Pauline Canterberry and Mary Miller are known as the “Dustbuster Sisters,” due to their efforts to make the Massey Energy Corporation adequately control the emission of coal dust from Elk Run, a nearby mine.

The following is the text from a comment letter written by Pauline Canterberry to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection on November 3, 2005.

Re: Public Review Permit No. U5003-5
Haskel Boytek, Permit Supervisor

Comment:
For the past eight (8) years, life in the community of Sylvester West Virginia has been a living Hell of black coal dust, nerve shattering noises and broken promises, while we have watched our homes be destroyed, and respiratory illness invade our bodies, after the Department of Environmental Protection issued Elk Run Mining permit # D21-82, without considering the impact it would have on our community. Many of those problems still remain unsolved.

I sincerely pray the issuance of permit # U 5003-05 doesn’t start a chain reaction of the same problems, but instead the DEP has learned through their mistake and will make provisions in this permit to protect the Community of Sylvester. We do not oppose coal mining, but we do demand that it be done responsibly so as to protect our Town and its Citizens.

We request that all blasting to open the driftmouth for this mine be kept at a minimum to protect our homes from further damages.

We request warning lights or signs be placed at the entrance to this facility from Route #3 as it is located in a blind curve.

We request that all trucks hauling coal from this facility before the beltline is finished be enclosed traveling loaded or empty to prevent coal dust leaving them while traveling through Sylvester to the Elk Run Facility, that their speed not exceed thirty (30) miles per hour, to limit damage done to an already broken and cracked highway.

We request the Belt Line which will cross Route #3, Coal River, the Railroad Yard and any excess land be completely covered from exiting one mountain and entering the opposite mountain to assure no coal dust leaving it and entering the airway.

We request Elk Run protect and secure the Cemetary that lies at the railroad entrance of the Belt Line, where Benjamin White, who the Town of Whitesville was named for, is buried.

We request the sewage facilities for this permit be connected to and serviced by the Boone-Raleigh Public Serive District PSD as each resident in this community is required to do, this will eliminate any doubt of fecal contamination draining into Round Bottom Ranch, the Town of Sylvester and the Coal River, a river as reported from a study released this past year on the Coal River Watershed, which is already over contaminated with fecal matter.

We feel these requests are just and in compliance with the West Virginia Codes for mining and reclamation and the public service district, as well as the welfare of the Citizens in the community of Sylvester.

Massey Energy as sole owner of Elk Run Mining Company spends millions of dollars begging people to believe they are good neighbors, when all they need to do is earn it in their everyday actions and deeds.

In the future I respectfully request that all meetings pertaining to the welfare of the citizens of the Sylvester community be held at the Sylvester Community Center, it is adequate and available to accomodate such a meeting, our population is sixty (60) percent elderly seniors who are unable to travel over congested highways, yet deserve the respect of being able to participate in matters that are important to their lives.

I sincerely hope this is a much wiser and compassionate representation of the DEP and Elk Run Mining officials than we faced November 1, in 1997, which was a black day for the Community of Sylvester, for they left us with no alternative than to fight for our very existence, which we intend to do till Justice once again prevails.

Submitted by:
Pauline Canterberry
Resident, Town of Sylvester, WV

Things done to bring attention to the coal dust problems in the Town of Sylvester, West Virginia, and to seek a solution to stop the problem:

Compiled by Pauline Canterberry and Mary Miller, March 2006.

1. In 1997 Elk Run Mining Company, a subsidary of Massey Energy, applied for a petition to install a preparation plant at their Elk Run Facility, knowing the prevailing winds in the Town of Sylvester area traveled west to east which would bring it directly over the town from the facility. The Mayor of Sylvester and the Town Council met with the Elk Run Mining officials and asked them not to install the preparation plant at that facility. Also, a meeting was called with the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) in November 1997, asking them not to allow the permit. They were given a petition bearing the names of 75% of the Sylvester residents opposing the permit. The DEP issued the permit and the facility went into operation on in April 1998. A mountain bluff was removed which protected the town from its present facility, and the preparation plant sat on a hill within 700 feet of the nearest residents.

2. Within a month of operating, our town began to be covered with coal dust night and day. The facility operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Town people began calling complaining to the DEP. For two years our complaints were ignored.

3. Finally DEP inspector Bill Cook (now deceased) began to write violations against Elk Run Mining. After three violations without any relief, we demanded a hearing before the DEP. At this hearing Elk Run Mining pleaded good cause showing, an inadequate screen was placed before the plant which didn’t begin to catch the coal dust, they planted pine trees in front of the facility which will take years to grow large enough to provide any protection, they installed a sprinkling system which, had they used it correctly, would have helped some, but it was only operated when the DEP inspectors were in the area. The Town still had no relief.

4. At this point, the coal dust not only covered the outside of our homes, but now was entering to the inside due to the fine consistency of the dust after being crushed inside the plant. We demanded a hearing before the office of Surface Mining to show video evidence of the coal dust. Homes and vehicles were covered with coal dust, as well as hugs billows of coal dust coming at us from the plant over the Town of Sylvester. With four members of the board present, all voted unanimously that Elk Run Mining was violating their permit and allowing coal dust to leave their facility and damage the residents in the Town of Sylvester. Elk Run was told to correct the problem at the hearing October 25, 2000. That order was appealed and we are still awaiting the Judge’s final decision on that hearing, which was July 3, 2001.

5. At this time, we decided to take our plight to the Legislature and ask for new coal dust laws to be made. We were told there was already Laws that protected the people, yet coal companies are not made to abide by this law, especially Massey Energy.

6. At this time, we decided to expose Elk Run Mining and Massey Energy for what they truely were, a corporation that harasses and destroys for their own personal greed and our politicians were refusing to uphold the West Virginia Laws because of being indebted to the coal corporations because of campaign contributions recieved from them.

7. We contacted the News Media to write stories and publish pictures of the destruction in Sylvester.

8. We continued to send mail to state and federal officials, only to be referred back to the DEP by form letters.

9. We joined environmental groups to expose Massey Energy. Coal River Mountain Watch in Whitesville, WV; Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in Huntington, WV; and the West Virginia Organizing Project in Logan, WV.

10. We joined protests against Massey Energy:
Massey Energy’s Charleston office
Massey Energy’s stockholder meeting, Richmond, VA
Massey Energy’s stockholder meeting, Charleston, WV
Massey Energy’s stockholder meeting, Chantilly, VA
Massey Energy Kanawha City office (tried to issue a list of demands to stop damages to Citizens, but were asked to leave the premises.)
Protested the President’s visit to Charleston to promote coal in WV
Joined Coal River Mountain Watch and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in law suit against Massey Energy owned Marfork Coal Company for black water spills into the Big Coal River, where Sylvester’s drinking water comes from. It is now in its second appeal to the Supreme Court with no decision.

11. In February, 2001, Sylvester residents filed a lawsuit against Elk Run Mining for damages to Property. We gathered Coal Dust samples from homes in Sylvester every seven (7) days for two and a half years, filming and documenting the trail. We filmed coal dust from Elk Run Mining flowing over from their facility and into the Town of Sylvester. We filmed coal dust being washed from homes and sidewalks, the attic of homes showing the accumulation of coal dust. We filmed balls of coal dust being emitted from the preperation plant and flowing into the air passage over Sylvester.

12. We attended meetings in Washington, DC and spoke at news conferences about the coal dust damages for citizens of southern West Virginia.

13. We fought overloaded Coal Trucks and got speed limits lowered in the Town of Sylvester.

14. We successfully fought a Synfuel Plant being built on Elk Run’s Mining facility.

15. We attended monthly meetings with Elk Run Mining officials seeking to end the dust problems.

16. We keep in constant contact with the DEP and Office of Air Quality about the conditions in Sylvester.

17. We sought and won the removal of a dam in Big Coal River at Elk Run Mining that had been built without a permit.

18. We gathered over 700 signatures on petitions to have Big Coal River rechanneled where mountaintop removal mining has filled it in with silt causing severe flooding.

19. We went on road tours through Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia showing power point presentations of damage caused to communities and citizens by mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, seeking help from other State Legislatures to support the Shey-Polane Protection Clean Water Act.

20. We attended the Babcock-Reynolds Foundation Seminar seeking grant funding for Coal River Mountain Watch to enable them to continue their fight against mountaintop removal mining and its injustice to citizens being destroyed by it.

21. We contacted state representatives seeking warning systems to be placed in areas where sludge impoundments are built, in case of breakage.

22. We are serving as intervenors in a law suite against Marfork Coal Company for black water spills from their impoundment into Big Coal River where citizens’ drinking water comes from.

23. We campaigned during elections to elect politicians who aren’t paid by coal companies.

24. We protested in Appalachia, Virginia against a coal company who was working on an unpermitted mine site, causing the death of an innocent child in his sleep when a huge boulder came crushing down the mountain into his bedroom.

25. We protested a permit to install the second silo 100 feet from Marsh Fork Elementary School where the present silo is causing the children to become sick, also to prevent enlargement of the sludge impoundment above the school as the MSHA reports it already has leaks in it.

26. We requested changes in the permit at Elk Run Mining for an underground mine, to save the Town from further damages. These requests were granted.

27. We lobbied at West Virgina State Legislature for the Resolution for Sludge Safety project. The resolution was introduced.

28. We supported Coal River Mountain Watch in its nation Mountain Justice Summer movement.

29. We opposed a proposed settlement between DEP and subsidaries of Massey Energy, Inc.

The following letter is from the Elk Run permit manager to Haskel Boytek, a permit supervisor.

January 9, 2006

Re: Permit U-5003-05
Roundbottom Powellton

Dear Mr. Boytek:

Elk Run Coal Company has prepared this response based on the review of the public comments recieved for the above referenced permit during our meeting held January 9, 2006. Those in attendence at that meeting were Paul McCombs, Wayne Persinger representing Elk Run Coal Company and Kenneth Maxwell, Greg Ball, Tracie Kitchen, Haskel Boytek, Tom Satterfield, Dallas Runyon, and Terry Ramey representing the DEP.

Blasting: Blasting concerns as it relates to damage to their homes will be handled according to current blasting regulations. Pre blasting surveys will be conducted on residences within one half mile of the permit area. Any damage to residents’ homes will be based on this survey.

Coal Haulage: No coal haulage will occur after 11 pm. All loaded coal trucks will be covered and will maintain a 30-mile per hour speed limit within the Sylvester City limits. The road to the mine site will be paved to minimize tracking of mud onto Route 3. Route 3 will be cleaned, as it currently is, weekly unless it requires additional attention while coal is hauled. Flashing warning lights and signs will be installed at the intersection of Route 3 and the mine access road. Upon completion of hauling coal through Sylvester, Route 3 will be evaluated by Elk Run Coal Company and the Department of Highways to determine if any damage in excess of the normal wear and tear has occured. If a determination has been made as to damage a cost will be agreed upon by both parties at that time.

Dust: The entire beltline will be enclosed from mountain to mountain. The permit has typical details that show how that will be accomplished. The beltline will have a dust suppressant system on it to further minimize dust at the transfer points. Note that these transfer points will be totally enclosed as well. The cleaning of the road will also help with the dust concerns.

Cemetery: A cemetery was located that was in the path of the proposed overland beltline. This belt line has been relocated to avoid this cemetery. The cemetery has been located and a chain link fence has been constructed around the perimeter of the cemetery. In addition repairs have been made to some graves where they have settled.

New Road Construction: Concerns were raised about the construction of the access road above Route 3. During the construction of this road fencing material will be maintained ahead of the construction to keep material from rolling over the hill and onto the highway or into residents’ homes. In addition the contractor will station a spotter on Route 3 with radio communication with the equipment operators to watch for falling debris, which could pose a hazard to the citizens.

300-foot Waiver: Residents that live within a 300-foot radius of where the mine site access road intersects with Route 3 are being asked to sign a waiver to allow the permit limits within 300 feet of their residences. This waiver is required so that the mine access road can be widened to all for easier access from Route 3. This is necessary so that the coal trucks can have easier and safer access to Route 3.

Impoundment: The impoundment issue does not have anything to do with this permit. However, all impoundments must have an emergency warning plan approved annually by the DEP.

Sewage System: Elk Run Coal Company will be connecting to the local PSD for its water and sewage for its mine bath house use.

Meetings: Elk Run Coal Company and DEP discussed that any future public hearings should be held at the Sylvester Community Building. This community building has ample space and is more convenient to the residents of Sylvester. In addition it was discussed that Elk Run Coal Company representatives meet periodically with the Sylvester town council to discuss various issues.

If you should have any questions or comments, please contact me at 854-3505.

Sincerely,

Paul McCombs
Permit Manager

by Sue Sharp [reprinted with permission from http://www.wvcoalfield.com ]

Sylvester is a small community tucked neatly away in the mountains of the southern coal fields of West Virginia. According to the dictionary, a community is “all the people living in the same place and subject to the same laws.” As anyone who has ever lived in a small community knows–that really doesn’t describe a community very well.

A community is a place where people really care about each other, a place where people still believe in helping each other. People in a community rake leaves or shovel snow for their elderly neighbors, and they are there to lend a hand when there is an illness or death in the family. In the summertime, people sit on their front porches and talk to their neighbors. They have cookouts, and invite the neighbors over to swim in their pool.

Over the past two and a half years, I’ve noticed a change in the town. It started slowly, at first, hardly noticeable. It was like one day you woke up and noticed that not too many people were sitting on their porches. You didn’t see people out walking for exercise. Of course, I’d noticed the coal dust on my porch and in my pool, but I was waiting for someone to do something about it, just like everyone else! Soon people were comparing notes and swapping coal dust stories. It took awhile. West Virginians are easy-going people–slow to anger.

For two and one half years, Elk Run Coal Company has been dumping coal dust on our town and for two years, we have been trying to get something done about it! We’ve complained to the DEP, various other state agencies, OSM, gone before the Surface Mine Board, been to hearings, town meetings and even met with coal company officials. All we’ve come up with is EMPTY PROMISES!

To people who have never dealt with a problem like this, it is very hard to understand what we mean when we say we have a coal dust problem. They think: “Well, what’s a little dust?” I want you to use your imagination for me:

* Take two jars of baby powder and dump them in a large baggie–maybe the gallon size. This is where you have to use your imagination. Now pretend this powder is BLACK and that it contains diesel fuel and other chemicals that are used in making synfuel. Get a plate and dump about a fourth of the ‘dust’on it, set it on the coffee table and turn the ceiling fan on. Leave the fan on until the plate is empty. My, doesn’t the living room look nice all covered in DUST? Notice how it clings to the carpet, drapes and furniture. use your imagination and change the color of the dust from white to BLACK.

* Now take another quarter of the ‘dust’ and sprinkle it on your porch and porch furniture. Sit back and relax in one of the chairs. Doesn’t the ‘dust’ make your clothes look nice?

* Take another fourth of the dust and gently sprinkle it on your freshly washed car, remembering all the while that this is BLACK DUST. Be sure to start the car and turn the heater on so the dust gets sucked into the car.

* Finally, what do you do with the last quarter of the dust. It really doesn’t matter what you do with it! Because no matter where you put it–It’s going to get ALL over everything–EVERYWHERE!

People were JUST PLAIN FED UP! All of government was telling us: “No one should have to live like this!” But, yet we were.

The community pulled together and circulated a petition to make the company see that we were serious about getting something done about the dust level and to raise awareness about the problem. The problem with the dust didn’t start until the company moved the prep plant to our side of the mountain. Everyone who lives in a coal community knows that they will have to deal with some dust. We were all used to dust–but not at this level.

The mountain had protected use from the blowing dust until they cut the mountain down and put that prep plant right on top of it. That just opened the way, like a tunnel, for the dust to float down on top of us. A violation was written, and a cessation order issued. DEP Director Mike Castle rescinded the order and offered an alternative solution. The solution involved making the coal company pay the “town” of Sylvester $100,000 to use for a civic project so the miners wouldn’t have to be out of work for three days. Well, that didn’t take care of the problem! The dust is still there!.

Many meetings and hearings took place, and now the town of Sylvester is in mediation with the coal company and DEP to try to work out a way to…Well, I’m not sure that they’re trying to do.The only right, decent, legal thing to do is STOP THE DUST! How? Maybe that’s what they’re trying to figure out. I don’t know the answer to the dilemma. I have some ideas–but NO ONE IS LISTENING. The law says for them to prevent damage. How can anyone know how much damage has already been done to the tiny lungs of children who have played in the town for the two years that this has been happening? Is it going to take a 10-year-old child dying from BLACK LUNG Disease before our government does something to benefit the people just because it is the right thing to do?

We are prisoners in the very homes we worked so hard to pay for. We can’t use our porches, or porch furniture or swimming pools. In warm weather we can’t leave our doors or windows open because the dust comes inside. Our attics are full of coal dust; our insulation ruined and our sidewalks black with coal dust. It’s in our furnaces, our air conditioner filters and air cleaners. Even keeping the doors and windows shut doesn’t keep it out. Somehow it manages to creep inside the house and get in the carpet and drapes. When you dust, it’s on the tables and fan blades. sometimes it manages to get inside the kitchen cabinets. Children who play in the yard come in the house looking like they have been working in the mines. I’ve even found coal dust inside my computer. You wash it off today and tomorrow it’s back.

Unlike the Ghost Busters song “who ya gonna call?”– it seems to us that we don’t have anyone to call. The state agencies who should be ‘Dust Busters’ don’t seem to care. If they did, we wouldn’t still be putting up with this after two and a half years. We need an air quality standard for WV. EPA standards are NOT good enough for here! Dust is too concentrated in WV!

Builder Levy is an accomplished photographer of the West Virginia coal fields, and has generously allowed his writing and photographs to be reprinted here. http://www.builderlevy.com

Pauline was born in 1930 in Stanaford #4 camp near Beckley. At age 10, her family moved to Keith, a coal camp outside of Whitesville. At eleven, to be able to buy things for herself, she had a route in Whitesville, selling the Charleston Daily Mail. During high school she worked as a clerk at the Whitesville Dollar General Store where she remained upon her graduation, eventually becoming the store’s manager. Her husband, whom she married in 1948, was a coal miner and decorated WW II veteran. He had fought in the Battle of the Bulge, was captured and spent five months in a German prisoner of war camp, and survived a fifteen day forced march to Berlin. He died of Black Lung disease in 1991. Pauline and her friend and neighbor, Mary Miller and other residents of Sylvester have been fighting to get Massey Energy to control and limit the amount of coal dust that is constantly coating their homes from its recently expanded Elk Run stoker plant, and uncovered conveyors. Although the Sylvester residents have won some legal battles in court, and forced the coal company to put a protective plastic dome over the coal stockpiles, Elk Run (a Massey subsidiary) continues to operate and expand. Massey has been buying out and buying up every available home near their operation so that they could expand with impunity. Ms. Canterberry said of Massey Energy, “It seems like they want to expand us all out of the “holler” and make it into one big stockpile of coal.”

by Sandra Sleight-Brennan

“It’s a tragedy, an Appalachian Tragedy, what is happening in the coalfields now,” said Julia Bonds, a member of a group of West Virginia residents called Coal River Mountain Watch. “You drive the main roads and you see a mountain to the left and a mountain to the right. The problem is that you can’t see what’s behind that mountain.”What’s behind is a different story entirely. The landscape changes from lush, tree-covered mountains to a barren moonscape - the result of a mining practice called mountaintop removal.

Julia’s home, in the southern West Virginia coalfields, is one of the places where such mining is most common.“See those trucks down there?” said Virginia Rorrer, another resident, pointing into the distance at a group of six dumper trucks, looking like miniature toys. “Those trucks have tires that are almost three meters tall.” The scale made it almost impossible to comprehend.

To date, approximately 162,000 hectares, an area half the size of Luxembourg, have been flattened by mountaintop removal, or, as the mining industry now wants it to be called, ‘mountaintop mining’. Hundreds of metres of mountain are blown away in order to get at the thin seams of coal underneath. Once the coal is removed, the excess debris is dumped into nearby valleys and streams. Hundreds of thousands of hectares and over 700 km of streams have been covered by this ‘valley fill’.All this is done with the approval of the US Army Corps of Engineers and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the two regulatory agencies charged with protecting the state’s air and water and carrying out federal laws.

West Virginia is home to some of the richest mineral resources in the Appalachian mountain chain. The mountains here have been mined for over 100 years. Most families here have several generations of miners; many can trace their roots back to nearly 200 years. In the late 1800’s, their mineral rights to vast tracks of land were bought by out-of-state industrialists for a few dollars. Many people became miners to make a living and thousands died of miner’s diseases - black lung and silicosis. Deep mining, where shafts are dug into the ground, was replaced in the 1950s and 60s by strip mining, where large machines and blasting are used to eat into the side of a hill to get at the coal. For the past 20 to 30 years, companies have been required to reclaim and restore to the original contours the area they strip-mine. Yet even after all that time it is rare to see trees growing on this ‘restored’ landscape.

West Virginia is one of the poorest American states: it ranks 49th out of 50 states in household income, and many argue that this is partly due to an over-reliance on extractive industries such as coal and timber, and absentee ownership of those industries. The coal industry claims that mountaintop mining is benefiting the mountain-locked region by creating flat areas to bring new businesses and industries to this poverty-ridden state. Yet in the 30 years that coal companies have been levelling mountains only two per cent of the sites have been used for any development. Residents argue that in any case they are paying too high a price - their communities, homes and water supplies are being irreversibly damaged. The blasting is fracturing aquifers and the water table is dropping. And dust is coating the landscape. When it rains, inches of rock dust turn hard and kill vegetation.

Two years ago, citizen’s groups hauled the DEP and Army Corps of Engineers to the court, and in May the Federal District Judge ruled that the agencies must stop issuing new permits for mountaintop mining when there is no use designated for the valley fill associated with it. The ruling stated that the permits ran counter to the Clean Water Act’s goal to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of America’s waters. The coal industry denounced the ruling, saying it would mean the loss of 32,000 miners’ jobs in Kentucky and West Virginia over the next five years. “It used to be that when a coal company came in the community boomed,” says Larry Gibson, a Coal River area resident. “Now they move everybody out. They make it hard for people to live there. The community aren’t getting the profit; it’s just a handful of people at the top.”In fact, the people in the coalfields see less money from mountaintop removal than do their neighbours in the larger cities of West Virginia. Coal companies pay a severance tax on coal, which is collected by the state and then distributed to communities on a per capita basis. This means that the larger towns, which are typically farther from the coalfields, see more of the money than do the small communities who live with the disruption on a day-to-day basis.

Take for instance the town called Sylvester (population 300), where a coal-preparation plant crushes coal brought in from the surrounding mines.

Pauline Canterberry, 72, says that by August this year, the town had received only $300 from the severance tax. Yet in the past two years, Sylvester has lost its well water and is now coated with dust. “The state thinks it can’t do without it and they’re permitting a part of the state to be destroyed for the economy of the state,” she says.In March, the national Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) privately briefed US President George W Bush’s officials on the issues surrounding mountaintop mining. The contents of the briefing were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment. The documents say the area is home to “some of the best forest habitat in the world” and goes on to describe wholesale deforestation, toxic pollution, burying of streams and other environmental destruction being caused by mountaintop mining.

A scientific study by the EPA states, “Mountaintop mining operations in the Appalachian coalfields involve fundamental changes to the region’s landscape and terrestrial wildlife habitats.”

Larry Gibson of Kayford Mountain knows these changes well. His ancestors have been there for over 200 years - now he is the only resident, his 30 hectares of land virtually surrounded by more than 5,000 hectares of mountaintop removal.

“I was born in 1946; this mountaintop farm was thriving then,” he says. “All this land was filled with corn and sweet potatoes and that bank right there had honeybees. My daughter was born in 1987. When she was born, the mountains were gone.”

Sandra Sleight-Brennan writes for the Panos Institute

Courtesy of Bob Gates

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