I lived at the head of Choppin Branch Road in McRoberts with my wife Debra, just beneath TECO Coal’s mountaintop removal strip mine. Living beneath this mine has been a frightening experience. TECO set off explosives daily that would shake the entire house. I had to go underneath the house more than once to try and repair damage to my foundation.

The blasting was bad, but it was the floods of 2002 that destroyed us. My house and my son’s are located just beneath one of TECO’s valley fills. During the spring and summer of 2002 we experienced more than four flash floods that would leave rocks as big as a cow’s head in my garden. These floods got up under my son’s floor and the clay and mud shifted the posts under his house. One flood even washed out his tool-shed.

The worst came on Christmas morning in 2002. My lovely wife decided that the challenges our family was facing were simply too great and she took her life that morning. She left eight letters describing how she loved us all but that our burdens were just too much to bear. There were a lot of things that lead to my wife taking her life, but TECO’s aggravation was the straw that broke her will. She had begged for TECO to at least replace our garden, but they just turned their back on her.

I look back now and think of all the things I wish I had done differently so that she might still be with us, but mostly I wish that TECO had never started mining above our home. Protection for families like ours is suppose to come from the state and federal regulatory agencies, but instead they look the other way as coal companies destroy entire communities for the sake of profit.

In loving memory of my wife Debra Faye Burke.

Granville Burke
October 2003

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