West Virginians say they don’t fault coal industry for water crisis

Many West Virginians don’t blame the coal industry for the spill of a coal-processing chemical that has tainted the water of 300,000 people around Charleston, the state capital.

Indeed, some of those who live in parts of coal country — much of which is suffering from decades-long legacies of mining pollution — say coal is the state’s only hope for employment and progress.

To the outside observer, mining can look like a blight on the Mountain State, not a blessing, with dozens of white and gray scars of blown-off green mountaintops across southern West Virginia visible in satellite images from miles above.

But the feeling on the ground can be very different.

“This is just a freak accident with the water thing, in my opinion,” said Timothy McKinney, 30, a laid-off coal miner in Prenter, W.Va. “I’ve been in coal mining since I was out of high school, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the coal industry in general.”

McKinney said he is upset with the chemical company responsible for the spill, which was one of the most dramatic environmental disasters in recent memory in the area and the cause of national headlines.

He says Freedom Industries should have had better safety measures in place, including multiple walls of containment, to stop the accident. He said that would have halted the leak into the Elk River, which made his family’s water undrinkable for days and emitted a pungent, licorice odor into their homes.

McKinney said reports of rashes due to the contaminated water were “all over Facebook” in his community. But he didn’t connect the coal-processing chemical spill with the coal industry as a whole.

“We are programmed early on,” said White, 30, who is also the son of a coal miner. “They (the industry) have ingrained themselves in every aspect of our lives.”

“They are in our schools, telling children they should ‘grow up like Daddy and become a coal miner,’ and telling them they don't need an education when they can work for the industry and make large amounts of money. Even have ‘coal career days’ for children in grade schools.”

In the boom-and-bust economy of coal, however, the lack of jobs has effects that are hard to ignore and that stoke fears of the industry's decline.

In the absence of mining work, some people slip into selling drugs, especially crystal methamphetamine, to make ends meet — creating resentment between West Virginians who make money from legal work, often low paid, and others who turn to crime running meth labs.  

“They live higher than anybody around here. They got four-wheelers, they got dirt bikes, they got nice cars. And the smell of it kind of smells like what the damn water smells like,” one resident of coal country, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, told Al Jazeera, referring to the observation that the licorice scent coming from the MCHM (or 4-methylcyclohexane methanol) that spilled Jan. 9 smells like a meth cook. 

Randy Lengyel, 48, executive director of the Boone County Ambulance Association, strongly defended the coal industry’s role in the state.

“The outside media is always trying to run down the coal industry because they contribute to global warming,” Lengyel said, but maintained that those reports fail to recognize how crucial coal is to the operation of local services like the ambulance association, because property tax revenue from the coal industry remains key to its operation.

Butch Barker, a maintenance worker at the ambulance association, said that some people in coal country bear ill will toward environmentalists for challenging the industry, blaming the activists for job losses or mine closures.

“I know people who hate the environmentalists. They’re afraid they’re going to take their jobs,” Barker said.

He said the bad feelings are so strong that some people might refuse to take water from activists, referring to the environmentalists that handed out free water in his hometown of Nellis.

The son of a miner himself, Barker, whose uncle died in a mine accident in 1943 along with 10 others, said neither side understands the other, but he personally believes there’s a middle ground.

“It goes both ways,” he said. “They can coexist and make things a lot better.”

Still, to Barker, mines are vital to Boone, with other jobs scarce and far away. “If you take the mines out of this county, there ain’t gonna be nothing.”

Environmentalists say there's plenty of work to be done in cleaning up the damage done by mining. 

"Yeah? How long's that going to last?" he said.

Some analysis of how the coal industry has affected the economy of West Virginia shows that it likely contributes to poverty rather than its alleviation, and that most counties where poverty reigns in the region are also those that rely the most on coal mining.

Two economists, Stratford Douglas of West Virginia University and Anne Walker of the University of Colorado Denver, published an analysis in December comparing 409 counties in Appalachia for trends in poverty and education stemming from the “resource curse” of coal.

“The ‘resource curse’ occurs when a region’s resource wealth makes its people poorer,” Douglas told Al Jazeera. “Some places, like Norway and Texas, are richer because of their resources. Some other places seem to be poorer because of their resources, and our study indicates that these may include the coal-mining counties of the Appalachians."

While it can apply to many kinds of natural resources, from oil and gas to minerals and timber, the resource curse involves steep levels of inequality, high poverty and environmental degradation in places whose economies rely on one resource. The promise of the commodity also comes with the economy having to rely on its price, often leading to a cycle of boom and bust.

“No doubt, coal mining provides opportunities for relatively high-wage employment in the region, but its effect on prosperity appears to be strongly negative in the long run,” the economists wrote in their analysis.

One of the biggest problems, the analysis stated, is that the coal industry does not provide enough high-paying jobs to people who obtain college degrees. These people leave the state, contributing to economic decline over the long term.

In addition to taking steps to diversify the economy, the authors suggested that Appalachian authorities try the tactic that wealthy Norway has, charging higher dues on companies that mine coal in the area.

The authors noted the recent rise of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of shale gas deposits in the region, and said it wasn't an antidote. 

“The shale gas industry, like the coal industry, shows a strong tendency toward boom and bust.”

As for why West Virginians so strongly defend the coal industry, Douglas said cultural factors are at work.

“The coal miner is to us West Virginians what the cowboy is to Texans: a hero and an emblem. We’re proud of our miners, and proud of our mining traditions. It’s hard to think of West Virginia without thinking of coal mines.

“People in West Virginia defend the coal industry because it provides jobs, income and tax revenues, and because the coal mining tradition runs deep in West Virginia,” he said.

But, added Douglas, “The numbers we studied indicate that the people who live in Appalachian counties where there is no coal mining are, on average, better educated, have higher incomes and enjoy higher income growth rates than those who live in Appalachian counties where coal is mined.”

Douglas said it’s hard to convince people who only know jobs in mines that the industry doesn’t offer the region a good bargain.

“We can’t see what the economy of the region would be like if there were no coal mining.”

On Google maps, it's easy to spot how coal mining has altered the landscape of West Virginia. Prenter and Nellis, just two of many mining towns in the region, are shown in blue. A few hundred people live in each. Some nearby mines and coal slurry ponds are in yellow.

From Jan. 9 to Jan. 19, much of the area around the capital city, Charleston, was under a tap water ban due to a chemical spill that tainted public water for 300,000 people.

Explore the map and zoom in to see more.