McRoberts, KY
Communities Ruined for Profits
Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
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
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:25 am
I taught school at McRoberts Elementary my first year of teaching. I will never forget it! It would have been 1983-1984. I often think about the kids and wonder what happened to them. I am sorry Granville for all of your trials and I hope things are better for you, but they will never be the same. Prayers.
April 12th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I am sorry about your wife’s tragic ending, but sir you cannot blame coal mining for that. I was raised by a man who mined coal and he worked hard so that I could have the things I have, graduate college, and have a better life. I just wonder what you do for a living? Do you work? Most people I find that don’t like coal mining are those that are not profitting personally from it and want a settlement from the coal companies for doing nothing. I don’t know that is your case but mostly yes… if your cry had just been for the memory of your wife, you would have failed to mention TECO 10 times in hopes they will monetary compensate you. I have lived around coal my whole life and thank god everyday that we have it so that we actually have an economic infrastructure in Eastern Kentucky. These working men pay taxes on their salary that most likely keep you eating each month. Again, don’t place blame like that on hard working men, it is just not fair.
February 27th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I just happened to be browsing the internet, when I came across this. It broke my heart to read it, I guess mainly because I know the truth behind it. The man who wrote this is my uncle Granville. The day his wife took her life, my dad and I we’re the first ones to get there. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I also remember the floods that year and what my uncle and his family went through. They lost so much, you might can say they lost it all. They did live right below the work site and had to put up with alot from TECO. When he talks about their garden being ruined (not just once, but numerous times) this wasn’t a garden planted for leisure activities, this garden supplied them with the very food they depended upon to survive. Their family was the hardest hit in every way possible, yet they came out with barely anything. I’m sure my aunt was struggling with many problems, but I do believe TECO’s actions were to blame also. I guess these people didn’t have the right lawyer or know how totalk to TECO’s reps. TECO knew from the start that they would be able to swindle this family out of anything and everything and they did. It hurt me to see what somebody (raised by coal) had wrote about my uncle’s story. Your words make him sound like a nobody, someone who never worked a day in his life, somebody looking to get a free dollar from the hard working coal miner’s. For your information, my uncle has worked his whole life, working many years in a machine shop that worked on mining parts. That’s why now he gets social security, because he did work his whole life. My father worked his whole life in and around the coal mines. He gave his whole life to the mines to raise his family. That’s why he’s 57 and has been hooked to an oxygen machine for the past several years. I was raised by a coal miner, so I do respect the hard work they do. But I also know the coal mine’s could be more safe in the mine’s and outside of the mine’s. Coal has raised alot of us, but it has also destroyed alot of us as well.