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Reflection on Women's Stories from the MTR and Climate Change Tribunal

Re-post of an article worth reading about the effects of Mountain Top Removal of coal.

Rebecca Barnes-Davies, Presbyterian Church Eco Justice

Reflections and words from my trip to Charleston, WV for the Central Appalachian Women’s Tribunal on Climate Justice

The Central Appalachian Women’s Tribunal on Climate Justice on May 10, 2012 was a powerful and meaningful event of local women lifting up their voices and engaging in action to protect the health and integrity of their families, their communities, and their land. I was honored and energized to be in this gathering of powerful grassroots advocates who are working hard to take care of the things they love. The speakers and leaders of this event were local residents who shared their personal stories of witnessing to the devastating effects of Mountaintop Removal (MTR) Coal Mining in their homeland of Appalachia. Some of these local women have won prestigious awards, gained national recognition, and/or been interviewed in documentaries for their great efforts. They come from a four state area: TN, WV, VA, and KY.

These women’s lives have been drastically impacted by MTR and I was convicted and inspired by their stories. Hearing their testimonies, I am ever more committed to continue to pray and work for an end to the destructive practice of MTR that is damaging this part of God’s creation. I hope you will join me in these efforts, both from reading these glimpses of local residents’ stories and from knowing our biblical, theological, and denomination mandate to care for God’s creation.

People of faith have every reason to engage this struggle as a core part of their Christian vocation and identity. As Presbyterian Church USA policy from 1990 says, “God’s work in creation is too wonderful, too ancient, too beautiful, too good to be desecrated.” God’s work in the mountains of the southeastern United States is: the work of these powerful women, this vital stand against MTR, and the beauty and health of Appalachian communities.

This gathering last week was one in a series of global tribunals that help to lift up the particular vulnerability of women to, and strength in the face of, climate change. These tribunals have given voice and recognition to women who live all around the world and are fighting for justice in their environment. Reflections from this Appalachian tribunal will go to the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development this June 20-22, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I will be at the Earth Summit as part of the World Council of Churches delegation, and will be sharing with Presbyterians and others back home my sense of the developments there. This local Women’s Tribunal was a great first step to this important global conference and will influence my participation there.

Nearly twenty women shared their personal stories, testimonies, ideas, and demands related to Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. While nothing can replace being in person to hear someone’s story, here are some of the words and stories I took away with me from local residents that I want to share with you. I cannot verify that my hand-written notes captured exact quotations, so although I will represent them (for clarity) in quotation marks, this is my disclaimer that the actual wording may have been slightly different!

“It’s not possible to destroy our mountains without destroying us. It’s not possible to poison our streams without poisoning our children….For all the voices you hear today, remember there are others who have been silenced or intimidated.” From a woman who can remember watching the blasting on the mountains from her bedroom window since she was 5 years old.

A 25 year old woman, who knows that the legacy of environmental degradation in her mountains is to “stunt Applachians’ health before they’re even born,” wants MTR stopped because she desires that it be “safe to birth my future children in my homeland…living where our families have lived for generations.” Knowing that in Appalachia “we need healthy babies for a bigger, brighter future,” she argues that we must undo the “shackles around our good health.”

A nurse takes note of “strange and serious illnesses” in her home territory (after going away for nursing training and then coming back home). She was particularly stunned by an extremely rare illness that took the life of her cousin (an illness with which only 20,000 people have ever been diagnosed) that is now the diagnosis for another person in her community and one more nearby. She says there is not one home located near coal mines that has been untouched by serious illness.

A woman whose 12 year old daughter lost a classmate to cancer—the same daughter having severe sinus troubles because of MTR (including the membrane in her nostrils being cut by the lose rock dust the family had to breathe)—shared her anger that her daughter’s health was being sacrificed to the energy demands of cheap coal in this country. This woman’s family stayed sick the entire time they were blowing up the mountain above their home. To add insult to energy, the reports from the coal company discounted the health disparities in these communities affected by MTR coal mining because the case studies didn’t take into account “consanguinity” (in-breeding)! (If anyone is looking for an example of environmental justice (i.e. environmental racism and classism), here it is! Outrageous!)

Coming from a family that has been in coal mining for generations, one woman shared that in her 20 year saga of trying to protect her land, it has been an ongoing battle that takes a ton of work, and unfortunately “people here are frightened of the industry.” In many families, people worry “they’ll take my pension…burn down my house” and she shrugs as she speaks, knowing their fears are realistic and part of the fabric of this struggle. She has fought long and hard, pushing politicians who often won’t do anything, which she recognizes is because “it is political suicide to try to do anything” against coal in this part of the country. Yet she has hope, even as there’s another round of fighting ahead (the coal company has yet again filed permits for the land near her home, permits that have been denied multiple times). She smiles and says, “Get all these ladies together and do what women do and that’s win the battles!”

Another woman whose male relations are all in coal mining, and who herself was a stay-at-home mom, shared her story about being “thrust” into this movement by the coal company itself. How could she have a choice when this MTR coal mining “can turn lungs into concrete,” and when constantly “babies are wakened by noise” and when a toddler in his bed was crushed by a boulder falling into his house from the mountaintop above? Sludge gets into the water. She declares, this is “equivalent to a war zone.” She wants her children to know that they have choices. So when her legislator, agreeing with her in principal but nervous to take action says “we have an awful lot of coal” she retorts “we also have a lot of sun and air.” She is clear that “they mine coal where we live, not we live where they mine coal.” Families and communities come first. And, besides, “Nothing else matters if we can’t breathe the air and drink the water.”

Telling a story about an old preacher who laid a dollar over the scripture selection about it being hard for a rich person to get to heaven (and then asking someone who wasn’t seeing the point, “well, can you see it now?!”) another woman focused on following the money in this debate. She has seen the medical expenses in her community, the cost of roads (driven on by too-heavy coal trucks) go into the creeks, the flooding in her community and wants these economic costs to be part of the discussion. When people talk about the economic boon of coal mining, do they consider these things that matter to local residents?

When discussing the effects that MTR coal mining has on the local community, one woman shares that the coal mines “after they ruin your community and quality of life, then they come in and offer money to buy you out.” She has seen 30 communities dry up and disappear in her 44 years of living in the area. She says “you can’t have Mountaintop Removal and communities…it’s one or the other.”

Another woman talks about the chemicals in water, air, and land. One family reportedly has a continuous flame in their well because of the explosive methane that seeped into their water supply from mining. Birds and fish are dying, she explained, and property values plummet because homes are covered in coal dust. Mountain ginseng and mountain flowers are buried. Family cemeteries are sometimes made inaccessible because of coal mining. One cemetery was pushed over by a bulldozer. All of these things break the sense local residents have of belonging to the land.

A woman who started standing up to the coal company in her town started explaining how the fabric of community is torn by the coal company: “fear.” If her truck was in her neighbors’ driveway, her neighbors got in trouble for associating with her. She lost her best friend. She stopped being asked to serve on volunteer organizations because the coal company wouldn’t give donations to any local organizations that activists, like her, were a part of (even if they didn’t have anything to do with the struggle against coal mining). People were afraid and felt controlled, and they got alienated from each other.

The long-time custom of “porch sitting” is another example of how communities are harmed by coal mining, says another woman. You can’t sit on your porch with the huge trucks going by, coal dust spewing, she explained. MTR coal mining also reduces the labor pool, so that creates tension. Drug use has gone up, the more people get depressed and look for outlets to escape.

A “stubborn holler dweller” (as she was called by the EPA) stood up to the coal company in her area and received serious death threats. Encouraged to move to a hotel, she stood her ground. With a 6 ft chain link fence, security cameras, and attack dog, this local woman would “not be put out of my grandfather’s home,” even when people were caught sneaking into her property. It is her home and she has a right to stay there.

“Mom and Dad’s chimney was pulled away from the wall” and they “lost access to water” because of coal mining, another woman said. When her parents lost access, the coal company graciously brought a barrel of water over, pouring bleach in it when it was obviously full of things you could see floating around in it. This woman, not trusting anything, took a sample. Her sample showed the water was not fit to drink. This struggle sometimes is just “too hard… people decide to move.” Her parents stayed, but one huge blast and shaking of the house brought a heart attack to her Dad. A year later, after having been moved away, her Mom died “crying to go back home.” This woman tells us “I feel like an orphan…People have no idea what we go through.”

A local pastor reports that the local river isn’t one where you can put your feet in or catch fish from. “No baptisms in this river,” she says. Meanwhile the receiving chairs on her porch are covered in coal ash. The prayer concern list at church has “so many health problems.” She believes in the statement from Martin Luther King, Jr. that the church should be the headlights, but that in this case, the church is the taillights in standing up for the people in Appalachia against coal mining companies.

At first in denial over the devastation of MTR, having bought land and built a dream house, another local woman was forced to accept it when her well water turned bright orange. She shares resigned disbelief that the burden of proof was on her (and her pocketbook) to prove that it was the coal company’s fault. This was a “huge wake-up call,” she says. She quickly came to realize that many state officials have a kind of culture of “customer relations” with miners that they don’t have with residents. Meanwhile, she found that when she sampled her water, she had to send it 70 miles away (refrigerating it that whole time) because the company’s water tester will “switch your samples for tap water” so again, “the burden of proof is on me.”

These women are strong, wise, and courageous. I was honored to be in their presence and hope that you will join me in prayer and action to help them protect their homes. In addition to the strong stance that the Presbyterian Church USA has long taken—that low-income communities not be disproportionately impacted by negative environmental practices—in 2006 the PCUSA General Assembly approved a resolution to abandon the use of mountaintop removal coal mining. We believe that the earth is God’s, and all people and all parts of creation are to be valued, respected, and tended with care. I pray that we will indeed join our hearts, minds, and bodies to this faithful call and work for an end to MTR.

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Lead More Toxic To Kids

Lead is more toxic to children than previously believed and the federal government has once again lowered the blood level of concern threshold.  The federal Center for Disease Control recently reduced the “action level” from 10 micrograms per deciliter to 5 micrograms per deciliter. 

The agency stated that this new action level means that “children will be identified as having lead exposure earlier, and parents and doctors can take action earlier.  The action came about because a national committee of experts recommended CDC change the blood level of concern.  Their recommendation was based on reviewing a growing number of scientific studies that show that even low blood lead levels can cause lifelong health effects.  For more information, go to www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead  



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Burn Baby Burn

Last week, the Chicago Tribune ran a series of articles that uncovered a devious relationship between the tobacco and chemical industries. It’s hard not to be outraged – no matter how cynical you might be – by the tactics used by the chemical companies that made flame retardant products to convince the American public that furniture needed to be treated with chemicals to protect life and property in the event of household fires. This 4-part series, titled “Playing with Fire,” makes clear the calculated efforts of this segment of the chemical industry to dupe the American public.

The first article in the series lays the background to this extraordinary expose. “These powerful industries distorted science in ways that overstated the benefits of the chemicals, created a phony consumer watchdog group that stoked the fear of fire and helped organize and steer an association of top fire officials that spent more than half a decade campaigning for their cause.”

The source of the information used in this series was internal memos, speeches, strategic plans, correspondence and other materials among more than 13 million documents made public after the tobacco companies settled lawsuits related to health claims brought by victims. These documents also reveal the influential role that Big Tobacco played in the extensive use of toxic chemicals in American furniture.

According to the Tribune series, this relationship began when Big Tobacco came under attack when smoldering cigarettes sparked fires leading to deaths (see Part 2 in the series). One choice facing the tobacco companies was to make a fire-safe cigarette that was less likely to start a fire. But the industry insisted that they couldn’t make a fire resistant cigarette that would still attract smokers. Instead, they shifted attention to the furniture (ands away from cigarettes) and promoted fame retardant couches and chairs. To achieve this goal, Big Tobacco poured millions of dollars into an “aggressive and cunning campaign to ‘neutralize’ firefighting organizations and persuade these far more trusted groups to adopt tobacco’s cause as their own.”

Part 3, “Distorting Science,” describes how the makers of flame retardant chemicals manipulated research findings to promote their products and down play health risks. The article tells us that “the industry has twisted research results, ignored findings that run counter to its aims and passed off biased, industry funded reports as rigorous science.” There was also a prominent burn doctor speaking in support of flame retardants as part of a campaign of deception and distortion on the efficacy of these chemicals.

Lastly, Part 4 describes the pathetic efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose mission is to safeguard America’s health and environment, which allowed generation after generation of flame retardants onto the market without rigorously evaluating the health risks.

This series makes it clear that fire retardant materials used over the years are not effective and some pose serious health risks. They have been linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility. Lots of household furniture is full of these chemicals. Worse, they escape from the furniture and settle in dust that is particularly dangerous for infants who crawl and play on the floor constantly putting things in their mouths.

If ever you had doubts about the lengths that big business will go to deceive and “pitch” the public, including politicians and bureaucrats, look no further than this series. It‘s an education in corporate behavior gone awry.

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Cape Fear moms are fearless advocates for their children’s health

Over the weekend, mothers from Kansas and Texas visited our Cape Fear region to give a self-less and invaluable glimpse into what our future could look like. These moms raise children near coal-fired cement kilns, wake up from late-night rail cars carrying hazardous waste behind their homes, and have children attending toxic schools. These moms live in Midlothian Texas and Chanute Kansas, also known as cement towns. Selene Hummer and Alexandra Allred have given our community the shell-shock we needed to keep fighting Titan’s proposed cement-manufacturing and strip-mining facility slated for construction along the already mercury-impaired Northeast Cape Fear River.

While Alex and Selene shared their heart-breaking stories, I couldn’t help but pan the audience to see the faces of our local moms, who have been the backbone of the citizens’ movement against Titan for four years now. Although the stories were hard to listen to, I felt the positive energy from moms strategizing on their next hard-hitting questions to hopeful elected leaders, while their face-painted, happy and healthy kids ran around and enjoyed the outdoors.

“I loved hearing from Alex Allred. She‘s right on the mark that mothers have a protective instinct that is often times absent from corporate interests, state agencies and politicians. We know when something is good for our kids or not,” says Julie Hurley, local mom and organizer with Mothers United. “In the case of added air pollution and potential water waste and contamination in New Hanover County, Titan Cement doesn’t pass the ‘good-for-our-community test.,’ In fact, their proposed project looks like harm to our kids and community for the foreseeable future.”

Mothers United is a newly formed group of moms who advocate for a healthy community. Their point of view, as parents looking out for their kids, is an undeniable force and one that any politician better brace themselves for.

“We’re a support system for each other,” Ashley Reed, of Mothers United said in a recent interview for local women’s magazine, WILMA. “We set up play dates and movie nights every third Thursday to get our children together, but while the children play, we’re planning.”

This group now representing almost 300 people is multi-tasking, like only moms can do, and I cannot wait to see the results, which I’m confident to say will be a healthy, breathable, swimmable, fishable, lovable future for everyone to enjoy, including our children.

To follow the Mothers United group, please check out their Facebook page, by clicking here.
For more info on the fight against Titan, visit www.StopTitan.org

Alex Allred is a mother of three who lives in Midlothian, Texas. Alex visited Wilmington, North Carolina to share with citizens her experiences of raising a family in the ‘cement capital of Texas.’ Moms and face-painted children attended a Picnic in the Park on April 29, 2012 in Castle Hayne, North Carolina. This unincorporated town is the proposed site of Titan Cement, which will be the largest cement manufacturing facility and strip-mine in a coastal setting. Mothers United began advocating for children’s health in February of 2012 and has grown to a group of local moms, representing close to 300 people.

Guest Blog by Sarah Gilliam

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Designed to Fail – An inside Look at Why Regulatory Agencies Don’t Work

How often have you sat in a public meeting with a government representative at the front of the room responding to questions from the public with answers that make no sense? Maybe his answers are legally accurate (that is, they are doing what is required by law), but are they following the spirit of the law in involving members of the public in the decision-making process? Rarely does government engage the public as an equally or even as a partner.

Have you ever wondered why it always seems to be this way? Have you ever asked why does the government do things the way it does? A fascinating look into what makes government tick was published today in Independent Science News. The article, “Designed to Fail: Why Regulating Agencies Don’t Work,” provides an insiders look into how government works, or more to the point, why it doesn’t work. The author, William Sanjour, retired in 2001 after spending 30 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), mostly working on its regulations. Sanjour provides unique insight and offers counter-intuitive advice. He tells us that most people think you need to “fill the regulatory agencies with honest people who won’t cave in to special interests. “Give them more money, more authority and more people.” Instead, he says that “concentrating all legislative, executive and judiciary authority in one regulatory agency just makes it easier for it to be corrupted by the industries it regulates.”

Sanjour goes on. “I’ve learned that the way to achieve true regulatory reform is to give regulatory agencies less money, less authority, fewer people but more intelligent regulations.” He points out that by dispersing regulatory authority, rather than concentrating it, it would make corruption more difficult and make it easier to write more sensible regulations.

Public interest comes and goes, he says. “The interest of Congress, the press, and the public can only be maintained for a few months or years. There are lots of other things going on. But there is one group whose interest never wanes or wavers. The life, the existence, the future of the regulated industry depends on the pressure it can exert on the regulatory agency. At least that’s what the special interests believe.”

Here’s what Sanjour believes needs to be done:

1) Agencies which enforce regulations should not write the regulations.
2) The revolving door should be shut.
3) Whistle blowers should be protected, encouraged and rewarded.
4) To the greatest extent feasible, those who the regulations are intended to protect should participate in writing and enforcing the regulations.

The full article is available on-line at http://independentsciencenews.org/health/designed-to-fail-why-regulatory-agencies-dont-work/