Rawl, WV
Mountain near Rawl
Friday, September 1st, 2006
Anna Santo, AV Staff
For millions of years pristine streams have trickled down the sides of the mountains surrounding Rawl, West Virginia. Wildflowers bloomed, animals came to drink, people bathed and diverse aquatic life thrived along the shores of the Tug River in the unnamed mountains of Mingo County.
Since Massey Energy began mountaintop removal coal mining operations 5 years ago, the same immaculate creeks and rivers have flowed thick with toxic sludge and sediment. They have ravaged surrounding ecosystems and gathered chemicals that leave bumpy red rashes and cause human hair to fall out. For the first time, sicknesses such as cancer, kidney and liver failure, and respiratory problems plague families in Rawl who have lived in the same house, bathed in the same creeks, and drank the same water for generations.
These mountains are missed by the thousands of people who are now forced to drink, cook and bathe in toxic water. It is missed not only for the water that it once provided, but also as a home, as a refuge, as a protected habitat for wildlife, and as a source of livelihood for the people of Rawl and surrounding communities.
Rawl, West Virginia
In 2005, scientists at Wheeling Jesuit University released a study indicating that water tested in private wells in Rawl, West Virginia exceeded federal drinking water standards for arsenic, lead, iron, aluminum, beryllium, barium, manganese and selenium. Though Massey Energy denied any correlation between nearby mountaintop removal mining operations and the elevated toxin levels, those found in the water were all toxins commonly found in coal sludge.
A branch of Massey energy admitted to having pumped millions of gallons of coal sludge into underground reservoirs near Rawl in the 1980s. Considering that ten years ago, a blast powerful enough to shatter windows in a nearby church and homes resonated throughout the Rawl area and that ten years ago, water in the same place started to go bad, it seems plausible that the same blast that destroyed the foundations of dozens of homes may have cracked the barrier between the buried sludge and the aquifer that provides Rawl’s city water .
Unfortunately, Massey Energy not only refuses to provide the city with clean water, leaving the city with rust-colored, opaque water flowing from their faucets- but they refuse to investigate the possibility that their mining activities may have contributed to the water that “runs out of the pipe like tomato soup: thick with orange sediment.”
Over 300 residents of Rawl have filed a lawsuit against the branch of Massey Energy that pumped the sludge underground, but to date have not received any compensation or easement.
