The social crisis in Appalachia: Part 3: Environmental disaster and private profit

By Naomi Spencer and Rosa Lexington:

Millions of dollars worth of coal heaped in uncovered train cars pass through impoverished Appalachian towns each day, covering the ground and coating buildings and automobiles with coal dust. The enormous wealth produced in the region is owned and controlled by a few large companies and individuals, while the majority of the population lives from day to day, many without basic necessities.

Export pier at Newport News, VA, where European and Asian-bound ships are loaded with coal from central Appalachia

In the pursuit of greater profits, the coal industry has expanded its surface mining operations in the coalfields region. Since 1999, coal operators have acquired surface mining permits on some half a million acres in Kentucky and West Virginia, primarily in the coalfields region. This has boosted extraction rates with the employment of far fewer workers, while worsening the environmental health and public infrastructure. The political establishment and regulatory agencies from the federal level down, along with the trade unions, have facilitated this state of affairs.

Surface mining operations in Letcher County, Kentucky near the site of the 1976 Scotia mine disaster, which killed 26 miners and inspectors.

Surface mining has increased dramatically in West Virginia since the 1970s and 1980s when coal miner strikes shook the industry. In 1982, 19 percent of total mining tonnage was the product of surface mining; by 2006, the proportion had reached 42 percent. In all, some 1.2 million acres—one in 10 acres, a cumulative land area the size of the state of Delaware—have been surface mined in the region, according to data from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mountaintop removal is a form of large-scale surface mining that involves blasting away trees, topsoil and up to 1,000 vertical feet of ridges to expose deep-running coal seams. Millions of tons of debris are dumped into adjacent valleys, blocking natural stream paths and increasing runoff. These extensive “valley fills,” along with logging operations that have denuded hillsides, have worsened flash flooding and left valley towns more vulnerable to mudslides. Silt runoff has also filled creek and riverbeds, making overflows much more frequent with heavy rains.

FEMA trailer camp near Gilbert, West Virginia, to house residents displaced by repeated flooding

These operations often take place in close proximity to residential areas, including towns where a large percentage of residents were once employed in mining.

On June 12 of this year, several counties in southwestern West Virginia were hit by flash floods, prompting disaster declarations and the deployment of the National Guard. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) opened three “Disaster Recovery Centers” in three of the affected counties on July 6, three weeks after the disaster.

The June floods were the latest of a series that have struck coalfield towns in the past few years. The World Socialist Web Site spoke to many residents who said they were certain that recent mountaintop removal operations had exacerbated the floods. However, political and environmental officials deny a firm link between the disasters and mining operations.

Scores of residents in Gilbert, a small Mingo County community, and neighboring towns were living in trailers that had been brought in by the FEMA after floods last year. FEMA camps lined the highways in bare, unshaded gravel lots. Residents said families circulated through the camps on a waiting list, with some making repairs on their flood-damaged homes only to be hit with new damage the following year.

On a perfunctory visit to the region, Democratic Governor Joe Manchin commented to reporters, “It’s a shame to come to the same areas every few months and see the damage over and over again.”

A June 14 report in the Charleston Gazette related that Manchin told reporters, “[H]e could not attribute the cause of the flooding solely to mountaintop removal mining,” and that because “there is no direct correlation,” communities would have to focus on “mitigation” efforts.

This tack effectively absolves the coal industry of legal responsibility and shifts the financial burden away from the coal operators onto public agencies and residents themselves. Many flood victims have no insurance; in the aftermath of other recent floods, residents have seen flood insurance skyrocket to thousands of dollars a month.

Residents have little legal protection against such devastation. After major floods in 2001, some 1,400 survivors filed a lawsuit against coal and timber companies; this was secretly settled in December. A similar lawsuit recently been filed by 20 Mingo County families against four mining companies is likely to be settled the same way. The coal industry views legal proceedings largely as a cost of doing business.

A landslide on June 15 in Mingo County, caused by a mine operated by an Alpha Natural Resources subsidiary, resulted in mud and debris being washed against two homes and over a road. Such slides are so common as to barely rate a mention in the local papers, though their impact on the quality of life for residents is incalculable.

The state’s regulatory agency, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), does little to enforce its requirements that strip-mining operations adequately assess the impact their activities will have on surface water runoff and contamination of local water supplies. Federal regulations, overseen by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining, are crafted to be largely voluntary and self-enforced.

The danger of flooding has been created through decades of extraordinarily reckless mining practices. Federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) data indicates that mountaintop removal valley fills destroyed an estimated 724 miles of Appalachian headwaters from 1985 to 1991, and more than 1,200 miles between 1992 and 2002. Regulators approved 1,600 valley fills from 2001 to 2005, estimated to have buried another 535 miles of streams. All of these operations were undertaken in violation of federal protections on headwaters, yet the government took no action against the coal companies on any of them. Instead, the OSM loosened regulations on what constituted “fill” so as to allow for sediment and toxins to be dumped in streambeds. At every level, the thrust of policy has been to conform the law to the practice of the violators.

Mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, manganese, beryllium, chromium, and many other toxic and carcinogenic substances are all contained in coal. Mining and coal preparation at processing plants release large amounts of these particulates into the groundwater every year with impunity. At prep plants, the coal is washed with other chemicals, producing a toxic byproduct known as “slurry.” The slurry is held in massive impoundment ponds or underground, including in old mine shafts, where it poses a significant risk of leaking into the water supply.

Hundreds of billions of gallons of coal slurry are held in impoundment ponds throughout the coalfields region. The region has suffered several major spills of slurry or thicker coal sludge after dam breaks. Most recently was December 2008 coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, which released 1.1 billion gallons of waste across 300 acres and into nearby rivers.

In 2000, over 27,000 Martin County, Kentucky, residents had their water supply contaminated by a sludge spill at least 30 times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill after a Massey Energy impoundment collapsed into mine shafts and spilled into the Tug Fork river below. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration fined Massey only $5,600 for the disaster.

In the 1972 Buffalo Creek Disaster, a slurry flood from the Pittston Coal Company impoundment in Logan County, West Virginia, sent 132 million gallons of waste into the valley towns below, killing 125 people, injuring over 1,200 and rendering the remaining 4,000 residents homeless. Widespread protests followed calling for the prosecution of coal bosses for murder and outlawing strip-mining, which combined with militant strikes by miners over job safety, black lung exposure and for improved living standards.

A number of studies have reported high arsenic levels in the water supplies of coal mining areas. Surface and private well water have chemical contamination profiles that indicate contamination with coal slurry.

The West Virginia state Department of Environmental Protection unveiled a proposal in May to set the legal limit of “total dissolved solids” (TDS) at 500 milligrams per liter in streams and waterways, double the federal recommendation. The department studies leading up to the proposal were prompted by complaints beginning in 1998 about unpleasant odors and tastes in drinking water drawn from the Monongahela River, and a massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek on the border between West Virginia and Pennsylvania last fall.

Coal mining is a major source of TDS. The dissolved solids under the proposal include chlorides and sulfates, which at high levels can be dangerous to aquatic life and cause unpleasant odors and tastes in drinking water. At the same time, DEP announced plans to weaken the state’s legal limit for iron in trout streams, from 0.5 parts per million to 1.0 parts per million.

Citizen and environmental advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against Massey and Arch Coal subsidiaries in the state for allowing excessive levels of selenium to contaminate the water supply. Selenium is a naturally occurring mineral that is released in excessively high levels as runoff and as a byproduct of coal processing. Patriot Coal, coal giant Peabody Energy’s newly spun-off Appalachian operation, has been charged with similar violations by federal Judge Robert Chambers at its massive Hobet 21 mountaintop removal operation.

In June, Chambers ordered a hearing, set for August, to consider issuing an injunction against the operation. In a 55-page opinion, the judge also pointed to the role of the state Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) in delaying the enforcement of standards on selenium. Chambers stated, “Hobet’s track record of non-compliance and the WVDEP’s history of acquiescing to deadline extensions and other modifications to ease permit requirements suggest compliance is not likely without intervention on the part of this court.” In January, the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved an expansion of the Hobet operations.

Even small amounts of selenium have been found to cause reproductive problems in aquatic life. A June 18 Charleston Gazette report cites the work of biologist A. Dennis Lemly, who found that the Hobet 21 operation has left the Mud River “on the brink of a major toxic event.” Lemly has identified that Mud River fish are suffering substantial deformities, including curved spines and both eyes on one side of the head. “If waterborne selenium concentrations are not reduced, reproductive toxicity will spiral out of control and fish populations will collapse,” Lemly stated.

Coal companies have been using “streamlined permits” issued by the Army Corps of Engineers in Appalachia—almost 80 percent of permit approvals since 1997—to get around the Clean Water Act. Such permits were supposed to apply only to “minor activities that are usually not controversial” and that would have only “minimal cumulative adverse effects on the environment.” The Gazette notes that mining operators have been permitted to purchase streams as long as they follow the formality of submitting in writing “a general plan” to minimize adverse effects. With this process, “There is far less regulatory scrutiny, or public notice and comment, than if companies go through the more rigorous individual permit process.”

The Dominion Resources power plant, south of Richmond, Virginia, where 11,000 tons of coal are delivered by train from southwest West Virginia or eastern Kentucky every day.

As a result, hundreds more miles of streams have been filled with debris and toxic waste. The Corps is now halting the streamlined process. However, the Corps has joined with the coal industry in filing a notice that they would appeal a court order to halt streamlined permits for strip mines in the southern coalfields of the state.

Residents of Williamson, situated on the Tug Fork River, told the WSWS that the city warned them not to drink the water or brush their teeth with it over six months ago, and that they never saw a subsequent announcement lifting the advisory. In nearby Matewan, residents related a similar situation, telling the WSWS that they had been told not to eat fish taken from the river. Some houses had no water available, Williamson residents said, because waste being stored in old mine shafts had leached into the groundwater.

Any improvement in water quality is made at the expense of the population. West Virginia American Water is seeking to raise rates by 15 percent to recoup the $50 million it spent on improved water lines and treatment plants beginning in 2008. If regulators approve the request, customers’ bills would increase by an average of $6.32.

A coal road in West Virginia. State funds subsidize the construction of private industrial roads.

The coal industry is buffered from any such costs. A new analysis of tax data by the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy found that the coal industry cost the state budget $97.5 million more than it paid in taxes and other revenues. The analysis factored in government outlays for inspections, the extensive damage to roads and bridges by coal trucks, and tax breaks. The report found that in 2009, the coal industry paid $307.3 million in severance, business, and corporate income taxes. The state devoted $174 million in tax credits and subsidies, and expended another $113.7 million to regulating mining and repair of the state-subsidized coal-haul roads.

Coal operators in Kentucky enjoy a similar disparity. According to the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, the coal industry accounts for $528 million in state revenues and $643 in expenditures, including $85 million in tax incentives for “the mining and burning of coal.” The report notes that the figure does “not include the many externalized costs imposed by coal including healthcare, lost productivity resulting from injury and health impacts, water treatment from siltation caused by surface mining, water infrastructure to replace damaged wells, limited development potential due to poor air quality, and social spending associated with declines in coal employment and related economic hardships of coalfield communities.”

27 July 2010

The social crisis in Appalachia Part 4: Youth prospects

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Bahamas Blog International

The social crisis in Appalachia (Part 2): An epidemic of ill health among the poor

By Naomi Spencer

Old hospital in Williamson, West Virginia

By virtually every measure, the working class and poor in the United States confront a crisis in social infrastructure. In the coalfields region of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia, where most residents are poor, and access to health care and other basic services is limited, the levels of disease, drug addiction, and other ills are a stark expression of the inequality that exists throughout the country.

Statewide, poverty stands at 22 percent in Kentucky, and the official unemployment rate is 10.6 percent. In West Virginia, unemployment rose to 9.5 percent in March 2010 from 6.9 percent a year earlier; 19.1 percent of West Virginians live below the poverty line. In both states, the median annual income for households is $10,000 below the national median.

In April 2010, Kentucky had 776,000 people enrolled in the Food Stamp Program, an increase of 75,000 over the year before. West Virginia saw an increase of 40,000 over the same period, to 338,000 enrollees. In Kentucky, only households with no more than 130 percent of the poverty threshold are eligible. West Virginia determines eligibility on a strict measure of assets and earnings, with no enrollee allowed more than $2,000 in assets.

According to data from Kentucky Youth Advocates, in 2008 the families on food stamps in the state received an average $210 per month; most families run short by the end of the month, especially in areas where grocery stores are few, which generally makes food more expensive.

Welch, West Virginia residents on McDowell Street, lined with boarded-up storefronts. Many towns in the coalfields have no grocery stores.

Currently some 790,000 Kentuckians are enrolled in Medicaid, including nearly one in every two children. Because of the economic crisis, the rate of applications has spiked, from 930 per month last year to 3,400 a month now. A Kaiser Family Foundation report released May 26 projected the Medicaid rolls in Kentucky could increase by 424,000 over the next several years.

At the same time that poverty and social need have grown, state legislatures have inflicted major cuts on public programs. The Kentucky budget approved on May 29 included budget cuts of 3.5 percent for many state agencies this year, with 4.5 percent cuts to follow next year. Cuts to public health and education funds have come down year after year in the state, which has staggered under billion-dollar budget deficits for the past decade.

Health spending is likely to plummet in 2011. The budget as it was passed in May included money to be provided by the federal government in the form of Medicaid matching funds, which were blocked in the US Senate. By the end of the year, the state faces an additional shortfall of $238 million in its health care budget.

Another area facing cuts is the Department for Community Based Services, which provides child protection services and processes food stamp applications. The department’s funding is slated to be cut by 8.5 percent. Reflecting the social instability wrought by grinding poverty and insufficient family services, Kentucky is currently the worst among the 50 states for the rate of child death from abuse and neglect. The state’s juvenile drug court program, which provides counseling and rehabilitation to minors, has also been eliminated.

West Virginia is one of the few states that did not record a deficit last year, because of its long-running program of austerity and paltry social outlays. In fact, the rating agency Moody’s Investment Services upgraded the state’s bond rating to AA1 on July 9, praising its “fiscal conservatism and consistent fund balances.” For the coming fiscal year, the legislature passed a budget with no spending increases in any services, in spite of the increasing need among the population.

The coalfields region of the two states is particularly exposed to budget cuts. Poor people from the mountains often have to travel hours away, to Lexington, Charleston, or other cities, to see a doctor who will accept Medicaid reimbursement. Others get treatment through charities, county health departments, and expensive hospital emergency rooms.

The more complicated one’s conditions are, residents explained to the World Socialist Web Site, the scarcer are the specialists and resources required to treat them. Public health clinics in many towns are understaffed and under-stocked, or lack the budget to operate regular office hours.

The lack of other basic infrastructure, including transportation and major roadways, further contributes to the difficulties of accessing care. Residents explained that in certain areas, helicopter evacuations were the only means of survival for accident victims.

Kentucky suffers a major doctor shortage, according to an analysis by the Lexington Herald Leader published May 27. The paper found that for every 100,000 people in the state, there are 213.5 physicians, compared to the national average of 267.9 doctors per 100,000 people. Just to reach the national average, about 2,200 more physicians would be needed to serve the state.

For the Medicaid-enrolled population, the shortage of doctors is particularly sharp. Many doctors, dentists, and clinics will not accept Medicaid patients because of low and late reimbursements for their services and an antiquated system of paperwork involved in filing with the state.

Dentists are especially scant in the mountains, exacerbating poor dental health rates. According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Dental Association, adult residents in the coalfield region of Appalachia suffered “a high rate of complete or partial edentulism [toothlessness], an infrequent orthodontic treatment, great unmet orthodontic need and less demand for orthodontic care than was suggested by their clinically determined need.”

Poor people, who often have the poorest nutrition and a higher incidence of tobacco use, are at a far higher risk of losing their teeth or developing life-threatening abscesses, infections, and cancers of the mouth and throat. Some of the poorest families receive dental care only through traveling dentists providing basic screenings as charity.

Medicaid reimbursements for dentists have not risen since the early 1990s, while the cost of care has spiked. In West Virginia, Medicaid reimbursements haven’t been increased since 1991, and the state cut its rates by a third in 1994. Dentists dropped out of the program en masse because they could not afford to treat poor patients. An October 2009 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and West Virginia Public Broadcasting identified a single dental practice in the tiny coalfield town of Oceana that treated 12,000 patients.

Further contributing to the high incidence of toothlessness in the region are the limited dental services that are covered by Medicaid for adults. In West Virginia, preventive care is not regularly included, even for infants and toddlers.

For adults over 19 years of age, reimbursed care is largely limited to emergency tooth extractions. Consequently, some patients who may be ineligible for fillings, but eligible for dentures, are compelled to have all their teeth pulled in order to quell excruciating pain. Patients who have their teeth pulled are sometimes forced to wait for their dentures to arrive several weeks later by mail, during which time they are unable to eat solid food, residents said. If their dentures do not fit properly, patients may have to wait weeks more for a refitting.

Without regular medical examinations and preventive care, residents are more likely to develop chronic or fatal conditions. Cancer death rates are significantly higher in rural Appalachia, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Cervical, colorectal, and lung cancers were all far higher—mountain counties in Kentucky recorded 196.6 cancer deaths per 100,000 population from 1994-1998, as compared to 166.7 per 100,000 nationally.

Mental distress and drug addiction are also on the rise. A 2008 study by the federal Appalachian Regional Commission found high prevalence rates for both serious psychological distress (16.1 percent) and major depressive episodes (10.6 percent) in the coalfields population, as well as painkiller addiction that is more than twice the national rate.

Extreme poverty gives rise to a myriad of other health problems. For example, the CDC published a study in November 2009 indicating distinct geographic patterns across the United States for the prevalence of diabetes and obesity. The study revealed high rates of the conditions in the poorest areas of the country, particularly in the Appalachian coalfields, where 30.9 percent of the population was obese, and 10.6 percent had diabetes.

In no small part, these conditions are due to “food deserts” that exist in the regions. Many distressed urban centers in the US, such as Detroit, Baltimore, and East St. Louis, have similar problems. When industry shuts down, businesses including grocery stores close up shop and leave the area. A shortage of grocery stores carrying fresh fruits and lean meats require residents, especially those who use food stamps and may have other problems of economic origin, such as lack of transportation, to depend upon convenience stores, gas stations, or discount stores, where primarily high-sodium and fatty foods are sold.

Residents in West Virginia border towns of Matewan and Williamson told the World Socialist Web Site that because of the differences in the Kentucky business tax code, most of the shops closed their doors and relocated across the state line. This left thousands of residents without easy access to healthy foods in towns with no public transportation systems.

The erosion of basic social infrastructure is a feature of widening inequality in the United States. The coal industry continues to reap billions of dollars each year from central Appalachia, paying less in taxes than it receives from the state, as the workforce is decimated, social spending is eliminated, and living standards collapse.

This process has contributed to the stagnation of the life expectancy in the region. Since the early 1980s, the coalfields have experienced a “reversal in fortunes” in mortality rates, according to a 2008 study co-authored by researchers from Harvard and the universities of California and Washington. In the worst-off counties, researchers found life expectancy either stagnated or dropped by 4 percent for men and 19 percent for women between 1983 and 1999. This marked the end of rising life expectancies among the poor—a trend that represented huge gains in medical technology, as well as the historic gains of the civil rights era and the “war on poverty” measures initiated in the 1960s in the coalfields region.

Since the 1980s, inequality has exploded, decent-paying jobs have been destroyed, and welfare has been dismantled. Consequently, both male and female life expectancies had a statistically significant decline in poor counties, averaging a loss of 1.3 years.

The social crisis in Appalachia (Part 1)

The social crisis in Appalachia: Part 3: Environmental disaster and private profit

24 July 2010

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