The smell of smoke and the sound of country music filled the air of the festival. Underneath the flimsy tent the audience sat waiting to hear the presentation of Carrie and Michael Kline from Elkins WV. Their presentation was about people who have suffered through mountain top removal in WV, called Voices from the Rubble.
This presentation was a mixture of music, recorded voices of the victims, and the presenter's opinions on mountain top removal and the people suffering in those areas. In short, mountain top removal is when a coal mining company removes the top of a mountain to get to a seam of coal. Once the top is removed, the company dumps the dirt in the valleys; which causes the streams that lead into rivers to flood, when they flood they carry all the deadly chemicals the company uses to extract the coal. The water floods into the farms and kills all the crops.
The voice of Larry Gibson explains his point of view on mountain top removal. He says how in his town people didn't used to worry about food or jobs because they had the coal mines to work in, and their farms to eat from. But now the coal mines are closed, and the farms are destroyed. According to Larry, the chemicals are also contaminating the water supplies from miles away. Larry says, "Hundreds of people died who never even worked in a mine." He then goes on to explain losses, "Most people don't know we've lost 233,000 jobs," "we've also lost six and a half million acres of land." but the thing that scares Larry the most is the polluted soil and water.
Carrie and Michael began to play their guitars. The song they sang was "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive," which is about a town in eastern Kentucky where the people are stuck in poverty and forced to sell their land or work for the coal company. As the name of the song goes, they never leave Harlan alive.
Next the voice of the late Judy Vaughn shared her views on mountain top removal. She explains how before the coal company can remove the top of the mountain; they must remove all the trees and plants. She says how ginseng grows on the mountains in her town. The people from her town would go and pick it. Judy says, "Ginseng would sell for about a hundred dollars a pound, but now the ginsengs gone, completely gone, and it will not grow back.” She says how you can't even go up on the mountains like you used to, "they've got em' all fenced off." Judy then says how the thing that scares her the most is the population decline.
Carrie and Michael sang another song called "Across the Mountain Side." This song is about drag lines ruining the lives of people in a small town. Drag lines are huge buckets used to remove overburden dirt away from the coal. Then they sang another song, this one was about a man telling his wildlife to run away from his town because they would not be able to survive the harsh environment left behind once the mountain top removal started.
Then the audience heard the voice of Larry, he said, “You never see anything bigger than a toad in those reclaim sights.” Reclaim sights are what the land becomes when the coal company is finished with the mining. The companies are supposed to restore the mountain to its original condition; however, this almost never happens. The company usually uses fill dirt to bring back some of the height to the mountain, and then they spray non-native grass seed.
Michael sang one last time, this time with no music. This song was about a man who refused to sell his land just to make some quick money. One of the lines was, “I ain’t sellin’ my soul just to give you a strip of coal.”
If mountain top removal interests you or you want to learn more about this organization you can visit www.ilovemountains.org. To watch some of Carrie and Michael’s musical performance you can see it at this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=968PDA61BDg
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