-Americans is actually being advocated as policy,” (South End 124).
As of January 6, 2006 there was $1,029,358,467 in funds for individuals and households in Mississippi courtesy of FEMA. There were also 29,215 trailers and 422 mobile homes available to the 80,843 people living in temporary housing in Mississippi (www.fema.gov). As of March 9, 2006, there were 70,217 trailers being occupied in Louisiana (www.fema.gov). This by no means makes up for the fact that thousands of people along the Gulf Coast were drowning for days and the federal government did not so much as recognize the fact that this may be a national disaster. According to FEMA’s website, “first responders (such as EMTs, firemen, policemen etc.) were urged not to respond to hurricane impact areas unless dispatched by state or local authorities.” The bureaucracy of the situation regarding assistance to people who needed care is a major flaw of the government concerning Hurricane Katrina. Approximately 50,000 people were left in New Orleans because they did not have transportation nor did they have the funds to actually leave the city during the mandatory evacuation. One could say that the people who were left behind when the storm hit “got what was coming to them” because the majority of people who stayed in the city were black and of the lower economic class and therefore were people who were classified as “sinners”. One could also say that the people, who were left behind in New Orleans and did not have any water to drink or food to eat, were treated like animals. There are numerous accounts of people being left on highways after being rescued for three to four days without any food or water. There are accounts of people trapped in their attics, on their roofs not having any way to reach safety. Where was the federal government when all of these things were happening?
FEMA is not only related to what has happened on the Gulf Coast but also is related to mountaintop removal and how it is affecting the environment around the coal plants. In West Virginia specifically there have been multiple instances of people experiencing slurry impoundment breaks, harsh floods and physical harm. In Shumate Hollow near McGraws, West Virginia there was a harsh flood that ran straight through the hollow of about 200 people, completely devastating many of the houses in the hollow and killing an old woman. Since the disaster has occurred, many people have been seeking help from FEMA, but the representative of FEMA repeatedly says to these people “total devastation." FEMA has said to some of the residents of Shumate Hollow that they will offer them a few months rent and temporary housing (i.e. trailers). Some people have been waiting 18 months for their aid; they continue to live in tents, in campers and under tarpaulins until FEMA returns their phone calls. Teresa Smith's house was not condemned by FEMA, it was condemned by the fire marshal and she has been living in a camper for the past year and a half; she states, “It’s like we don’t exist…or they don’t want us to,” (www.wvcoalfields.com).
Chapter II: water contamination
Water contamination is a linking factor between both victims of Hurricane Katrina as well as those of mountaintop removal. Considering how rapidly the hurricane occurred, the water contamination on the Gulf Coast was very sudden and those who were affected were not prepared. But when there are incidents of water contamination in Appalachia, those types of contamination are much more drawn out and lengthy in the time that it takes to contaminate the water.
When bearing in mind the breadth of the water contamination situation on the Gulf Coast, it is mind boggling. Harvey and Renee Miller, 73 and 72 years old, decided to wait out the hurricane, they were survivors of Hurricane Betsey among a half a dozen others. Once the storm had subsided, the couple decided to sit down in their living room; upon sitting down for only a few seconds Renee exclaimed, “ ‘What’s that brown spot on the floor? There’s another one! Another!’ Within a few seconds the spots multiplied and grew together. ‘My God, there’s water coming through the floor’…The water whipping past the house had risen to the top of the steps. He shut the door…and took the food and supplies to the second floor. When they looked out the window, the water had submerged a six-foot-high fence around the school next door. A few minutes later, it rose past the classroom air conditioners mounted about eight feet up…The water continued to rise, (McQuaid 204). After the initial breeching of the levees, members of the Environmental Protection Agency were sent out to test the standing flood waters for contamination. Once the testing was done on September 5, high levels of lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium and E. Coli were found in the standing water, not to mention the 6.7 million gallons of petroleum that had been spilled into the water supply from the refinery just off the coast of New Orleans (http://www.hurricane-katrina.biz/water-contamination.htm).
In Jefferson Parish there was “initial loss of power and pressure and approximately 112 pipe breaks in distribution system. 67,900 people are supplied with water from this specific distribution center,” (EPA 7). In St. Bernard parish there was “loss of power and pressure, 3.5 feet of water in treatment facility and damage to distribution system. 209,972 people are supplied with water from this distribution center,” (EPA 7). Water contamination within the city of New Orleans could be ascribed with bodies of humans and animals floating in the water supply, pipe breaks within the pumping stations, and complete covering of some pumping stations within the lower wards of the city. After the hurricane, many different agencies were contacted and offered grants in an effort to clean up Louisiana’s water supply. The EPA Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) is a loan program offering 20-year maximum long loans with low interest rates and special consideration is taken when dealing with people that have just gone through a natural disaster; people that are eligible are public and private entities, such as for-profit and non-profit agencies (EPA 6).
People living in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia are affected everyday by Mountaintop removal. There are coal companies within all four of those states that are polluting small communities’ drinking water supplies as well as dirtying their air. Not only does the removal of the tops of mountains have an aesthetically displeasing affect, along with the physical factors, but there is an economical factor as well. When a large coal company comes into a small town and builds a huge plant that causes tons of environmental pollution and physical harm, the monetary value of most of the houses as well as the income of most households within these communities drops dramatically. For example, “McDowell County in West Virginia has produced more coal than any other county in West Virginia, and for many years in the nation, yet the median household income is $19,931 and 37.7% of residents live in poverty,” (www.appvoices.org). There is a current unemployment rate in West Virginia of 4.3% which does not seem that high, but unfortunately it appears to be considering the rate of residents that live in poverty (U.S. Department of Labor).
“Louisiana ranks 5th in oil production and 8th in reserves in the United States. It is also home to two of the four Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) storage facilities: West Hackberry in Cameron Parish and Bayou Choctaw in Iberville Parish. Other infrastructure includes 17 petroleum refineries with a combined crude oil distillation capacity of nearly 2.8 million barrels per day, the second highest in the nation after Texas. Louisiana has numerous ports including the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), which is capable of receiving ultra large oil tankers. Natural gas and electricity dominate the home heating market with similar market shares totaling about 47 percent each. With the entire product to distribute, Louisiana is home to many major pipelines supplying the nation: Crude Oil - Chevron, BP, Texaco, Shell, Exxon, Scurloch-Permian, Mid-Valley, Calumet, Conoco, Koch, Unocal, Dept. of Energy, Locap. Product - TEPPCO, Colonial, Chevron, Shell, Plantation, Explorer, Texaco, Collins, BP. Liquefied Petroleum Gas - Dixie, TEPPCO, Black Lake, Koch, Chevron, Dynegy, Kinder, Dow, Bridgeline, FMP, Tejas, Texaco, UTP. There are a substantial number of energy companies that have their regional headquarters in the city, including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell Oil Company” (www.wikipedia.org). Interestingly, according to the census bureau in 2003, the median household income in Louisiana was $33,792 whereas the national average was $43,318; also, 18.1% of people in Louisiana lived under the poverty line in 2003 as opposed to the nation-wide average of 12.1%. The question stands in both areas of the country, in Appalachia as well as Louisiana, where does all the money go from the processing of fossil fuels? Since both West Virginia and Louisiana are ranked in the bottom five of the poorest states in the United States, there is an unanswered question. Because of the demographic of both of these states, I feel that the government is, without remorse, taking advantage of these people. In Louisiana, according to the 2000 census, there were 1,501,944 African Americans living in Louisiana; in West Virginia, I will reiterate, the median household income is $19,931. These groups of people are black, poor and basically out of the light of the media as well as the government. With an event as drastic and dramatic as Hurricane Katrina, a group of people that are normally ignored by the federal government because of their socioeconomic status, not to mention their race, were shoved into the spotlight of the media but were only focused on for a few days before the story grew old.
Chapter III: Millennium Goals
In 1992 there was a meeting entitled Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss a document entitled Agenda 21. Out of Agenda 21 came the Millennium Goals set forth by the people who attended this meeting and it has since forth been a blueprint by which to live as sustainably as possible. Some of these goals were as follows: halve the share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, end progressive shrinking of global area of natural forests, develop and meet national air quality standards based on World Health Organization guidelines, achievement of universal completion of primary school and gender equality in access to education, establish and implement a system of national accounts that internalize environmental costs and eliminate subsidies that encourage the extraction and use of virgin materials and fossil fuels (www.un.org). One of the goals is to halve the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty. In order to have this goal apply to Hurricane Katrina victims and mountaintop removal victims, we have to localize the problem. Before the hurricane, the amount of people living below the poverty line in Louisiana was 18.1% of the total population. Since there has been a massive redistribution of the population of Louisiana, that number may decrease, but regardless, Louisiana is one of the poorest states in the nation. West Virginia is neglected as a state also. Their poverty rate is 37% of the entire population of the state of West Virginia. Since mountaintop removal has become a household name within West Virginia and the amount of employment within that sect of the state government has dropped rapidly, the mining employment rate has dropped 90% with the automation labor within mountaintop removal (www.wikipedia.org).
Another Millennium goal established in Agenda 21 is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The amount of greenhouse gases emitted in Appalachia is startling to think about. Because coal companies want to cut off the tops of the mountains in order to extract more coal from the mountains, they are producing much pollution. Through the process of mountaintop removal, the coal companies use coal to run their machines, thereby producing tons of emissions. Because the coal companies have no restrictions on their usage or their output of emissions, they can pollute as much as they want. The clean water act was established in 1963 as a “piece of legislation relating to the reduction of smog and atmospheric pollution in general,” (www.wikipedia.org). In 2002, the Bush administration redefined the clean water act by redefining “fill material” to exclude mineral waste (www.appvoices.org). By doing this, the administration made the clean water act not liable to mountaintop removal companies any longer; it was legal for the companies to dump their waste (basically the tops of mountains) into the rivers and valleys below. Over 1500 rivers and streams have been covered by “fill” since 1977; this is thereby contaminating the local water supply and putting everyone who consumes the water at risk for infection and sickness.
In 2002, two different mercury plants in Louisiana produced over half of the state’s exposure to mercury; these two plants were: the PPG plant, which released 1222 pounds of mercury into the air, 7 pounds to the water supply and disposed of 231 pounds in landfills, and the Pioneer plant which released 910 pounds to the air, 13 pounds to the water supply and disposed of 261 pounds in landfills (www.oceana.org). In 2003, West Virginia’s power plants emitted nearly 4,000 pounds of mercury to the air, water supply and to the landfills (www.ohvec.org). Mercury is one of the deadliest elements to human exposure that exists. Most of the people within the United States are exposed intestinally to methylmercury due to mercury exposure within the fish population. Pregnant women are the most at risk because they carry fetuses; it has been said that 9 out of 10 pregnant women in the United States today have been exposed to abnormal amounts of mercury. Some effects of mercury exposure are impaired neurological development such as impacts on cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills (www.epa.org). Mercury exposure is directly linked to the emissions produced from chemical plants as well as coal-processing plants. There are no laws against emission of mercury from air pollutants within the clean air act which was established in 1977 and was written to regulate air emissions, but did not include mercury in the draft of the law. The Millennium Goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases ties in with another millennium goal to develop and meet national air quality standards based on the World Health Organization guidelines. Guidelines of national air quality standards, according to the World Health Organization are as follows: “the evidence for ozone and particulate matter shows risks to health concentrations currently found in many cities of developed nations. These epidemiological findings that imply that guidelines cannot provide full protection, as thresholds below which adverse effects do not occur have been identified; when dealing with particulate matter, guidelines can be based on mortality and unscheduled hospital visits, or more subtle indicators such as psychological indicators. Achieving the guidelines for dealing with nitrogen oxide may therefore bring benefits for public health that exceeds those anticipated based on estimates of the pollutant’s specific toxicity.” (www.who.int). If by living by the World Health Organization’s guidelines, and one was in West Virginia or Louisiana, the levels of mercury would still be exceedingly high and polluting not only to the environment but also to pregnant women and their fetuses all over both states.
Yet another goal addressed within Agenda 21 regarding the Millennium Goals is to end progressive shrinking of global area of natural forests. In West Virginia, since the practice of mountaintop removal began, “nearly 1 million acres of the region’s mixed mesophytic forests—the most biologically diverse and productive temperate hardwood forests on earth—already have been destroyed. (Gone from huge tracts are dozens of species of trees, the understory herbs, the soils and their seed banks. Altered are microclimates and hydrological balances. At risk are communities, the Appalachian Mountain culture sustained by the forests, neotropical migrating birds and wildlife.) Also, over 1,200 rivers and streams have been directly affected by mountaintop removal mining” (www.wvecouncil.org). West Virginia has some of the most biologically diverse forests in the nation. There are species of wildlife and plant life that cannot be found anywhere else in the nation but in the heart of West Virginia. With the removal of forests and streams because of mountaintop removal, there comes impact upon the local population of a certain area that has lost a large portion of their biodiversity. Also, many areas of hardwood within the West Virginia forests are being cut down to supply hardwood to make floors, houses and just for plain timber. West Virginia has been referred to for a very long time as “Almost Heaven.” If the degradation in West Virginia continues at the rate it has been progressing for the past twenty or more years, there will be nothing left to appreciate inside of the environment of West Virginia.
Louisiana has suffered a great deal since Hurricane Katrina hit the coast of the state. Not only was there complete devastation of many cities and towns and pollution that took weeks to clean up, but there has also been a resurgence in forest depletion amongst the state. New Orleans is surrounded by wetlands to the southeast and with wetlands comes poor conditions for forests to occupy, especially when a hurricane makes landfall and causes the wetlands that sit below sea level, to fill with water and kill most of their natural resources.
An additional aspect of the established Millennium Goals within Agenda 21 was the achievement of universal completion of primary school and gender guidelines. Education is an extremely important aspect of becoming an adult and moving up within society. In Sundial, West Virginia there is an elementary school, Marsh Fork Elementary that is located right next to a coal processing plant. A man by the name of Ed Wiley had a granddaughter enrolled at that very school. She left school early four days in succession; to her grandfathers dismay it came to light that she was becoming ill from the coal processing occurring not 200 feet from the elementary school. Here is Mr. Wiley’s story: “This morning, Floyd and I, along with Ed Wiley, a West Virginia grandfather and former coal miner, and over one hundred supporters marched the final mile of Ed’s epic 455-mile walk from Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia to the steps of the Senate Office Building. Ed left Charleston on Aug. 2 to raise awareness about the school’s location next door to a coal refuse pond and preparation plant; and to build public support for the construction of a new school in a different location. Marsh Fork Elementary School is on the front lines of the controversial practice known as mountaintop removal coal mining. Its students are becoming the casualties. An active 1,849-acre mountaintop removal coalmine surrounds the school area. Marsh Fork Elementary sits just 225 feet from a Massey Energy coal-loading silo that releases high levels of coal dust and saturates the air in the school. Independent tests have shown that coal dust is hazardous to the health of school children. And a leaking earthen dam holding back 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal-sludge is also located above the school site. What’s more, Massey Energy wants to build another silo. Much to the chagrin of people like Ed Wiley,” (www.ilovemountains.org). This specific story highlights the fact that not only are land values depleted and pollution emitted into the atmosphere but children are being affected by mountaintop removal through the location of the coal processing plants as well as the water contamination going on because of mountaintop removal. Some children cannot achieve their desired education because of sickness attributed to emissions produced through mountaintop removal. Education within West Virginia is a topic of great concern. In the 2004 state assessments of education within West Virginia, it was found that of the 146, 703 students that were enrolled in public school there was a 68% proficiency level in mathematics and a 78% proficiency level in reading. This statistic brings down Louisiana’s education system by about 4 notches. Louisiana is also ranked very poorly when it comes to public education for their children. Louisiana has gone through many different disasters since the beginning of the public education system; it was found in 2004 that only 59% of students in grade 8 were above the basic level in mathematics and 64% of students in grade 8 were above the basic level in reading (www.statemaster.com).
Another aspect of Agenda 21 within the Millennium Goals is to eliminate subsidies that encourage the extraction and use of virgin materials and fossil fuels. In 1999, the amount of money spent on federal subsides for the extraction of fossil fuels in the United States was $95 billion. Since West Virginia produces the second largest amount of coal in the United States, this Millennium Goal would benefit the state immensely and the subsides to extract fossil fuels should benefit the state immensely as well. In 1998, Governor Cecil H. Underwood made a speech to address the problems West Virginia has in relation to its energy-producing economy and ways to become more efficient; a portion of his speech is as follows: “Our vision for the year 2010 is that West Virginia will be a showcase state for efficient power generation and efficient industrial energy usage. There will be several state-of-the-art, highly efficient, environmentally compliant fossil fuel power generation plants in the state. Coal-based generation plants in West Virginia will be in compliance with all clean air regulations, demonstrating technologies developed in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Coal Technology program. West Virginia’s manufacturing plants will be highly productive and energy efficient with virtually all waste heat and waste materials reused and recycled” (www.nrcce.wvu.edu). The only way that this could be an applicable way of producing and conserving energy would be to either invest in renewable fuels or to invest in what is now known as “clean coal”. “Clean coal is the name attributed to coal chemically washed of minerals and impurities, sometimes gasified, burned and the resulting flue gases treated with steam, with the purpose of almost completely eradicating sulfur dioxide, and reburned so as to make the carbon dioxide in the flue gas economically recoverable. The coal industry uses the term clean coal to describe technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use[1], with no specific quantitative limits on any emissions, particularly carbon dioxide…There are no coal fired power stations in commercial production which capture all carbon dioxide emissions, so the process is theoretical and experimental and thus a subject of feasibility or pilot studies (www.wikipedia.org).” Since clean coal is not on the market yet and will not appear, hypothetically, until between 2020-2025, there is no reason why the United States Energy Commission should not or could not invest in the research and application of renewable fuels; besides, coal will not be around forever. Having subsidies that benefit those who extract coal and pollute the air with coal emissions are not beneficial to the environment nor the community that is directly affected by the production and distribution of coal.
Chapter IV: Possible Conclusions
Global warming is a factor of society that links both mountaintop removal as well as Hurricane Katrina. In Gelbspan’s article he writes, “very few people in America know that Katrina’s real name is global warming, because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue. The reason is simply: to stabilize the climate, we must cut coal and oil use by 70%. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history. In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming,” (South End 23). What Gelbspan is trying to say is that pollution has effectively caused the influx in larger, more powerful storms to exist. Since the process of mountaintop removal attributes so much coal and coal pollution to the environment, they can be considered as a prime resource for what is causing global warming. With the effects of global warming come larger, more powerful hurricanes in our systems warm waters, i.e. the Gulf of Mexico. Because the amount of pollution in the United States today is greatly affecting global warming, weather storms are being affected greatly by this situation, i.e. Hurricane Katrina. So, in essence, the statement could be made that mountaintop removal, in an inverted way, actually caused Hurricane Katrina. The pollution produced from cleaning coal and the production of extracting coal from the tops of mountains affects the region into which the coal is mined immensely, not to mention the people who are affected all over the nation by the amount of pollution emitted into the atmosphere annually. Hurricane Katrina has been said by many people to have been propelled not only by warmth in the ocean waters, but by the warming of the planet itself. “The profusion of giant hurricanes was just one symptom of a global climate that seemed to be going haywire. The year 2005 was also the hottest on record, capping a distinct uptick in global temperature” (McQuaid 346).
Victims of Hurricane Katrina were ignored by the United States Government for 4 days; they did not have food, water, electricity or sterile housing. Victims of mountaintop removal have been ignored by the government since 1977 when the process of mountaintop removal came to be. Both groups of people have suffered environmental degradation, exploitation by the powers that be on account of race, class and/or socioeconomic status and widespread loss of natural resources. Both groups of people have been exposed to water contamination, but there has not been hardly any effort by the federal government to help these people in need. Millennium goals discussed in Agenda 21 such as to halve the share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, to end progressive shrinking of global area of natural forests, develop and meet national air quality standards based on World Health Organization guidelines, achievement of universal completion of primary school and gender equality in access to education and to eliminate subsidies that encourage the extraction and use or virgin materials and fossil fuels are all components of a plan to remedy the environmental, political and socioeconomical problems faced by residents of the Gulf Coast that were affected by Hurricane Katrina as well as residents of Appalachia affected by mountaintop removal.
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