Courtesy of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

Coal companies have been mining in the community of Island Creek in Pike County Kentucky since the 1960’s. Back then there were about fifty families that lived in Island Creek. But once the strip mining started in the 1980 families started to move out. As recently as 2004 there were still about twenty families living in Island Creek, that was until Clintwood Elkhorn, a subsidiary of Tampa Electric Coal Company (TECO) moved in, now there are only five families left in this rural isolated community.
The few families that remain have organized with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC) to protect their property and the mountains and streams of their community from the mountaintop removal and contour strip mining going on all around them. Right now they are pinched between Fishtrap Lake, a reservoir created by the Army Corps of Engineers, and TECO’s mining operation.
This once thriving rural community is now inundated with dust and mud from the mining operation, flash floods that washout the roads, blasting that shakes their houses, massive trucks and heavy equipment on their once tree lined dirt road, and now the well water they rely on has been contaminated. The creeks that used to flow all year long are now dry after being buried by the valley fills from the mining operation.
Faced with the challenges of an outlaw coal company as a neighbor the residents of Island Creek have been reaching out to other communities impacted by mountaintop removal strip mining as well as people living down river towards Lexington and Louisville. The residents of Island Creek along with other KFTC members have been raising the question what is the true coast of coal mining on rural communities across Appalachia? After a hundred years of coal mining are coal producing states like Kentucky really better off? If we continue to allow the sacrifice of communities such as Island Creek what are the implications for the rest of the planet?

Doug Justice Island Creek, Pike County
My name is Doug Justice. I was born and raised in Island Creek. I moved away for 19 years but returned home in 1977.

I worked in the coal mines for 22 years and that’s how I made my living and supported my family. I have never seen an outfit treat a community the way TECO Coal has done us.

This past fall seems that it has been the worst it has ever been. This outfit here is making us eat the dust. They’ve been running the dozer and rock trucks on the road, tearing our road apart. I’m tired of the big rocks on the county road. There’s a big rock in the ditch line by my house that’s been there for a month.

I’m tired of them taking the county road and making silt ponds out of them. When I go home I don’t know what road to take they’ve moved it so many times.

TECO COAL has no respect for the residents of our community. They tore our telephone lines down and left them down for over two years. They’ve torn the TV cable lines down and never put them back up.

It’s a shame how their treating us out here. It’s a shame how they’re pushing the mud into our streams they are ruining our waters. We used to be able to catch minnows. I caught a craw daddy black as coal. TECO COAL has killed everything in our streams. There’s no kind of wild life in our creeks anymore.

It’s a shame we can’t prepare for our children and grandchildren.
I don’t want to be bought out. I absolutely can’t stand the lifestyle their making for us but I won’t give it to them. This is my home!

TECO COAL needs to obey the laws and treat the people with respect and fix the road. They need to quit doing their mining the way they’re doing. They’re destroying our timber, streams and mountains all to pieces.

KFTC frequently sponsors Mountain Witness Tours that visit communities directly impacted by the day-to-day realities of mountaintop removal mining. This is a chance for visitors to see the destruction of mountaintop removal first hand and hear the stories of the people who are forced to live with it. Whitney Hammons of Louisville attended a Mountain Witness Tour to Island Creek in Pike County.

We went there [Island Creek] and we spent the afternoon eating lunch and talking with people who are from that area, and who are impacted by what the coal companies are doing there. We got to ride around with them and they took us to their houses. They showed us the dirt roads; they told us about not even being able to use their water to drink - the health department has told them not to even use their water to cook with.
I really think that seeing what’s happening is very important. You can look at pictures and people can tell you about it, but you just don’t really realize the destruction that it is unless you experience it and see it. In comparison to the beautiful mountains, you just see miles of dry dirt, where it was a wilderness, and trees.
I think it is right to honor and propel the voice of the people who are directly affected. These people speak for the land. They’re not really speaking for themselves so much as they’re speaking for the planet because they’re so close to the earth, they’re so close to those mountains. They’re actually the voice of the earth. And they’ve always been; they live of the earth. So it’s really something that should be heard and listened to – especially now with all the destruction that’s happening.

Whitney Hammons
Louisville, KY

To learn more about KFTC’s Mountain Witness Tours visit www.kftc.org or click on KFTC.

MY PAIN begins early with thunderous noise from big machines.
MY PAIN gets worse as the day continues
As my insides are blown apart and
MY PAIN grows as the big machines move
Scooping up my insides and dumping
Them over what is left of me.
I can only silently watch as I’m being destroyed
And with the silent cries of MY PAIN
I realize I am dying.

I scream for them to stop but they do not hear.
I give them hints of MY PAIN and death
But the mudslides and dried-up streams go un-noticed.
I hear the men laughing and their jokes about how much of me
They’ve moved and shoved today and as to how much of my insides they
have hauled away. I CRY…

MY PAIN becomes intolerable as I die knowing that to them my death will mean nothing.
Tomorrow they will move on to another to inflict their pain, destruction and death.

Written by: Brenda Urias as told to her by A MOUNTAIN

Kentuckians For The Commonwealth - KFTC
P.O. Box 1450
London, Kentucky 40743
(606)-878-2161

To those who believe our mountains and streams are special, necessary and worth protecting:

Our names are Rully and Erica Urias and we live on Island Creek of Grapevine in Pike County. Our home and our community is surrounded by coal mining going on in every direction in the mountains around Island Creek. We want to tell you what life is like when coal mining takes over your community, and then tell you how you can help out.

There is no aspect of our lives that coal mining has not affected in some negative way. We used to live in a beautiful place. When you drove down the road it was like driving through a tunnel of trees. It was beautiful, like a fairy tale experience. Now it is a sad and ugly place. All the trees have been cut down along the road so the coal company could move in their giant equipment.

That was just the beginning. The road has now gotten so bad from the coal company’s use that school buses won’t even run up the gravel road to our community. And we hope no one up here ever needs an ambulance. We either eat the dust from the coal trucks or hope we don’t get bogged down in the muck on wet days. Our neighbor Doug Justice twice had to use his own equipment to remove a mud slide that came into the road off the coal company’s mining operation.

The coal company has even invaded the privacy our home. The blasts that the company uses to blow up the mountain also shake our house. It can be strong enough to knock pictures off walls and stuff off of shelves. One night about 7:45 p.m. the blast was so bad that it took 10 minutes to calm down our two-year old daughter, Makayla.

The water from our well has been ruined, too. We can’t drink it and now we’re even afraid to give Makayla a bath. She loves to take baths and like most children will try to drink the water. We can’t let her play with any toys that she can put water into and drink from because of the contamination of our water. We bought her a kiddie swimming pool last summer and filled it up and it had black specs floating all through it. Our daughter cannot even enjoy her own yard.

All the while the mountains that make this place so beautiful are disappearing so that the companies can get out the coal as cheaply as possible. They blast the tops off of the mountains and push it over into the valleys where we live. We’re sure the companies just want us to go away, but we’re not. Our family has been here for generations and we plan to stay. But we wonder what kind of future Makayla will have if something is not done to control the coal companies.

We are not without hope. Our outlook changed dramatically last year when we started working with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. KFTC has been around for 25 years helping people like us and our neighbors take control of our future. Since we got involved with KFTC we’ve gotten the attention of the coal company and county officials. KFTC has been very supportive and has helped us find ways to educate and fight for ourselves. They teach us how to be leaders in our community.

It means a lot, knowing we’re not alone. Before we had KFTC we had nobody. I didn’t know there were other people with the same problems going through the same thing we were. Now we know that the problems we experience are faced by hundreds of families who live in the coalfields. KFTC helps us join together so that we speak and act with one voice. The more voices the better we can be heard.

You can help by joining us and becoming a member of KFTC or by making a donation to support KFTC’s work. It’s a great investment because you’re investing in Kentucky’s future. We can’t think of a better way to invest in the future than to preserve what we have now — like our homes, water and mountains. The more supporters, the stronger our voice and we want to add yours.

Thanks for listening to our story and for taking action to make Kentucky a better place for all of us.

Rully and Erica Urias

Rully Urias Island Creek, Pike County

My name is Rully Urias. I have lived in the right hand fork of Island Creek 23 years of my 26 years of life.

I have never witnessed such blatant disregard for average hard working American people with such negligence towards environmental protection of some of this country’s most beautiful land.

Our county road drainage tiles are clogged up, TECO COAL have cut our trees down and left them lying piled up beside the road. Heavy rains will cause our road to wash out. The coal trucks go flying down the road without any regard for our resident’s safety. The over excessive blasting shakes the house and terrifies my 22-month-old daughter. Our water is unsuitable to bathe in but we have no choice but to use the contaminated water. Mistakes can be made and lessons can be learned but to stand by and let it happen time and time again is pure disregard for local, state and federal mining regulations that should be enforced by our elected officials.

Coal mining industry is a way of life in Eastern Kentucky and as much as we would want it to stop it’s not going to stop. I’ve worked underground and surface jobs and I’ve been forced to break laws and do poor jobs when jobs need to be done right. This needs to stop! If honest hard working American people want to earn a decent pay and honest living we have to step up and let the big coal corporations such as TECO COAL know that we are not going to stand by and let them rape our land, destroy our history and run our heritage into the ground.
I for one encourage everyone here today to take a step forward and take an initiative to contact your local, state, and federal government; write letters and make complaints. Make phone calls and speak your mind! Because until we band together the big steel toed boot of the coal industry will be right on our behind. Kicking us all the way into submission of their rules and destruction. We need your support we need TECO COAL to stop the destruction. Thank you.

Brenda Mutter Urias is a resident of Pike County, Kentucky, and an active member of the non-profit community organization, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

My name is Brenda Mutter Urias. I’d like to welcome you to my home here in Island Creek of Phyllis, Kentucky.

My father’s dad came to settle in this area around 1825. He built a home and raised a

large family. He was a farmer. My father built the house I’m living in back in 1955 with lumber he sawed himself from a particular type of tree taken from the mountains that surround the homeplace. He built it solid and with pride just like his dad before him. It was a place he was proud of and he took comfort in knowing his family would always have a place to call their own.

We had good well water, beautiful mountains, clear streams and clean air. We were poor in material things but we were also rich. Most of our food came from the garden. We had fruit orchards and, of course at that time, farm animals.

My dad was a miner and he fought to help establish the UMWA so that the workers and their families would have better pay and medical coverage. He died at the age of 68 from black lung. He had one son and his one wish was that his son would never go into coal mining to make his living. Gladly to say, he didn’t.

Today, the beautiful mountains have been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining. The streams are buried and have dried up. The air is full of dust and the well water is contaminated. The house is not as solid as it was just a few years ago. The nearby blasting is taking a toll. The mountains around the house now also poses a threat to our home in regards to flash floods and mud slides. I fear daily as to what may happen to my home. I don’t want to see it destroyed but sometimes I feel I’m watching a slow death to it and to the environment that surrounds it.