In this operation companies use giant earthmoving machines to take off the top of a mountain in order to dig up a vein of coal below. The Bush administration approved regulations May 3 that would have allowed coal companies to dump material stripped from the mountains into streams and valleys. The big coal companies hailed the decision.

Six days later Chief U.S. District Judge Charles Haden issued a 47-page ruling in Charleston, West Virginia, that would end the long-standing practice of coal companies putting fill into waterways and valleys. He ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to cease issuing new permits for mountaintop removal valley fills.

The ruling chastised the Bush administration and the Environmental Protection Agency for portraying its May 3 ruling as a technical change. Since 1977 the Army Corps of Engineers own regulation has prohibited mining companies from dumping rock and dirt in nearby waterways. Haden said the May 3 ruling was a special favor to the coal companies, a move that would codify 20 years of illegal dumping with the blessing of the Army Corps.

The coal companies have defended the practice, saying they must be able to dump the fill in order to preserve jobs. The ruling "has the potential impact to shut down the majority of coal mining operations in Appalachia," said William Caylor of the Kentucky Coal Association.

Many miners interviewed here said they believe the ruling was directed against miners. Some pointed to past rulings by Judge Haden unfairly denying black lung benefits to coal miners. One Marrowbone miner asked: "What’s the point of having mountains if you can’t afford to live here?"

Not everyone sees it in those terms. Many residents of coalfield towns, including some members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and retirees, believe the way coal bosses carry out mountaintop removal mining, as well as the clear-cut lumbering practices of forestry companies, are motivated by callous greed. They point out that these measures pose a big threat to the environment and to the people living in the mining towns.

As the Bush administration was issuing its ruling, six people died and 500 homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed by another round of flooding in southern West Virginia. The federal government declared the hardest hit counties--McDowell, Mercer, Mingo, and Wyoming--a federal disaster area.

In Fort Gay, West Virginia, Mayor Lawrence Thompson revealed that during the flooding several million gallons of coal slurry, known as blackwater, spilled into the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. This is the third time coal sludge from a coal mine has polluted his town’s drinking water in as many years, he angrily complained.

Judy Bonds of the Coal River Mountain Watch in Whitesville, West Virginia, told the Militant that during the recent flood a "river of black water ran through the town of Welsh." There was a problem with a decant pipe and with old works at a nearby mine, she explained.

Devastating floods are a regular occurrence in the coal mining areas of West Virginia. Last summer alone, four floods left thousands homeless and over a $100 million in damage in their wake. Twenty-four of the state’s 55 counties were declared disaster areas last summer. Parts of West Virginia have been declared federal flood disaster zones 29 times since 1967. Eight of those declarations included McDowell County.

Floods such as those last summer fueled opposition among working people to how many of these companies carry out their operations, leading to a spate of lawsuits against more than a dozen mining and logging companies.

Just about everyone agrees that mining and timbering affect runoff and have an impact on flooding. In a pristine state, forest floors soak up rain and slow runoff. Vast amounts of water are "transpired" back into the air through plant leaves. Removing this natural cover in a mountainous area like West Virginia quickens the cascade into the valleys.

The debate is over the extent to which mining and logging contribute to the damage.

Last year Kentucky coal boss William Caylor said, "Mother Nature is to blame."

But an Army Corps of Engineers preliminary report revealed that the way mining companies currently carry out mountaintop removal and other strip mining operations tends to make flooding more likely.

At one of Arch Coal Inc.’s mines, for example, it was found that runoff was increased by 3 percent at one valley fill, 13 percent at another, and at still another runoff was increased by a whopping 42 percent.

Every strip mine permit is supposed to include explicit flood runoff protections. For 12 years West Virginia regulators, under pressure by mining and logging bosses, resisted federal requirements. The state did not require a flood risk study until the fall of 2000.

In a May 8 opinion column piece in the Charleston Gazette, Robert Douglas, a local attorney, wrote that "underregulated surface mining and radical logging practices in West Virginia have created a monster." He said that the state imposes a tax on harvested timber, which is the chief source of funding for the Division of Forestry. "Politicians have granted safe harbor and secret super tax credits to Georgia-Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, Allegheny Wood Products, et al." This results in a diminished tax base and insufficient funding to hire enough forestry inspectors.

"During a nine-month inspection period in 1999, 703 logging operations were out of compliance and 208 failed to reclaim the area where they had cut trees. The net result is the rape of our mountains and the subsequent flood destruction to the citizens below," Douglas wrote.
 
 
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