She sits on her porch in the evening and looks out at what used to be a beautiful landscape, before the mountain was gone. In the old days, just a few years back, she’d then go into the garden and pick tomatoes and cucumbers and beans. The kids played in the yard, or went berry-picking, coming home with purple fingers and mouths. But there’s not a garden any more, it’s a slurry pond, a toxic mix of coal dust and heavy metals that seep into the ground and contaminate it. There aren’t any more berries, and probably never will be, because the trees and green things have been blasted to ruin.

Welcome to the Southern Appalachians.

I’m Donetta Blankenship. I’m 39, from Rawl. I live up what they call Rawl Holler.

My name is Joan Linville and I live in Boone County, WV., in a little town called Van, which was named after my husband’s grandfather.

I’m Vernon Haltom. I live in Naoma, WV., near Marsh Fork Elementary School.   Sludge spills are not a daily occurrence, but too common of an occurrence. I don’t live directly under a sludge dam, but I work under a sludge dam. If that one were ever to go, I would be dead, and everybody in the town would be dead. This is going to be nearly a nine billion gallon sludge dam when they’re finished with it, and they’re already pretty close to it, I’m sure.

I’m Cynthia Karriker. I’m Maria Gunnoe. My name is Larry Gibson.

Jim Foster.

Sludge spills. Slurry ponds. Toxic waste. Water so contaminated you can’t even take a bath in it without risking kidney failure.  

April of 2005, I ended up in the hospital. They told me that I had that auto-immune liver disease, and I know for a fact that I’ve never done anything to cause me to get it. I’ve never drunk, I’ve never done anything like that to damage my liver. But I do have a lot of papers sayin’ that the things in our water does cause liver damage.When I started out, my stomach was really botherin’ me. It started swellin’ a lot. I ended up getting’ jaundiced with it. That was when they told me I was goin’ to the hospital. I was feelin’ tired all the time, you know, just different things like that. When I went they told me that my liver enzymes was in the thousands. My doctor did tell me that my liver was failin’. I’ve even got osteoporosis. And I know one of the bacteria that’s in the water will cause bone changes. There’s just so many different things that’s all of a sudden poppin’ up. --Donetta Blankenship, 39

I lost my husband six years ago from pancreatic cancer, which I feel was contributed to by the work he done and the chemicals he was around at the mines. In our community everyone is dying of cancer, no one is dying a natural death any more - it’s always cancer. They have poisoned our river here; theyhave taken our drinking water, closed our water plant because the water is so toxic. –Joan Linville, 67.

The coal companies don’t care a damn. They just want the coal. If the people die or get shot or get run over, so be it. If someone’s farm which has been in the family for 200 years washes away, so be it, and good riddance. If the family cemeteries fall into cracks in the earth, and all that’s left is headstones, so be it.

But there are voices. They are getting louder. What damage has been done is permanent—it will never be the same. When the Bush administration relaxed the regulations for the coal industry, everything changed, and he effectively signed the death warrant for a whole region and a whole people. But there are voices, and they are getting louder.

We eat coal dust. We breathe coal dust. It’s in our eyes. It’s in our house. It’s on our clothes. Our car is covered with it every day and it’s just an inhumane way to have to live in the United States of America. This is America, you know? And it’s like a war zone - it really is! Nobody knows what kind of hell we go through here unless they come here and stay a while. I feel that I have dedicated the rest of my life to fightin’ mountain top removal. I hope I live long enough to see it stopped, because I think West Virginia is one of the most beautiful states in the United States and we have some of the most wonderful people in the world here. –Joan Linville

People need to grab a hold of what they’ve got, or once the coal company gets through there’ll be nothin’ left. This ritual of takin’ our men to mine for coal – there’s not one life worth losin’ for coal. As of 1997, we’ve lost 200,000 men to black lung and cave-ins alike. We lose men every year. And this disaster we just had [at the Sago mine], now people are lookin’ at it. Now people are passin’ laws. Every time somethin’ happens like the Buffalo Creek they pass laws. But then they twist the laws and they still break the laws. Every law that’s ever been written has been written in a coal miner’s blood.—Larry Gibson

And in response to all the floods, and to the coal company’s claims that this was an “act of God” takin’ place in my back yard, I began organizing other people here in the neighborhood. I got to lookin’ around, and it seemed that the people around me was bein’ affected or were in line to be affected by this same mountain top removal site. Doing this, I’ve also educated myself on mountain top removal in the regional area, in the Appalachian region. And I’ve been workin’ consistently for the past five years - locally I’ve been workin’ for seven years – on the issue of mountaintop removal and what it’s doin’ to ourcommunities.—Maria Gunnoe

These people are a proud people, an independent people. Some have lived in these mountains since the founding of our country.

Where will it end?