SCRATCHING THE SURFACE FOR BIG JOHN

Big John stands over 300 feet tall and can scoop out rock and dirt the size of a house in one big bite. To make his job easier, a large surface area is drilled and filled with hundreds of explosive charges. This loosens up the rock just enough for Big John to slice through it easily.


But these blasts are using much more firepower that mining has ever used in the past -- as much as 200,000 pounds in a single blast. That's 100 times the amount of explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing -- more than enough to shake every house in town. And that's exactly what has been happening for the last few years at Mountaintop Mining communities like the one at Blair. But there is still disagreement over the standard by which to measure whether damage has occurred. Some say if a house moves less than 1 inch per second there is no damage, while others say that limit is only 1/2 inch per second.

The WV Department of Environmental Protection investigates literally hundreds of complaints about blasting each year. These complaints come from citizens who must endure stray flyrock, vibrating homes, damaged water wells, and endless clouds of dust. Coal company officials have responded that there is "no malice intended" but even so, the citizens of communities like Blair don't find a great deal of comfort in that statement. They wonder how coal companies can be totally free from any responsibility, when the DEP has issued over 11,000 violations for strip mining since 1994. But less than 1/10 of citizens' complaints about blasting result in citations. One reason for that is that citizens have the burden of proof in blasting complaints. The presumption favors the coal companies. Even if citizens have a pre-blast survey (and most do not), they must still prove that the blasting was the actual cause of any damage to their property, an almost impossible feat for most of them.


State legislator Arley Johnson tried to change that in January 1998 with a bill that would shift the burden of proof to the coal companies, and presume that any damage done within 5000 feet of a blast was caused by that blast. The legislature, however, wanted to study the issue for another year, and did not vote on the bill. In an passionate speech before the House, Johnson pointed out that citizens are suffering around these blasting sites, and that they need a change in the laws that will give them some relief, that mountaintop mining can be done "in a lot better way."


At a forum in Huntington, WV near the end of 1997, the vice president of Arch Coal (whose subsidiary companies operate at Blair and at Kayford Mountain) said that the mining industry operates under the strongest and most far reaching environmental laws in the world. He said that sometimes residents may be a little "inconvenienced and in rare instances their property may be harmed, but that the environment is protected even during the process of mining, and that complaints of damage are isolated incidents." Tell that to some of the former residents of Blair, who were bought out by the coal companies, because it is much easier to mine coal when no one is around. Less complaints that way. Those who have stayed are wondering why most of the vacant homes have been burned to the ground, and watching as the mountain above Blair is quickly being blasted into dust.





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