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Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West VA might be the most tragic and symbolic site of American children left behind by their state government.
Forsaken by state officials and a recent WV Supreme Court decision last week, the school and its children must play amid the toxic dust of a coal silo-and soon a second one-that sits less than a football field away.
The Marsh Fork Elementary School also sits only a few football fields downslope of a 2.8 billion gallon earthen coal sludge impoundment, where Massey Energy is setting off thousands of pounds of explosives near the dam.
Every school kid in the coalfields knows Massey's reckless history with coal sludge dams.
In a haunting parallel to last December's TVA coal ash disaster, a Massey subsidiary in eastern Kentucky was responsible for the largest coal slurry spill at that point, leaking over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into the area's waterways and aquifers.
With blasting nearby, if the 380 foot earthen dam above the Marsh Fork school broke, the children and community residents would have less than three minutes to flee.
Based in Richmond, Virginia, Massey Energy has demonstrated a merciless coveting for coal at any expense. At the 2008 4th quarter earnings call, the out-of-state company's president crowed that 2008 was the "most successful" in Massey's history, and their "very aggressive expansion plan" was executed "almost to perfection." The Virginia-based president was "especially pleased" that Massey reached an "all time record high" of $641 million in adjusted annual EBITDA.
Now laying off workers due to market demands, with 19 union-busted Appalachian mining operations valued at $2.6 billion in 2008, the Richmond company shelled out $20 million in penalties for dumping toxic mine waste into the region's waterways in 2008; Massey also paid a record $4.2 million for civil and criminal fines in the death of two coal miners in West Virginia last year.
Now let's contrast this to statements made by Old Dominion Electric Cooperative officials in regards to their proposed $6 billion Surry coal plant located 18 miles from historic Williamsburg...
"The only thing that comes out of the top of the coal plant is water vapor", said Jeb Hockman, an ODEC spokesman in the Smithfield Times on May 13, 2009 in reference to the Clover coal plant in Halifax, VA. ODEC officials, in trying to win support for their Cypress Creek coal plant, have repeatedly told the Town of Dendron residents that the Clover plant had never been fined, sued, or in violation of anything.
The truth is that the Clover coal plant "has been found to be in violation of Virginia Code, ordered to pay nearly $10,000 in civil charges, sued by residents all the way in New York for polluting the air there, and ordered to pay $5.3 million in penalties to the federal government".
"Just because it's a Cooperative however, doesn't mean they aren't willing to fight dirty", writes ClimateJess. The water vapor quote from the Smithfield Times was dropped into a "reassuring", "here's the facts" junk letter distributed by ODEC to the 300 Dendron residents urging their support for the proposed coal plant.
As the Tamara Dietrich in the Daily Press writes: "All five members of the Surry County Board of Supervisors approve of the Cypress Creek power plant. 'I don't think (they) and others can see beyond the dollar signs,' Eggleston says."
What they are not seeing, thanks to ODEC's spin efforts is the fact that the Surry plant "will produce 14.6 million tons of carbon dioxide, 920 pounds of lead and 118 pounds of mercury every single year". "ODEC hopes to sell much of the 250,000 tons of fly ash generated annually from burning 9,000 tons of coal every day".
When are we going to learn the lesson that coal is nasty stuff and that we need to break our addiction to dirty fossil fuels? We don't break that addiction by shooting up more coal in our systems.
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