Memorial Day Activists Protesting 998 Coal Sludge Deaths Arrested. Unprecedented Bail Set.

Seventeen courageous Mountain Justice volunteers were arrested in a civil disobedience action in Mountain Justice’s continuing movement to end mountaintop removal.

Six are still in jail with bogus, unprecedented, $2,000 cash-only bail amounts, slowing their release. Many of them were arrested for the first time with clean records, and all they did was cross a line onto coal company property.

The Kayford Eight were charged with trespass and conspiracy for walking onto the 12,000-acre-plus Kayford Mountain mine and locking themselves to a giant dump truck. Placing U-locks around their necks, they attached themselves to guardrails and the driveshaft of the truck after hanging a banner on the truck’s grill that read “Never Again!” Here is a statement from the Kayford Eight:

We locked down at the Kayford mountaintop removal site with mud from the Mingo County flood on our boots and now, with the dusty remains of Kayford Mountain on our boots, we stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers jailed for their actions to oppose mountaintop removal coal mining.

Also before dawn, two brave women, donning hazmat suits and respirators, boated onto the eight-billion-gallon Brushy Fork toxic coal slurry lake and launched a 60-foot floating banner that read “No more toxic sludge!” They were charged with trespass and littering. How can you litter on a giant toxic waste dump? Massey Energy has a permit to blast within 100 feet of this impoundment, which sits atop a honeycomb of abandoned deep mines.

In 2000, more than 300 million gallons of coal slurry broke through the bottom of Massey’s Martin Co., Ky., impoundment, and into the deep mines beneath, then exploding into two watersheds, smothering aquatic life over 100 miles of streams. A Brushy Fork failure would be over 23 times larger than Martin County.

Facing a daily assault of over 3 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives detonated at mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia, Coal River Valley residents joined with Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero activists at the entrance of Massey Energy’s Marfork mining complex in Pettus, West Virginia on Saturday, May 23rd. According to the Sludge Watch Collection, seven people approached the entrance to the dam facility and the Whitesville detachment of the West Virginia State Police asked them to leave. When the seven refused, the state police arrested them.

Saturday’s two backcountry actions were followed by a picket at the mouth of Massey Energy’s Marfork mining complex, which includes the Brushy Fork dam, where more than 75 Coal River Valley residents and supporters emphasized the deadly danger of that impoundment: the 72-foot peak depth of the sludge at the Head Start facility there should the dam break. Seven people crossed the line onto Marfork’s property and were arrested for trespass.

While the Kayford Eight were released the same day, the other nine fared differently. The two Brushy Paddlers and four of the Pettus Seven are being held for $2,000 each, cash only. We know you love and care about the people of Appalachia! Now is the time to demonstrate your support through a donation to help bail out these committed and passionate activists. Mountain Justice really need your support more than ever at this crucial juncture in the movement to end mountaintop removal mining!

Thirty-eight years after Hechler’s first hearings on mountaintop removal, scores of Appalachian communities have been flooded, depopulated, subjected to a boom-bust single economy of outside coal companies, and contaminated by toxic strip-mining operations; over 500 American mountains have been blown to bits, an estimated 1,300 miles of streams have been jammed with waste, and over a million acres of deciduous hardwoods forests in America’s oldest and most diverse mountain range have been wiped out.

A Massey subsidiary in eastern Kentucky was responsible for the largest coal slurry spill in the eastern US–until last December’s TVA coal ash pond disaster–leaking over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into the area’s waterways and aquifers in 2000. That disaster “impacted more than 100 miles of stream beds and associated flood plains downstream,” and also covered backyards and farmland in coal slurry, according to a 2001 EPA’s task force report.

“I fear for my friends and all the people living below this coal sludge dam,” said Gary Anderson, who lives on the mountain near the site. “Blasting beside the dam, over underground mines, could decimate the valley for miles. The ‘experts’ said that the Buffalo Creek sludge dam was safe, but it failed. They said that the TVA sludge dam was safe, but it failed. Massey is setting up an even greater catastrophe here.”

If donating by mail, make out a check or money order to Mountain Justice at: P.O. Box 86, Naoma, WV, 25140.

For donations that have a much-needed immediate impact, call 304-854-1937. Thank you!

Sources: Huffington Post and Mountain Justice

Related posts:

1. Residents to Protest at Massey Energys Toxic Coal Sludge Dam
2. Second Coal Company Sludge Spill – Bad For the Coal Industry
3. Daryl Hannah and James Hansen Arrested in WV Coal Mining Protest