“I Love Mountains Day”

February 14, 2008

Support HB 164

“Whose mountains are these?” Terri Blanton, an activist with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth cried.

“Our mountains.”

“Whose streams?”

“Our streams.”

“Whose future?”

“Our future.”

Yesterday, ten members of Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church headed east on I-64 from Louisville to Frankfort to lobby for the stream saver bill and rally on the capitol steps.  It was 8:30 AM and the temperature was 14 degrees.

We arrived at the state capitol just in time for the last few minutes of an orientation session.  Next, we divided into counties, going to different rooms to organize further.  We met with legislators and wrote post cards to the governor and representatives.  At 11:30, we gathered on the capitol steps, nearly 1,000 Kentuckians united in our desire to save our water from the toxic waste of mountaintop removal mining. 

1,208 miles of streams in Appalachia, according to the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, were destroyed by valley fills from 1992 to 2002, and regulators approved 1,603 more valley fills between 2001 and 2005 designed to destroy and additional 535 miles of streams.  A valley fill is exactly what it sounds like: When the top is blown off a mountain, millions of tons of debris are pushed over the side to bury streams and hundreds of acres of healthy forest.  The result is increased flooding, upstream and down; increased water treatment cost; loss of recreational use; increased erosion and sedimentation; altered stream chemistry and temperature; and loss of nutrient sources essential for downstream water quality and aquatic life.  In other words, you destroy a mountain stream teaming with fish and crawdads, bordered by hemlock and rhododendron, with a rock strewn drainage ditch. 

The Stream Saver Bill would protect our waterways.  No dumping of mine wastes would be allowed into any “intermittent, perennial, or ephemeral stream or other water in the Commonwealth.”

“Whose mountains are these?”

“Our mountains.”

"Whose streams?”

“Our streams.”

“Whose future?”

“Our future.”

I stand next to my friends, David and Bobbi Buchanan, at the base of the capitol steps holding a sign made by an unknown child showing the destruction of mountaintop mining.  Despite wool socks and boots, my toes are freezing and I rotate my uncovered hands from pocket to pocket so one is available to display the sign.  Wendell Berry speaks—eloquently, realistically, sometimes despairingly of the greed of coal companies and legislators who have pocketed their money—our homegrown prophet for the land, for justice, for “the least of these.”  A preacher prays and preaches.  Public Outcry, a music group formed to protest mountaintop removal mining, leads us in a new version of “Let the Circle Be Unbroken.”  The sun gleams off several inches of snow.  A mother holds her baby in a snuggly against her chest as camera crews compete for the best angle. One woman wears a red valentine boa that falls all the way to her ankles. We shiver and shake in our red shirts and “Save the Mountains” stickers and pins; earnest faces, all.

A little later, we line the tunnel from the capitol annex to the capitol where legislators must walk from one building to another.  Some bold protestors speak to representatives dressed in three piece suits as they pass.  I hold back, willing only to join the common voices.  A Lutheran pastor challenges a legislator who has stopped to schmooze.  The legislator skillfully evades his questions.

One delegate, for whom I did not vote, works the crowd, shaking hands and smiling as he passes by.  I wouldn’t trust him further than I can spit.  I remember another legislator who met with us earlier in the House Chamber.  The general tone of his speech sounded positive, so that if you didn’t listen for the omissions, you’d think he was ready to support the bill.  But he never answered a direct question.  He never said he would vote for the Stream Saver Bill.  “Slick as cow slobber,” my husband would say.

The day was winding to a close.  We drove home exhausted, and I, for one, was hungry.

“Whose mountains?"

“Our mountains.”

“Whose streams?"

“Our streams.”

“Whose future?”

“Our future.”

Did 1,000 Kentuckians protesting on the steps of the Capitol make a difference?  Who’s to say?  I searched for coverage of the event in the Courier-Journal, the largest newspaper in the state.  Regrettably, I found none.  As Wendell Berry said, the Kentucky legislature is a subsidiary of Big Coal.

Nonetheless, as Brenda Mutter Urias, whose family has lived in Pike County since the 1800s wrote in New Southerner, “We will stand our ground because these are our homes.  We will not surrender our property, our way of life, our heritage, our dreams for our young.  This place is precious to us.  We won’t give up.  We will stay.  Please remember us.”