[LINK] "After the Spill: Life in West Virginia's Coal Country"

[rfmcdonald]

The Atlantic's Omar Ghabra describes how, in coal-mining West Virginia, a profound economic dependence on environmentally destructive and medically hazardous coal-mining is making criticism of that industry impossible.

Forty-two miles from the Freedom Industries facility, Junior Walk, a 24-year-old lifelong West Virginia resident, first learned about the spill on the radio while at the makeshift office for the Coal River Mountain Watch, a local environmental watchdog where he works. Walk wasn’t surprised. As soon as he discovered the magnitude of the spill, he loaded up the bed of his red 1991 Ford Ranger with two 55-gallon barrels full of water and delivered them to fire departments and other distribution centers in the nearby areas that were hit.

Walk grew up in the coal town of Whitesville in Boone County, one of the nine counties affected by the leak. When he was twelve years old, his family moved from a remote area, what he describes in his energetic Appalachian accent as “the head of a holler,” closer to town. “Our water used to be pristine before we moved,” Walk recalls. But their new home was close to a site used by nearby mining operations to deposit coal slurry—a thick, black sludge comprised of waste fluid produced in the coal preparation process.

This toxic waste is often injected underground into abandoned coal mines, a process that can easily result in the leaching of slurry into nearby groundwater. It wasn’t long before contaminated well water in their new home came out of the faucet, discolored and fetid. “I can’t even describe the stench. We didn’t drink it, but I had to shower in it.” For five years, until their home was hooked up to a municipal water supply, Walk says he went to school smelling like the contaminated water every day, and his family could not use tap water for drinking or cooking.

West Virginia’s economy has heavily relied on the coal industry for decades. In the 1950s, the industry employed some 125,000 people. Today, mechanization and the rise of natural gas have driven that number down to anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000. Wal-Mart, not the coal industry, is now the state’s leading employer. Like many West Virginians, Walk’s family members have been employed by the coal industry for generations. His father worked at a coal prep plant until he was recently laid off.

“When I was getting ready to graduate high school, I realized that I didn’t have the grades nor the money to go to college, so I was kind of stuck here,” Walk says. “Like everybody else in that situation around here, I only had a few options: go to work for the coal industry, sell prescription drugs, or join the military.” West Virginia has the highest drug overdose mortality rate of all fifty states. It also has one of the largest veteran populations per capita, and the lowest rate of adults with college degrees.