Fighting an Uphill Battle

On a crisp morning, inside an old post-office building emblazoned with an exterior mural

that mirrors its rugged mountain surroundings, Judy Bonds starts another day of fighting to retain the scenery — and the way of life of those who inhabit it.

Alone as the office opens at 9, Ms. Bonds, one of three co-directors of Coal River Mountain Watch, an environmental group in this once-bustling town in the middle of coal country, is scanning the morning’s newspapers to see if yesterday’s protest got any play.

She and dozens of others opposed to mountaintop removal — a mining process in which a mountain peak is blown up, to reveal the seam of coal beneath it — carried placards, hired a banner-toting helicopter, and shouted slogans to spell out their message to coal-company executives and politicians who had gathered for a meeting in nearby Daniels.

“The problem with that meeting was there was no seat at the table for the people, the folks whose lives they’re tearing apart along with these mountains,” Ms. Bonds, 55, says to her co-workers. “You need publicity to fight that.”

Satisfied that the newspapers at least mentioned the protest, Ms. Bonds then recaps the time she spent yesterday with Morgan Spurlock, director of the film Super Size Me. Mr. Spurlock, who grew up in nearby Beckley, interviewed Ms. Bonds for an episode of 30 Days, his documentary series on the cable-television network FX.

‘It’s Such Hard Work’

By coming here, Mr. Spurlock followed the trail of other journalists who have sought out Ms. Bonds. The daughter and granddaughter of coal miners, Ms. Bonds’ ability to turn the plight of the poor residents of Appalachian coal country into poignant quotes — such as “There’s blood all over the coal that’s being burned” — and her dogged work on her neighbors’ behalf for the past decade have helped make her the public face in the fight against the moving of West Virginia’s mountains.

“She does extraordinary work,” says Lois Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, a national advocacy group in Falls Church, Va. Ms. Gibbs, who led a fight against companies and government officials over chemical contamination at Love Canal, her former neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., nearly 30 years ago, says Ms. Bonds’s battle against similar foes won’t be easy.

“It’s such hard work, especially now, when she has to battle some thinking that says, ‘Oh, we have to change over to coal to deal with our energy needs,’ even among environmental groups,” Ms. Gibbs says.

The 2003 winner of the $125,000 Goldman Prize for grass-roots environmental activism (she donated $49,000 of it to Coal River Mountain Watch), Ms. Bonds has emerged as a national strategist for the movement. And that means getting the word out to people far removed from the sculpted hills that surround her.

Says Ms. Bonds: “I find it funny that hillbillies from Appalachia are educating America about this.”

But providing that education has come with a price.

Ms. Bonds and others who have battled the coal companies have been threatened by neighbors and coal workers who see their activism as detrimental to mining, still a major industry here.

In addition, Ms. Bonds’s increasingly demanding family life and decade-long fight for the cause, which has involved years of cross-country travel to spread her group’s message, have brought her close to burning out.

“You just can’t do this kind of work forever,” she says.

Mining practices threaten not just the environment but also an entire Appalachian way of life that is tied to the hills, says Ms. Bonds. Generations have fished, hunted, and gathered ginseng, other herbs, and mushrooms. Ginseng, which can sell for as much as $300 per pound, has long supplemented the meager incomes of many locals, Ms. Bonds adds.

“We’re the last vestiges of un-homogenized Americans,” she says. “We’re the last rooters.”

Reaching Energy Consumers

Her group, along with a handful of others in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, is on a mission to connect that message to energy consumers in the rest of the United States, where burning coal creates more than half of the electricity used in American homes and businesses. More than half that coal comes from West Virginia.

Most Americans don’t know all that, says Ms. Bonds. What’s more, they have no idea of what getting at that coal does to the Appalachian landscape.

Although mountaintop removal, which uses a mix of fossil fuel and ammonium nitrate in its explosions, is safer for miners than chipping out the coal underground (nationwide, 47 subterranean miners died in 2006), it denudes mountains of hardwood trees and destroys the habitats of birds and mammals.

Following a move by the Bush administration to further relax federal regulations pertaining to mountaintop removal and the use of mining waste, coal companies can now legally fill stream valleys with debris from mountaintop-removal projects.

Near their mining operations, the companies often build earthen dams to hold back billions of gallons of waste and “slurry,” the sludgelike byproduct that can include toxic metals that come from washing coal. There are as many as 150 such slurry impoundments in West Virginia today, according to state records.

Those pools of slurry have resulted in floods in the hollows below, residents say (and the coal industry disputes), and the deaths of more than 100 people in the last 35 years. A broken dam in eastern Kentucky, in October 2000, resulted in the spill of 300 million gallons of slurry, an event the Environmental Protection Agency called, at the time, the worst ecological disaster in the history of the southeastern United States.

Meanwhile, the shudder of explosions during mountaintop removal damages nearby homes. Coal companies often don’t let nearby residents know when the blasting and mining will start, Ms. Bonds says.

So far, activist groups estimate, more than 400,000 acres of West Virginia’s mountains have been blasted and bulldozed. If companies use all the permits currently active throughout Appalachia, an area the size of Delaware could be leveled by 2012, activists say.

The blasts rip up trees that process the greenhouse gases created when coal is burned, Ms. Bonds says. “We tear down forests that cool the earth to get at coal that heats it up,” she says. “The whole climate issue is right here, right in West Virginia.”

Seeking Support

To spread the message about the costs associated with using coal, Coal River Mountain Watch gives presentations to Rotary Clubs, at college and universities, and in neighborhoods across the country.

This year, Ms. Bonds and other activists drove a rented van paid for partly by the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club to present their case from Florida to California, attempting to make connections with groups fighting the effects of coal mining in states like Idaho and Utah. On these road trips, they have sometimes screened Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice, a documentary by Catherine Pancake, a Baltimore filmmaker, in which Ms. Bonds and other grass-roots activists are featured.

On road trips, Ms. Bonds passes around a jar for donations, also encouraging supporters to make a gift later by check or via the Coal River Mountain Watch Web site. For an organization with an annual budget of $250,000, the donations help pay part of the $44,000 it takes annually to mount road shows and other consciousness-raising trips.

Much of the rest of the organization’s support — about 80 percent of it — comes from foundations. Coal River Mountain Watch uses a chunk of that money to sue coal companies. In many cases it has won the first round in court, though almost all of those victories have been overturned by federal appeals courts. The group also organizes local residents.

Economic Pressure

On this particular day, Ms. Bonds spends part of the midmorning talking about fund raising with Janice Nease, the co-director who founded the organization 10 years ago after watching the hollow she grew up in laid bare by blasting and scraping. They focus on how to best to tap their membership list of about 500 people. Membership dues, they note, brought in $1,200 earlier this year.

More-lucrative sources might be tapped by writing more foundation grant proposals: Some regional grant makers have regularly supported Coal River Mountain Watch.

But more help has come from national grant makers, like the New World Foundation and the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, both in New York, and the Richard and Rhonda Goldman Fund, in San Francisco. Most of the grants the group receives are for specific projects rather than for operating support. And with an annual, $30,000 operating grant from the Public Welfare Foundation due to end by next year, Coal River Mountain Watch will have to find some replacement dollars.

During their morning discussion on finances, Ms. Bonds and Ms. Nease get a call from one of their group’s organizers, who is preparing to talk today to parents whose children attend an elementary school in nearby Marsh Fork that is situated next to a Performance Coal Company loading facility and slurry dam. Coal River Mountain Watch and other groups want to take Performance Coal to court, arguing that coal dust, chemicals from processing coal, and the prospect of a dam burst present a hazard to the children. Mobilizing parents and residents could create momentum for the lawsuit and apply more pressure to state regulators.

After a visitor asks whether the outreach worker will be canvassing door to door, Ms. Bonds and Ms. Nease laugh. With so much of the local economy at the mercy of the coal industry, tensions run high. “Sometimes, people will chase you off their property with a shotgun,” says Ms. Bonds.

For that reason, organizers are urged to practice “warm calling,” contacting only people who are sympathetic to the cause and are referred by group members or neighbors. Often, Ms. Bonds will pepper agencies with Freedom of Information Act requests to find out who has been complaining to the state about coal-company operations. Then she will call them and ask if they would like to help.

But too often, she and her organizers are shunned.

“Sometimes, people want to tell their story,” Ms. Bonds says. “Other times, they don’t want to be seen with you. They’re either scared that there will be retaliation or they don’t want to endanger a coal job one of their relatives has.”

The industry provides a lifeline to many families in a state that has few opportunities for work, says William B. Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, a professional association that represents companies that produce 85 percent of the state’s coal. The coal industry’s $300-million in tax payments add up to 13 percent of the state’s gross annual product, Mr. Raney says.

“I have a hard time seeing why those folks would want to take a man’s job,” he says.

But mining jobs have been dwindling since the 1950s, when automation came to coal. Mountaintop removal extraction requires fewer workers than underground mining. Fifteen years ago, the industry in West Virginia required 28,000 workers. Now, even during a boom period for coal, a little more than 23,000 West Virginians toil as coal workers (not including related contractors), according to state figures.

As Ms. Bonds frequently points out, strong financial years for coal companies in recent years haven’t translated to good times for residents. Many of West Virginia’s coal counties suffer from poverty rates of 30 percent or more, according to U.S. Census data.

“We have this mono-economy that’s done nothing for us,” she says. “One reason Coal River Mountain Watch exists is to push the state to diversify the economy, so we’re not so beholden to coal. They’ve promised us things will get better because of coal for 100 years. Where is the prosperity?”

A Visit Back Home

Around noon, Ms. Bonds jumps in her Toyota to inspect some areas near mining operations. Very little mountaintop-removal mining is visible from state roads, but the drive one mile south to Marfork Hollow does feature the stark contrast that is backwoods Appalachia: The lush beauty of the region’s ecology serves as a backdrop for rusting trailers and burned-out public buildings.

As she arrives in Marfork Hollow — parking in front of gates that announce the property belongs to the Massey Energy Company — she briefly recounts her past.

Ms. Bonds’s family lived in Marfork for nine generations. Her forebears worked black seams or plowed the land behind the ancestral home with the help of mules. Residents allowed their hogs to roam free in the woods to feast on acorns.

Along with 50 other families, Ms. Bonds lived happily in the hollow, raising her family and working as a waitress at Pizza Hut, until Massey began blasting and mining behind their homes 13 years ago.

Shortly afterward, the Little Marsh Fork River became polluted. Drinking water began to smell like eggs. Clothes drying on the line became coated with coal dust. Children, including Ms. Bonds’s grandson, developed asthma. Bears and snakes, displaced by mining, came down from the hills.

“You had to be on the lookout whenever you crossed your own lawn,” Ms. Bonds says.

Eventually, people moved out, selling their homes to the coal company for a fraction of the value they held before mining commenced, she says. Ms. Bonds ended up several miles away. Because she fears retaliation for her activism, she won’t say where.

At 1 p.m., Ms. Bonds walks into Carrie’s, Whitesville’s lone eatery, in search of a hot cup of coffee. Three decades ago, she says, the town of 500 had several more restaurants, plus two high schools, a bowling alley, a roller-skating rink, and a supermarket. Today, all those buildings are boarded up.

As soon as Ms. Bonds’ T-shirt “Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining” is lettered on the front, “Save the Endangered Hillbilly” on the back — is spotted, restaurant patrons stop her. The son and a granddaughter of a 90-year-old woman living in nearby Sylvester say they have come to move the woman out. The coal dust in the town, where many people are elderly, is too thick, they say, and older folks are being besieged by young thieves on the hunt for drug money.

They ask what they can do to help the cause.

“We’re educating America,” Ms. Bonds tells them. “If people can call their congressmen, and write letters to the editor, that would do some good.”

One by one, others trickle in. A young man tells how his house is cracking because of coal-company explosions. Another woman from Sylvester stops to commiserate. A waitress chimes in.

Only when a coal-company employee enters for lunch does the conversation die.

‘My Hard Drive Is Full’

Ms. Bonds returns briefly to the office, where she informs her group that she has corralled more supporters while at Carrie’s.

Then, in midafternoon, she is off to Marsh Fork Elementary School to see how Performance Coal is maintaining its slurry impoundment. Once there, she inspects the dam and the trees planted on it from afar, eyes the Big Coal River, from which the company siphons water to wash its minerals before shipping them, and notes the acrid smell in the air — no more than 50 yards from the school.

“They’re breathing in coal dust, diesel fumes, and chemicals — things that are worse than what underground miners breathe in,” she says.

But she also makes sure to point out the trees and berry bushes up in the hills. She explains how true “sengers” — people who pick ginseng — keep the crop alive by throwing the seeds uphill so another plant will bloom the following spring.

She has few doubts that she is fighting the good fight, she says.

But fighting takes energy. She puts in as many as 60 hours per week at a job for which she is paid a part-time salary of $17,000 a year. Years of worrying about her group’s finances, the reach of its activism, and the strain of watching the lush terrain around her change for the worse have taken their toll.

Family duties — caring for a sister who was paralyzed in an accident this summer, maintaining a relationship with a nephew who is in jail — are calling.

“They say that after 10 years of intense activism, you need a break. I can understand all that,” she says. “My hard drive is full and is getting slow. It needs some rest.”

Coal River Mountain Watch is looking for ways to lessen the load on her. But Ms. Bonds adamantly insists she is not going anywhere. At her home south of here, she revels in taking care of her dogs, feeding birds, and watching them from her back porch, which faces a mountain.

“A sense of place pulls at you here. It’s a trait that makes Appalachians who they are,” says Ms. Bonds, who regularly tears up when talking about her home turf.

As the sun begins to dip behind the hills beyond the ramshackle homes of what once was a company “coal camp,” Ms. Bonds stops her car to point to several, thin-stemmed purple-flowered plants along the roadside.

“See that? That’s the ironweed. They say they’re a symbol for Appalachian women. They’re pretty,” she says, her cheery demeanor changing to defiance. “And their roots run deep. It’s hard to move them.”