McRoberts, KY
Father teams up with KFTC to fight back
Larry Easterling
Excerpts from a May 26, 2005 interview conducted by KFTC staff
In the year 2000, TECO [Coal Company] moved in to Choppin Branch in McRoberts, Kentucky. We started having problems with blasting, dust, had some fly-rock go through the roof of a woman’s house. Then right around spring, when the rains come, my mother got flooded out five times in three months, major floods. We started calling the state mine inspector, and this and that, and didn’t get much accomplished.
A few of us [were] having meetings at the community center. Me and my mother went down there. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth got the community of McRoberts organized.
We had a media group, we had a group that talked directly to TECO, we had people who’d write letters, we had people who’d call folks; we were well organized. We started just getting ourselves together. We started contacting the media, we wrote our letters, made our phone calls, and things started happening then.
TECO, I believe they shut them down two weeks, if I’m not mistaken, for one violation. But come to find out was they had too much disturbed earth above there; when it rained there was more runoff than what the ponds could handle, and that there is what it flooded for. We put a stop to that.
[T]he state mining law book, I read it from the front to the back. I used a dictionary to read it with so I could understand it. Then I went on the citizen’s inspection with the mine inspector. I really made them mad because I knew probably more than they knew about it, after I read the state mining law book.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth has been very helpful, with me and the community of McRoberts. We’ve not had much problems out of McRoberts since then. We haven’t had flooding in McRoberts since then.
Seems like these big corporate businesses, they’ve got more money than what we’ve got, they’ve got more power. I think that’s a dangerous thing because they get their way with the poor people. Lots of folks out there, they have no faith, they have no hope in the system, the government and state mining laws. Whenever I talk to a group of people, I always try to build them up, to let them know that there are things you can do.
I also found out too that one person alone can’t do it. You can’t do it by yourself. You’ve got to have a group of people to do it. At every little demonstration I’ve been at with KFTC, we’ve always had a big group of people going with us. Right there turns heads, and it makes front-page headlines on newspapers. It draws attention to folks. Our government officials – they don’t like that. Our state department – they don’t like that. Because it makes them look bad.
I feel good to be a part of that, because lots of people here in Eastern Kentucky, they feel like there’s no hope, that its not going to get better. But it can get better. I believe that. I won’t stop believing that. We’re people too and we work hard for what we have. And we don’t want somebody coming in and destroying it. That’s taking money out of our pockets and taking money from our kids.
I worked for a strip job for about five, six years. I drove a rock truck, a triple-seven rock truck. I got paid $8.50 an hour to drive that truck. I would have to work 65 hours a week in order to bring home $502.27 a week. I won’t go back to the mines, I’d rather push a shopping cart and bag groceries for a living before I’d go back to the mines. I’ve never met a coal miner retired from the coalmines that came out healthy. They’ve all got black lung, or they’re down in their back.
On a strip job, when they file a permit, to mine so many hundreds of acres of land, in the first permit stage they’ll say “we’re going to replace all this - reclamation with hard wood, put the forest back.� But at the end of the job, they revise this permit, or they just put on Kentucky fescue. The state mining law book reads that when they put this reclamation back, it is supposed to be for higher or better use. I can’t see what the Kentucky fescue’s higher and better use is for.
There’s a problem with the flooding too. We’ve got a forest floor, in the woods. When we do get these hard rains, right there soaks the water up. When they do the big reclamation jobs, with that new grass sowed on the ground, that doesn’t hold the water back.
My interest is a future for my kids and everybody else’s kids. Because right now, kids get out of high school, or out of college, and they head out of here. There’s nothing here for them. Parents even tell them to go somewhere else besides the coalmines. I’ve got two boys. I don’t want them to leave here. I’d like for them to find them a good job here. But the way it’s looking right now, I would probably tell them to leave here too, because there’s nothing here for them.
