Bell-and-York-Coal-Mining-and-Community-Identity1

Community Economic Identity: The Coal Industry and Ideology Construction in West Virginia*Shannon Elizabeth Bell we argue that to maintain their power and profits as their contribution t

Community Economic Identity: The Coal Industry and Ideology Construction in West Virginia*

Shannon Elizabeth Bell

we argue that to maintain their power (and profits) as their contribution toemployment declines, extractive industries have increased their efforts tomaintain and amplify the extent to which the “economic identity” of commu-nities is connected with the industry that was historically an important source

of employment We fit this argument within the neo-Marxian theoreticaltradition, which emphasizes the roles ideology and legitimation play in main-taining elite rule We illustrate this theorized process by analyzing the efforts

of the West Virginia coal industry, which, through its (faux) “grassroots” frontgroup “Friends of Coal,” attempts to construct the image that West Virginia’seconomy and cultural identity are centered on coal production Our analysisrelies on content analysis of various sources and on experience gained fromfield research We find that key strategies of the Friends of Coal includeefforts to become pervasively visible in the social landscape and the appro-priation of cultural icons that exploit the hegemonic masculinity of theregion These findings have implications for how industries around thecountry, and the world, work to maintain their power through ideologicalmanipulation

In the wake of industrialization and “postindustrialization,” resource extraction has played a diminishing role in the economies ofaffluent nations Although the United States, like other countries of theGlobal North, has continued to consume vast quantities of naturalresources, the contribution of extractive industries to total employmentand to total national economic production—as typically measured by

natural-* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Association meetings in San Francisco, August 2009 We are very grateful to Michael Schulman and the three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our paper and insightful sugges- tions for improvement.

gross domestic product—has been declining for decades This declineprimarily has been due to mechanization and to imports of raw materialsfrom the Global South This national-level pattern has manifested itselfacross the United States in a variety of communities that historically wereclosely connected to extractive industries, such as timber and mining.Due to this legacy, many rural communities are left with an identity tied

to a particular extractive industry, even though that industry no longerprovides many jobs or plays a dominant role in the local or regionaleconomy This tendency for many in a community to identify with an

industry that was historically important in the local economy, but that may

not be any longer, is regularly exploited by extractive industries tomaintain their political influence, which is often used to avoid govern-ment regulations aimed at ensuring the protection of the environmentand public health

Here we provide some theoretical conceptualizations for ing the development and perpetuation of community economic identitiestied to extractive industries, focusing on how economic identity is influ-enced by the active contemporary framing1efforts (Snow et al 1986) ofthese industries, which aim to define themselves as the backbone of localand regional economies We identify the industries’ framing work as

understand-“economic identity maintenance” and “amplification.” As part of thistheorization, we document how the contribution of extractive industries

to the economies of communities around the nation has declined matically while these extractive industries continue to create large-scaleenvironmental problems In particular, with the massive job losses that arethe typical outcome of the “treadmill of production” (Schnaiberg 1980),the bond that has historically maintained the loyalties of many ruralcommunities to extractive industries has been dramatically weakened, ifnot destroyed One of our key aims is to help determine why somecommunities continue to support industries that cause harm—forexample, by degrading the environment—while providing few (anddeclining) benefits, such as reliable high-paying jobs To illustrate theprocesses we discuss, we provide an empirical assessment of how the coalindustry in West Virginia attempts to suppress political opposition to thedestructive effects of coal mining by actively working to maintain and

dra-1 “Framing,” also referred to as “frame alignment,” is a process of “assign[ing] meaning

to and interpret[ing]” certain “events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists” (Snow and Benford 1988:198) In other words, framing is the way in which organizations package their message for their intended audience in an attempt to make the activities, goals, and ideology of the organization appear “congruent and complemen- tary” with the values, beliefs, and interests of the public (Snow et al 1986:464).

reinforce the centrality of coal to the identity of the state and localcommunities.

The Treadmill of Production and the Legitimation Process

The “treadmill of production” model is one of the most influential andimportant theories in the environmental sociology literature (Buttel2004; Foster 2005; Foster and York 2004) First introduced by AllanSchnaiberg (1980) in order to explain why environmental degradation

in the United States had grown dramatically since World War II, thetreadmill of production model argues that ecological destruction isintrinsic to capitalist (as well as some other) modes of production.Schnaiberg contended that the economic boom following World War IIled to increased production and profits, which were invested in thedevelopment of new production technologies These technologies camewith large operating expenses that needed to be financed, however, andindustries responded to these fixed costs by further increasing produc-tion so as to increase profits The increase in production led to anescalating need for natural resources, which were extracted at greaterrates and used in ways that “substantially increased both the volume ofproduction waste and the toxicity of wastes” (Gould, Pellow, andSchnaiberg 2004:300) This pattern of increasing extraction and degra-dation in order to generate greater and greater profits has become thecentral operating framework of the global market It is widely held thatthe treadmill of production, along with the ecological degradation itgenerates, is unavoidable unless the relations of production under cor-porate capitalism are changed (Buttel 2004; Foster 2005; Foster and York2004; Gould et al 2004; Schnaiberg 1980)

The effects of the treadmill of production are not limited to theecological, however; displaced workers are another result “Improve-ments” in technology lead to an increase in “worker productivity,” whichaccelerates the treadmill, “producing higher production and profits withfewer workers” (Gould et al 2004:306) This pattern, where jobs declineeven while production expands, is clearly visible in the case of natural-resource extraction industries, particularly timber and mining Forexample, in an analysis of the connection between timber jobs andfederal timber harvests, Freudenburg, Wilson, and O’Leary (1998) showthat following World War II, both in the Pacific Northwest and in theUnited States as a whole, the number of timber jobs declined dramati-

cally while federal timber harvests increased In fact, they note that job

losses were highest before the implementation of federal environmentallaws in the 1960s and ’70s, refuting the claim that environmental regu-

lations, such as those giving protection to the northern spotted owl inthe Pacific Northwest, were the primary cause of the decline of ruraltimber economies in the 1980s and ’90s Similarly, as Figure 1 reveals,while coal production increased dramatically in West Virginia from thelate 1970s to the 1990s, coal-mining employment declined substantially,

as it has generally done in the postwar era This trend was not limited toWest Virginia; as Figure 2 shows, national-level data on coal productionand employment reveal an even starker negative association, where pro-duction rose as jobs declined As the above evidence indicates, a patternexists among extractive industries: consistent with treadmill of produc-tion theorizing, even when production increases in these industries,employment levels decrease.2

2 The overall consequences of corporate capitalism for the economy and employment structure are, of course, more complicated than the treadmill model may suggest New types of jobs (e.g., information technology) may be created as other types of jobs (e.g.,

mining) disappear, so that the net effect of the treadmill may not always be overall job

losses However, the pattern described by the treadmill model does generally hold when focusing on manufacturing and extractive industry jobs.

Figure 1 West Virginia Coal Employment and Production

Sources: Workforce West Virginia (2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,

2007), Energy Information Administration’s Annual Coal Report (2002, 2004, 2006), and United States Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States (1961, 1971, 1981, 1991,

1994, 2000, 2005).

Gould et al (2004) draw attention to an important intersectionbetween ecological degradation and jobs: Historically, those individualswho are the most affected by industrial pollution and environmentaldamage also typically have been dependent on the jobs within the pol-luting industries Pollution and degradation have become “geographi-cally and socially removed” from the middle class, which has the money

to move upstream and upwind from the contamination and destruction,while blue-collar workers have been “induced and/or coerced” to live inclose proximity to pollution, in part due to the lower housing prices inthese areas (298) Thus, many of the people suffering the most acutecosts of ecological degradation are some of the least likely to fight againstthe treadmill processes because of their economic dependence on the

destructive industries Furthermore, many will even fight for the

compa-nies polluting their communities or destroying their ecosystems becausethey fear further job losses if environmental regulations are tightened.This system works to discourage mobilization against these industries,while at the same time producing an arsenal of workers that can bemobilized to create a countermovement for the industry in opposition toany efforts to impose stricter environmental regulations and disrupttreadmill processes

Figure 2 United States Coal Employment and Production

Source: National Mining Association (2008).

However, when there is a large-scale reduction in jobs, and ment no longer connects an industry to the community it pollutes, why

employ-do communities continue to support industry, even though industrialpractices have detrimental social and environmental effects? This ques-tion points to a lacuna in the treadmill theory, which has not focused onanalyzing the various ways industry gains compliance from workers andthe general public other than through providing jobs In an effort toadvance treadmill theory, here we examine the role ideology plays inlegitimating the dominance of industries We argue that public acquies-cence to the wishes of industry is in part achieved by industries’ calcu-lated efforts to reconstruct a bond with the communities they degrade,attempting to replace the employment connection between industry andcommunity with a constructed ideology of dependency and economicidentity

Critical traditions, from Marxism to feminism, have often emphasizedhow ideology is employed to further the interests of those in power bymystifying the nature of social relations and the causes of oppression.The role of ideology in maintaining capitalism was explored by Marx andEngels (1991) and has been a central theme of Western Marxism sinceits foundation in the works of Lukács ([1923] 1972) and Gramsci (1971).Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), leading lights of the Frankfurt School,where “critical theory” was born, produced particularly influential workexamining the emergence of a “culture industry” in capitalist societies,which manufactured cultural goods for mass consumption (e.g., Holly-wood movies, corporate media) that lulled the public into accepting thecapitalist status quo Since these foundational works, analyses of howculture and ideology are manufactured and manipulated in order tofurther elite interests have become a central part of research on thepower structure (Habermas 1975; Herman and Chomsky 2002; Lukes1974; Mann 1970; Mészáros 1989)

The work of Jürgen Habermas, the most renowned heir to the tion of the Frankfurt School, is particularly relevant to our analysis Heclearly recognized the ecological threats created in capitalist societiesand the social challenges that accompany these threats:

tradi-The rapid growth processes of advanced-capitalist societies haveconfronted world society with disturbance to ecologicalbalance, violation of the consistency requirements of the per-sonality system (alienation), and potentially explosive strains oninternational relations With growing complexity, the system ofworld society shifts its boundaries so far into its environmentthat it runs up against limits of outer as well as inner nature.Ecological balance designates an absolute limit to growth The

less palpable anthropological balance designates another limit,which can be overstepped only at the price of altering thesocio-cultural identity of social systems (1975:41)

Habermas has written extensively on the process by which social systemsare legitimized and the factors that lead to legitimation crises, whereinthe public comes to reject ideological justifications for the prevailingsocial system

Although the work of Habermas is generally aimed at a grandscale—understanding how entire social-political-economic systems, such

as capitalism, operate—rather than the specifics of how particular rations or industries work to retain their privilege, the theoretical con-cepts Habermas developed prove relevant at a smaller scale as well Thedecline in the number of jobs provided by extractive industries can beseen as a factor potentially leading to a legitimation crisis for theseindustries, since it can lead the public to question the propriety of industrymanagement of natural resources Thus, industry works to avoid this crisis

corpo-by furthering its efforts at legitimation The argument that we developbelow is that owners and managers of extractive industries actively con-struct, maintain, and amplify community economic identity in order toensure that certain ideologies dominate in communities that historicallydepended on natural-resource extraction, thereby averting a legitimationcrisis Maintaining and reinforcing community economic identity is criti-cal to avoiding a legitimation crisis, for, as Habermas argued, “traditionscan retain legitimizing force only as long as they are not torn out ofinterpretive systems that guarantee continuity and identity” (Habermas1975:71)

Industry efforts at legitimation via ideology manipulation can beunderstood as part of what Habermas (1984, 1987) has identified as thecolonization of the “lifeworld” (the realm of everyday, lived experiencewhere people find meaning from culturally grounded traditions of inter-pretation) Habermas observed that in modern societies, particularlycapitalist ones, the lifeworld is increasingly invaded by the overarchingsocial system For example, the marketing industry aims to define whatour goals in life should be (consumption—our life’s purpose becomes toaccumulate mass-produced goods, and people come to see themselves as

“consumers”), and the state aims to define key features of our identity(nationalism/patriotism—people come to identify as, for example,Americans, rather than as community members, human beings, etc.).The efforts of extractive industries to lure the public into identifyingwith industry are part of this same process, where logging and mining,for example, come to be seen not simply as sources of employment but

rather as key features of individuals’ and communities’ identities—that

is, workers often come to identify first and foremost as loggers or miners,and communities come to identify as logging or mining communities.Here, we focus on the coal industry in West Virginia to explore theprocess of legitimation via ideology construction and cultural manipula-tion However, it is important to note that there are a number of otherexamples of industry ideology construction aimed at securing for extrac-tive industries inordinate political influence despite their meager contri-bution to regional or national economies It is noteworthy, for example,that many rural communities throughout the United States, and thePacific Northwest in particular, identify with the timber industry, despitethe fact that few people are now dependent on this industry for employ-ment In addition, the valorization of the “cowboy” and rancher in U.S.culture is another striking example of identities constructed around anindustry that is of little importance in the modern economy and contrib-utes to a vast array of environmental problems, including water pollution,biodiversity loss, and land degradation (Wuerthner and Matteson 2002).Although not as prone to mechanization as other extractive industries,livestock grazing provides few jobs to rural economies, and most of theaccess to rangeland is controlled by a few large-scale operations, notfamily ranchers The U.S Department of the Interior (1994) estimatedthat the elimination of all public-lands livestock grazing would result inthe loss of only about 18,000 jobs across the entire West, about 0.1 percent

of total employment In light of the fact that these jobs are also dependent

on substantial subsidies from the federal taxpayer (Moskowitz andRomaniello 2002), from the perspective of society as a whole, the eco-nomic rationality of public-lands grazing is highly suspect, and its con-tinuation appears to have more to do with the political power of thelivestock industry, stemming in part from industry ideology, than thehealth of rural economies Thus, it appears that it is far from uncommonfor communities to identify with industries that do not do much tosupport local and regional economies In the remainder of this article, wefocus on the coal industry in West Virginia to further explore the ways inwhich community economic identities are actively constructed, main-tained, and amplified to the benefit of extractive industries, and, in manycases, to the detriment of rural communities

The Historical Roots of Dependency

As the second-leading coal producer in the United States (behindWyoming), and the top coal-producing state in Appalachia, West Virgin-ia’s historical ties with the coal industry have strongly influenced the

economic, political, and social structures of the state While Americancapitalists knew of the rich mineral and timber resources held within theAppalachian Mountains as early as 1740, it was not until the post–CivilWar years, and the birth of the American industrial revolution, thatinterest in the coal and iron deposits of the Appalachians brought largenumbers of speculators into the region (Eller 1982) In the late 1800s,eager entrepreneurs from outside Appalachia poured into the hills,procuring millions of acres of land and mineral rights at exceptionallylow prices Local residents, most of whom had been subsistence farmersuntil that point (Haynes 1997), had no idea of the value of the mineralsbeneath their land Many are reported to have “ ‘voluntarily’ sold [their]land for 50 cents or one dollar an acre” (Gaventa 1978:144), while stillothers were duped into different types of unfair exchanges For instance,

an entire mountain, which in the late 1970s supplied Georgia Power 1million tons of coal annually, was reported to have been traded to acompany agent for a hog rifle (Gaventa 1978:144) Others who refused

to sell their land became victims of legal traps, such as being jailed andthen offered bond in exchange for their land (Gaventa 1978)

Numerous scholars have referred to Central Appalachia as an nal colony” (Gaventa 1978; Lewis and Knipe 1978; Weller 1978) or an

“inter-“internal periphery” (Walls 1978) created to provide cheap resources tofuel the rest of the country Both of these models point to outsideinterests’ exploitation of the resources of Central Appalachia throughthe subjugation and domination of its people Part of this continueddomination has been achieved through corporate ownership of themajority of the land,3effectively blocking other industries from enteringthe region in an attempt to maintain this part of Appalachia as a mono-economy As Lewis and Knipe (1978) assert, “it is advantageous for coalmining to operate in isolation without competing companies” becausethe extraction process is tied to a particular location and the work ishazardous and strenuous (19)

A cheap workforce was the foundation of early mining, and it wasessential for the coal barons to remove the Appalachian people fromtheir land in order to “turn them into a docile workforce” (Haynes1997:49) Another method to ensure a cheap—and captive—workforcewas the establishment of company towns In the late 1800s and early

3 The Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force’s (1983) study of land ownership terns in 80 counties in Central and southern Appalachia found that 72 percent of the 13 million acres of surface land in the study were owned by absentee owners, and of the top

pat-50 private owners, 46 were corporations This pattern is even more dramatic in the highest coal-producing regions of Appalachia: four of the five counties with the most corporately held land are in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, and in those counties nearly

90 percent of the land is owned by corporations.

1900s, men were recruited into the state by the tens of thousands to work

in the booming mining industry The population skyrocketed duringthis period, and hundreds of company towns and coal camps, which werecompletely owned and controlled by the coal companies, sprang upthroughout Central Appalachia In these towns, the coal companiesowned the houses, the streets, the schools, the water systems, thechurches, the recreational facilities (if there were any), the doctor’soffice, and the company store, which was the only store in the townwhere one could buy groceries, furniture, clothes, and other goods Inaddition, most coal companies paid their employees in “scrip,” their ownmonetary system redeemable only within that particular company’s town(Lockard 1998) The use of scrip ensured that the miners and theirfamilies were unable to travel outside the town to buy fundamentalsupplies and that the company store was able to charge monopolisticprices for its goods The company store system and the other company-supplied services for which miners were charged, such as tool sharpen-ing, health care, and housing rent, were “a key mechanism forincreasing company profits” (Cook 2000:192)

Also integral to maximizing profits was reinforcing the traditionalgender ideology regarding the “appropriate” roles for men and women

in society, that is, men as the breadwinners and women as the caretakers

of the home These social norms, not at all unique to Appalachia, havehistorically forced households in capitalist economies to subsidize pro-duction through the unpaid work of women, allowing businesses to paylaborers wages that fall far below the cost of reproducing the household(Dunaway 2001) Through their unpaid cooking, cleaning, washing,child care, and other duties of domestic work, women have made itpossible for capitalism to remain profitable, for, as Dunaway (2001)asserts, “If capitalists compensated women for all their externalized costsand unpaid labor, prices would be driven up so high that most com-modities would not be competitive in the world economy” (22) Coaltowns in Central Appalachia were constructed to exploit and reinforcethis gender ideology by placing men in the mines and women in theclose-by homes By intentionally “equating masculinity with a willingness

to work in dangerous conditions,” and femininity with “domestic laborinside coal camps,” the coal industry was able to keep the costs of laborand worksite maintenance low (Maggard 1994:30, 18) This gender ide-ology has not only had implications for who does what work, it has alsomeant that men are favored as the center of community, work, andpolitics in Central Appalachia

Since the 1980s, however, there has been a shift in the Appalachiancoalfields’ economy, threatening the coal industry’s stranglehold on the

region During the 1980s, the Appalachian coalfields saw a tion in the region’s economy, wherein service sector jobs replacedmining jobs as the leading source of employment and earnings(Maggard 1994; Miewald and McCann 2004) Increased mechanization

diversifica-in the coal mdiversifica-ines and the advent of mountadiversifica-intop removal coal mdiversifica-indiversifica-inghave drastically reduced the number of mining jobs throughout CentralAppalachia, and West Virginia in particular (Burns 2005) As miningjobs have continued to drop off, service-sector jobs have risen, callinginto question the coal industry’s status as the “backbone” of the state

Coal and the West Virginia Economy

The $3.5 billion coal contributed to West Virginia’s gross state product in

2004 represented only 7 percent of the total gross state product, rankingbehind retail trade ($4.0 billion), real estate and rentals ($4.6 billion),health care and social assistance ($4.8 billion), and government ($8.4billion) (U.S Department of Commerce 2005) Furthermore, mining’scontributions to the West Virginia state product declined from the late1990s into the 2000s (Witt and Fletcher 2005), and its contributions areforecast to continue declining over the next thirty years (Witt andLeguizamon 2007) The tax revenue generated from coal severance taxrepresents less than 7 percent of the General Revenue Fund for the state(whereas personal income tax represents 37 percent) (State of WestVirginia 2007), and the West Virginia Executive Budget forecasts a 9percent decline in severance tax revenues by 2010 (State of West Virginia2007:70) Very little of this coal severance tax actually goes to the coalfieldtowns, which must bear the brunt of the numerous social, economic, andenvironmental injustices related to coal-mining practices The town ofSylvester, for instance, which sits next to the enormous Elk Run CoalPreparation Plant and a mountaintop removal coal mine and beneath anenormous slurry impoundment with the capacity to hold 769 milliongallons of coal waste, received only $701.42 in coal severance tax duringthe 2006–2007 fiscal year (West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office 2007)

As Figure 1 shows, coal employment in West Virginia has steadilydeclined since the 1940s This reduction in mining jobs has caused amassive exodus from the state: Since 1950, West Virginia has experienced

a net out-migration of 40 percent of its population (West Virginia HealthStatistics Center 2002).4In 1948 there were 131,700 coal miners in thestate, while in 2006 there were only 20,100 This represents a more thanfive-fold reduction in the number of jobs even after controlling for the

4 However, West Virginia’s population declined by only about 10 percent over this period due to natural increase.

decline in the population Even if we incorporate contract workers (such

as coal-truck drivers) into the employment data, which would increase thetotal coal employment to 40,924 individuals, coal industry employment inWest Virginia still only accounted for 5 percent of the total employedcivilian labor force in 2005 Health care, hospitality services, retail trade,professional and business services, and local, state, and federal govern-ment were each far more significant employers within the state than coal(West Virginia Bureau of Employment Programs 2005)

The decline in mining jobs since the mid-twentieth century was notbecause of a decline in the scale of coal production, since, although itswung up and down over this period, coal production was about thesame at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was in the late1940s (see Figure 1) Job losses were clearly due to the ongoing processes

of the treadmill of production where workers are replaced by machines.Changes in coal-extraction practices meant that the same amount of coalcould be extracted in the twenty-first century by employing only one-

sixth the workers required in the mid-twentieth century Coal was a

central part of the building of West Virginia’s economy However, withthe advent of the continuous mining machine, the longwall miningmachine, and most recently, mountaintop removal mining, a vast work-force of coal miners is no longer needed

The periodic reductions in coal production indicated in Figure 1correlate with a number of important events, particularly the implemen-tation of various environmental laws in the late 1960s and 1970s, such asthe Coal Mine Safety and Health Act, the Clean Air Act, the FederalWater Pollution Control Act, and the Surface Mining Control and Rec-lamation Act The significant production decline from 1970 to 1978 can

be attributed in part to the much stricter sulfur dioxide emissions dards for coal-fired power plants, which made Western (e.g., Wyoming)coal, which is extremely low sulfur, the “most cost effective choice formeeting sulfur dioxide limits without the installation of expensive equip-ment retrofits” (Bonskowski, Watson, and Freme 2006:2) This shiftcaused a decrease in the use of Appalachian coal in the 1970s However,

stan-as Figure 1 shows, this wstan-as only a temporary trend; Appalachian coalproduction quickly began to rise again to keep up with energy demand

in the United States

While the periodic declines in production described above have

undoubtedly had some effects on employment, the primary driving force

behind job losses has been technological changes in mining practices(Burns 2005) This is evidenced in the trend seen throughout the 1980sand into the early 1990s, when jobs continued to decline despite sharpincreases in coal production (see Figure 1) This increase in output can

be traced to technological advances in longwall mining, which becameone of the principal methods of underground coal extraction duringthis time period (Energy Information Administration 1995:1).

As discussed above, treadmill of production theory posits thatincreases in productivity will typically lead to escalating ecological deg-radation The Appalachian coal case is no exception Technologicaladvances in the methods of coal extraction and processing have hadgrowing impacts on the health, safety, and livelihoods of people living inthe coalfields Below we briefly describe some of the most serious envi-ronmental consequences of coal mining so as to clarify the reasons thatresistance to the coal industry has emerged and, consequently, industryefforts to further the ideology of the coal industry have intensified

Environmental Consequences of Coal Mining

Mountaintop removal coal mining and the resulting valley fills havespurred a great deal of controversy within “coal communities” and thelarger region This form of coal extraction has become widespreadthroughout Central Appalachia, particularly in southern West Virginiaand eastern Kentucky Under the mountains in these areas lie thin layers

of low-sulfur coal, which are extremely valuable and are too narrow to bemined by more traditional methods of deep mining In order to reachthis coal, mining operations must remove the “overburden” (whichincludes the tops of mountains, forests, etc.) to expose the coal seambelow Surplus volume of broken rock, called “excess spoil,” is generatedthrough this mining technique and must be disposed of Typically, it isdumped in valleys that are adjacent to the surface mines, creating “valleyfills” (United States Environmental Protection Agency 2003) According

to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s “Environmental ImpactStatement: Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fills in Appalachia” (2005),mountaintop removal mining and/or valley fills directly impacted 1,200miles of headwater streams between 1992 and 2002 In fact, from 1985 to

2001 valley fills buried an estimated 724 miles of streams in Appalachia.

Among its many consequences, mountaintop removal mining leads toflooding In the steep mountain terrain of southern West Virginia, mosthomes have been built in the valleys next to creek banks When themountains above these homes are deforested and flattened, there isnothing left to stop the rain from washing down the mountainsides.Thus, flooding has destroyed the homes of numerous coalfield residents

A study conducted by the Flood Advisory Technical Taskforce of theWest Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (2002) foundthat “mining and timbering impacts did influence the study watersheds

by increasing surface water runoff and the resulting stream flows” (71),increasing the runoff up to 21 percent in some cases, and, thus, contrib-uted to the massive flooding that southern West Virginia experienced in2001.

Another major environmental problem associated with mining stemsfrom “coal-sludge dams” (also termed “slurry impoundments”) Beforecoal is sent to market for processing, it must be cleaned in order toreduce sulfur and noncombustible materials present in the coal Thewaste generated by the cleaning process is called coal slurry (or “sludge”)and consists of “water, fine particles derived from the coal, and chemi-cals used in coal washing” (Orem 2006) This black chemical sludge iseither stored in huge impoundments on the surface of flattened moun-taintops or injected into abandoned underground coal mines (Orem2006) There are currently 111 coal-sludge impoundments in West Vir-ginia (Coal Impoundment Location and Information System 2005).Many of these enormous black lakes are situated on mountaintopsdirectly above small communities

Sometimes these impoundments leak, and even completely give way.The 1972 Buffalo Creek Disaster was one such instance Buffalo CreekHollow in Logan County, West Virginia, was home to some 5,000 peopleand was situated downstream of a coal-sludge impoundment holding back

132 million gallons of coal waste On the morning of February 26, 1972,the dam collapsed, releasing a torrent of black sludge water, which torethrough the hollow, taking with it everything in its path One hundredtwenty-five people died that day, and thousands were left homeless andforever scarred by the devastation they witnessed (Erikson 1976)

A more recent coal-slurry disaster occurred in 2000 in Martin County,Kentucky The impoundment collapsed, spilling 250 million gallons ofcoal waste (20 times greater than the Exxon Valdez oil spill), pollutingmore than 70 miles of West Virginia and Kentucky waterways, killingwildlife, and razing habitat Homes were destroyed by the thick, blacksludge Although there was little national media coverage, the EPAcalled it “one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of theSoutheastern United States” (Eades 2000) Forty-five other slurryimpoundments in West Virginia are considered to be at high risk forfailure, and thirty-two are at moderate risk (Eades 2000).5

5 Slurry impoundments are not limited to the coal preparation process Coal burned at coal-fired power plants generates coal fly-ash slurry, which is stored in impoundments In December 2008, 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly-ash slurry broke through an impoundment

at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee, contaminating a branch of the Emory River and approximately 300 acres of the surround- ing land (U.S Environmental Protection Agency 2009).

Not all coal waste ends up in sludge impoundments Instead, somecoal operations inject the slurry underground into abandoned coalmines This method of “disposal” creates an entirely new set of problemsincluding well water contamination and the health problems it can lead

to, such as liver and kidney cancers, colitis, skin disorders, and organfailure (Orem 2006; Wells 2006)

Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of training for the NationalMine Health and Safety Academy of the Mine Safety and Health Admin-istration (MSHA), asserts that the type of coal cleaning that generates aneed for coal-sludge impoundments and slurry injections is not neces-sary, but that the coal industry uses this method because it “saves a dollar

a ton in processing.” He goes on to reveal:

There are other technologies, such as dry filter press systems.Coal impoundments are not at all necessary There’s been tech-nology around since the 1960s [I]t would only cost about adollar a ton more

Overall the industry simply doesn’t give a damn about thepeople or the environment in this region [of the country] And

I can say that with authority (Stockman 2006:6–7)

Flooding and coal-slurry impoundments and injections are only thebeginning of the many ways in which coal adversely affects the environ-ment and residents of the southern coalfields Damage from blasting;respiratory problems from coal dust; accidents caused by overweight,speeding coal trucks; and the loss of hunting grounds and homesteadsare a few more of the consequences of coal for these rural communities.Even the laws that are in place to protect the land and people, such asthe Clean Water Act, have been largely ignored by many coal companies,

as evidenced by the fact that coal giant Massey Energy was charged with4,633 violations of the Clean Water Act between January 2000 andDecember 2006 (Associated Press 2007)

The people living in coal-mining regions of Appalachia have foundthemselves in a conflicted situation Most people living in the coalfieldshave been dependent, at some point in their lives, on the industry that

is now destroying their homes, health, and safety While many areaffected by irresponsible mining, until recent years most residents haveremained silent while the coal industry has continued to dominate thisregion However, due to the seriousness of the environmental prob-lems generated by the coal industry, a grassroots movement hassteadily grown in numbers and power within Central Appalachia overthe past decade The Coal River Mountain Watch, Ohio Valley Envi-ronmental Coalition, Citizens Coal Council, Kentuckians for the Com-

monwealth, the Sludge Safety Project, and the newly emerged collegemovement Mountain Justice are just a few of the organizations thathave been engaging in forms of resistance and direct action Stagingnonviolent protests, generating publications, lobbying the legislature,filing lawsuits, blocking new mining permits, and working with film-makers and journalists to expose the devastation coal has caused to theenvironment and rural communities are a few of the strategies theseorganizations have utilized to hold the coal industry accountable.

Industry Ideology: The Birth of the “Friends of Coal”

According to coal analyst Richard Bonskowski (2004), the grassrootsefforts at resistance described above are in part responsible for therecent small decline in coal production within West Virginia, as well asAppalachia as a whole In particular, efforts relating to litigation andpermitting delays for new mountaintop-removal mines and stricterenforcement of coal-truck weight limits and license fees have been espe-cially influential However, the coal industry has not stood idly by in theface of these challenges This became especially apparent in the coalindustry’s strategy to win one of the most contentious legislative debates

in West Virginia in recent years: coal-truck weight limits Through itsefforts to win this battle, the West Virginia Coal Association constructed

a countermovement to the environmental justice movement, calling theorganization it created the “Friends of Coal,” which has engaged inelaborate framing efforts to maintain and amplify coal’s status as theeconomic identity of West Virginia

In 2002, in response to a series of recent deaths from accidentsinvolving overweight coal trucks (some that were more than double thelegal limit), Delegate Mike Caputo (D-Marion) introduced a bill in theWest Virginia legislature to increase enforcement of the truck weightlimits Coal industry–supporting legislators quickly introduced retalia-tory legislation that would raise maximum legal weight limits for coaltrucks from 80,000 pounds to 132,000 pounds (with a 5 percent vari-ance) (Nyden 2002) Neither bill passed, but legislative efforts on bothsides continued to stir controversy in the state

During the summer of 2002, as the coal truck debate was raging,board members and officers of the West Virginia Coal Association held

a strategic planning meeting to discuss ways that they could improvepublic relations (Shanghai Zoom Intelligence Co., Ltd 2006) Theoutcome of that meeting was the birth of the “Friends of Coal,” whichwas to be a “grassroots organization” that would be “dedicated to inform-ing and educating West Virginia citizens about the coal industry and its