Battle over fate of W.Va.’s Coal River Mountain may be shown to world leaders in December

World climate-change forum may touch on W.Va. mine

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Environmental activists who want West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to stop Massey Energy’s blasting plans for the Coal River Mountain say the world is watching, and they plan to add pressure with a Google Earth tour created for a United Nations climate-change conference.

Virginia-based Massey has permits to open up reserves it says could feed power plants for 14 years. But Coal River Mountain Watch of Whitesville wants the company to stick with underground mining and allow the ridges — some rising more than 3,300 feet — to be turned into a 200-turbine wind farm.

As many as 15,000 delegates are expected for the Dec. 17-18 Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, and a YouTube channel aims to build public participation by offering about a dozen virtual tours of so-called global hot spots. Most are not yet available online.

The preview indicates some of the other tours will focus on water management in the Sierra Nevada mountains, rising sea levels in Bangladesh, avoiding deforestation in Madagascar and the links between climate and health in Ethiopia.

While Google spokesman Aaron Stein said Wednesday the company cannot comment on planned launches, Coal River Mountain Watch says it helped a crew from California two weeks ago as it conducted a fly-over of southern West Virginia. The team interviewed residents about the perennial battle between a local economy based on extraction and the need for clean energy sources.

Lorelei Scarbro, a coal miner’s widow from Rock Creek, said she narrates the piece, which will show the rest of the world the destruction that state politicians are allowing.

“And hopefully, a whole bunch of them are going to stand up and take notice,” she says, “because what they’re planning to do here on this 6,600 acres is just part of the contribution to the major climate crisis we’re in.”

Manchin’s spokesman suggests the governor is not particularly concerned about the prospect of additional pressure over Coal River Mountain.

“There’s always going to be outside pressure,” spokesman Matt Turner said. “But his first responsibility is to the views and needs of West Virginians. He’s always going to listen to them first.”

In its more than 18-month campaign, Coal River Mountain Watch has lobbied county commissions and congressmen. “We’ve talked to everybody that would stand still long enough for us to do a presentation on the wind farm,” Scarbro said, “from next door to Capitol Hill.”

Until Monday, however, the group had been denied a meeting with Manchin, a Democrat who once changed the state’s slogan from “Wild and Wonderful” to “Open for Business.”

This week, Scarbro was among about 20 activists who showed up at Manchin’s office, delivering a letter demanding he revoke Massey’s permits. Manchin declined, saying he lacked the authority.

“The whole world is watching,” the letter said. “… You have the power to show the whole world that West Virginia can blaze the way forward — choosing permanent jobs and clean energy over threatening the lives of its own residents.”

In mountaintop removal mining, a particularly destructive form of strip mining, forests are clear-cut. Holes are drilled for explosives to blast apart the rock, and massive machines scoop out the exposed coal. The rock and dirt left behind is dumped into adjacent valleys, lowering and flattening the mountaintops, and covering intermittent streams.

Coal operators say it’s the most efficient way — in some cases, the only way — to reach some reserves. They also argue they reclaim the land so it can be developed for other uses. Critics, however, say the land is ruined forever, and that people, property and the environment suffer unnecessarily.

The West Virginia Coal Association views mountaintop removal opponents as extremists who want to shut down all mining. At public hearings on the permitting process for mountaintop removal mines last week, thousands of angry miners shouted down the small number of opponents who tried to speak out against the practice.

Scarbro says the wind farm project would create jobs, too, and notes that it has won the support of many environmental groups, including those that traditionally oppose wind farms because of concerns about bat and bird kills.

The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Audubon Society back the idea, along with the Rainforest Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council.