Unholy Alliance by Julian Martin Wednesday, May 30, 2007
The strangest bedfellows in West Virginia, the United Mine Workers union and the
WV Chamber of Commerce, joined hands in the Viewpoint page article of May 16,
2007 entitled “Economic cornerstone of W.Va. under attack.” Strange
bedfellows because the Chamber of Commerce would stomp out the United Mine
Workers and any other union in a right to work minute. In the article the UMW
leadership has teamed up with an organization that wants West Virginia to be
a right to work state, meaning a right to work for less. Watch out for them
snakes.
A union leader and the union busters sing a duet against “activist
environmental groups.” They make it sound like to be active in support of
one’s beliefs is a bad thing. The coal companies are surely activists when it
comes to destroying our mountains, communities and the health of our
citizens. Why wouldn’t an environmental group in the mountain state be
active in trying to protect the mountains from the total destruction of
mountain top removal? Why wouldn’t sane people want to protect our mountains
from the assault of mostly out of state environmental extremists like coal
companies?
In an old trick to cast doubt on the motives of one’s opponents, Perdue and
Roberts make the ridiculous claim that people are not opposed to mountain top
removal to improve the environment but to destroy the coal industry. If the
coal industry were not destroying our mountains they would get no opposition
from environmental groups and the huge majority of West Virginians who oppose
mountain top removal.
When my dad was a UMW miner
there were 125,000 coal miners in West Virginia, with workers replaced by
giant machines, there are now only 17,000. If that is job creation somebody
better stop them before it is all machines and no workers. The Chamber of
Commerce is no doubt pleased that most of the remaining coal mining jobs are
non-union.
The jobs argument will be used
until all our mountains are destroyed.When they finish chopping off the top
of a mountain they will have to move to the next mountain or jobs will be
lost, then another mountain or jobs will be lost and then another. When the
last mountain is gone the unemployed miners can look back at the wasteland
they have created and see no jobs for their children.
Mountaintop removal is
destroying future jobs in the hard wood industry. Oak and hickory are not
growing on so-called “reclaimed” mines. According to the late Bill Maxey,
former chief of the West Virginia division of forestry, every year, forever,
we are losing 200 board feet per acre of new growth hardwood to mountain top
removal. On the 500,000 acres of mountains already destroyed that comes to
one hundred million board feet every year forever, and this is just the new
growth.
Purdue and Roberts could
not resist wrapping themselves in the flag and claiming that environmental
activism is an “…assault on our nation…” Watch out, they may dust off the old
standby, “communism.”
My dad, grandpa, stepson,
uncles, brother-in-law, and father-in-law have worked in underground union
coalmines. My grandpa and grandpa-in-law were in the battle of Blair Mountain
on the side of the United Mine Workers, they must be turning over in their
graves at the spectacle of their union in bed with the Chamber of Commerce.
The Purdue/Roberts article
claims that ours is an “energy state,” which is close to the past claim that
“West Virginia is coal.” “Energy state” really means West Virginia is a cash
cow for the out of state exploiters and their native collaborators. If ours
is an energy state our mountains and streams won’t last much longer.
Mountaintop removal strip-mining
has already destroyed 800 square miles of West Virginia, the equivalent of a
swath one-quarter mile wide from New York to San Francisco. They have buried
1000 miles of streams, which is longer than the Ohio River. West Virginia is
being sacrificed on the altar of money.
We are being told to destroy
mountains that could be permanent for jobs that are temporary. Jobs are not
what the coal industry is after, they couldn’t care less about jobs. They are
after money and that is all. We are told to trade our mountains for taxes
while the coal industry opposes taxes on coal, they prefer no taxes. But they
like tax breaks. They especially like the tax break for mining thin seams of
coal, which is a mountain top removal subsidy. We are told to stand tall for
our nation and sacrifice what we love most about West Virginia.
We are not the energy state. We
are not coal. We are the Mountain State.
[To see mountaintop removal for yourself contact me at
martinjul@aol.com.]
