Battle over coal mining gets a windy twist

By Vicki Smith

updated 5:35 p.m. ET Oct. 24, 2008

DOROTHY, W.Va. - Tacked to the front porch of a cabin atop Kayford Mountain is a sign. "Larry's Place," it reads. "Almost Heaven."

Almost. In five minutes, Larry Gibson can walk to a crumbling overlook he calls Hell's Gate.

It is a window onto an alien landscape of gray rubble where only machines move. It's a small example of mountaintop removal mining, he explains. Only 900 acres.

Then he turns away from the Patriot Coal Corp. project and gazes left toward the unbroken green tentacles of the Coal River Mountain.

It is a web of jagged ridges, some rising more than 3,300 feet. At its base are communities like Colcord, a few dozen neatly kept homes along Sycamore Creek. Under its canopy are bears and blackberries, white-tailed deer and wild turkey, ginseng and sassafras.

And like so many in southern West Virginia, it is a mountain that could be blown to bits for its coal.

Massey Energy, holder of state permits to blast 6,000 acres, sees the future — and a fortune — in Coal River Mountain. With the spot-market price of steam coal at $133 a ton and likely to rise, the mountain is a resource capable of feeding power plants for 14 years. Massey plans to start work as soon as federal regulators approve.

But Gibson and others propose a future in which the mountain survives.

Mine coal the traditional way, they say. Dig tunnels and leave the top intact for 200 windmills. Generate enough electricity for 150,000 homes. Let the mountain produce energy forever.

Gibson, 62, sees Massey's way of mining as no less than "the genocide of Appalachia," the sacrifice of a people, a culture and the hills that bind them.

"This land right here has done as much for the people as their own mother did," says Gibson, whose own lights and phone are powered by a solar panel while logs feed his potbellied stove.

"Coal's something we used in primitive times...," he says. "We can surely do better."

Once upon a time...
More than 300 million years ago, southern West Virginia was a steamy swamp thick with plants that sank as they died, forming layers of peat. Sand and clay landed on top, squeezing, drying and heating it. Over time, every 3 to 7 feet of peat became a foot of coal. And when geologic forces pushed up the Appalachian Mountains, the coal came with them.

By the mid-1700s, coal's potential had been discovered, and within a century, mining was big business. Since 1836, more than 13 billion tons have been dug from West Virginia alone.

Coal is the most reliable and affordable energy source in the United States, with some 52 billion tons of reserves still underground, the West Virginia Coal Association says. That's enough to ensure a productive future for nearly 50,000 people who depend directly and indirectly on the state's mines.

But reserves are getting harder to reach, and companies want cheaper ways to mine multiple seams.

Jeff Gentner / AP file Coal River Mountain is seen at left and behind an existing mountaintop removal mining site at Kayford Mountain, W.Va.

In mountaintop removal, forests are clear-cut. Holes are drilled to blast apart the rock, and massive machines scoop out the exposed coal.

The rock and dirt left behind, the "spoil," is dumped one 240-ton truckload at a time into adjacent valleys, changing the shape of the earth, lowering the mountain and covering streams.

Coal River Mountain Watch, the environmental group pushing the wind farm, says more Americans want clean energy, so it's the perfect time to consider a more sustainable use.

It's also the perfect place: For industrial wind farms, developers seek sites with wind speeds of at least 15.7 mph, the minimum to be labeled Class 4. Coal River Mountain catches winds that range from Class 4 to Class 7, with speeds of 19.7 mph or higher.

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