- 2 weeks ago
- #climateuprise
In today's video, we meet Veronica Coptis, the person at the helm of the non-profit the Center For Coalfield Justice. She describes her fight against a big corporation to protect the community that she grew up in from irreversible environmental damage from coal mining. Watch this episode to learn the truth about suburban coal mining.
https://coalfieldjustice.org/
#climateuprise
Today, for the Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is flooding all of its channels and homepages with stories about our current climate crisis. Join us by flooding your own feed with urgent info about why the world’s on fire, and how we can fix it.
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https://coalfieldjustice.org/
#climateuprise
Today, for the Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is flooding all of its channels and homepages with stories about our current climate crisis. Join us by flooding your own feed with urgent info about why the world’s on fire, and how we can fix it.
ABOUT REFINERY29
Refinery29 is a modern woman's destination for how to live a stylish, well-rounded life. http://refinery29.com/
RELATED CONTENT
The Life Threatening Dangers Of Gay Conversion Therapy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HL5ThApf0IA
The Dark Secret Behind Your Favorite Makeup Products
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IeR-h9C2fgc
The Truth About Where Hair Extensions Come From
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VlZ1SWLBfPE
SUBSCRIBE TO REFINERY29
Subscribe to the Refinery29 channel: http://bit.ly/subscribe-to-r29
Follow Refinery29 on Instagram: https://instagram.com/refinery29/
Follow Somos on Instagram: https://instagram.com/r29somos/
Follow Unbothered on Instagram: https://instagram.com/r29unbothered/
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00This is Greene County, Pennsylvania.
00:02It's home to the Bailey Mine Complex,
00:04the biggest coal mine complex in North America.
00:07It's the size of Manhattan, and it employs about 2,000 people.
00:11It's owned by Consol Energy, which was founded way back in 1864.
00:16This is Veronica.
00:18She's an environmental activist and the executive director
00:21of the Center for Coalfield Justice.
00:23She lives here.
00:25This is not a lake.
00:27It's a CRDA, a Coal Refuse Disposal Area.
00:32Or, in Veronica's words,
00:34this is what a toxic waste dump looks like.
00:37And this toxic waste dump is just one of 24 toxic waste dumps in Greene County,
00:43all of which may be leaching chemicals from coal ash into the water supply and the soil.
00:50Consol Energy bought this valley when Veronica was a teen.
00:53She grew up exploring these woods and learning how to drive on this road.
00:58But, all of a sudden, she just couldn't go there anymore.
01:03Not without someone watching.
01:07It changed her life.
01:09Realizing that the coal mine could just take a valley made me aware of the power the company had over
01:17the people living here.
01:18And from that point forward, I've always spoken out on how that power dynamic is not equal
01:24and that the community members should have just as much a say as an outside corporation.
01:29For generations, coal mining in Appalachia has meant good-paying jobs.
01:33But these days, it means fewer jobs for less money, as other fossil fuels get extracted.
01:39And the cost of coal, on land and on people, has become unavoidably apparent.
01:46But what's not so apparent is how to create a future here.
01:51I'm Jackie Huntington, and this is See Here Now.
01:59The Pennsylvania State Constitution entitles the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
02:04to clean air and pure water.
02:07Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people,
02:12including generations yet to come.
02:13But that right to public goods is often squared against the free market.
02:18And that's where the Center for Coalfield Justice comes in.
02:22The organization has engaged in repeated legal actions to contest Consol's permit applications for longwall mining.
02:30What's longwall mining, you ask?
02:32The longwall machine is a giant machine, and it has supports that support the surface or the roof of the
02:38mine.
02:38Longwall mining is Consol's bread and butter.
02:41Ninety percent of Consol Energy's steam and metallurgic coal is harvested using longwall mining technology.
02:48And there's a giant blade that breaks up all the coal, and then the coal falls onto conveyor belts, and
02:55it leaves the mine.
02:57As you remove that entire seam, there are no pillars that support the surface.
03:01And those supports will slowly move forward, and behind you, the ground sinks to fill that void that you just
03:06created.
03:07That sinking is synonymous with subsidence.
03:12Land subsidence can crack home foundations.
03:15People can lose well water.
03:18Public space is under constant threat.
03:21It's caused folks to sell cheap and get out, or just straight up abandon their homes and leave the county.
03:27Which only has a population of about 38,000.
03:30Our focus right now is on protecting streams within a state park.
03:34Specifically, Ryerson Station State Park.
03:37Public lands. A lot of people in the community use these public lands to recreate.
03:41They're not asking Consol to stop mining.
03:44They're asking the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to not let Consol do this particular type of mining under public
03:51land or near bodies of water.
03:53Because this used to be a lake. Duke Lake.
03:58In 2005, due to subsidence caused by longwall mining, this dam cracked and the lake was drained.
04:05After years of litigation, Consol reached a settlement with the state.
04:10Consol agreed to pay $36 million to rebuild the dam and the lake with a condition that they accepted absolutely
04:16no fault for any of it.
04:18Ultimately, the whole thing fell through. The land wasn't stable enough for any of it to be rebuilt.
04:25All of that money is just tied up in state coffers.
04:29Meanwhile, Greene County lost Ryerson Station State Park as they knew it.
04:33And people are still super angry.
04:36Despite the way it treats rural landscapes, Consol is headquartered in an antiseptically perfect business park.
04:43Next to a country club and golf course with its own lake and artificial waterfall.
04:49All protected with threatening signs and cameras.
04:52This is definitely a battle between people and corporate power.
04:56By not getting every ounce of coal out from under the ground, they could protect the streams.
05:02But the corporate greed and the corporate power that drives this company means they need every last ounce of coal
05:09out of the ground without any regard for what happens to the community left behind.
05:16The future of our next generation, of my daughter, is what's at stake.
05:22She actually really loves herself, so she might think you're taking pictures of her.
05:26She loves her picture taken.
05:29She's very in love with herself.
05:34Veronica's husband used to be a Marine.
05:37He spent three years working in the coal mines.
05:39He's going back to school right now on the GI Bill.
05:43He and Veronica want their daughter to grow up here.
05:45Oh man, you're growing.
05:48It'd be very easy for us to leave, like many other folks who may think differently than other people in
05:54the county,
05:55to just go to an urban center where their thoughts are more alike with their neighbors.
06:00But we feel our responsibility to stay.
06:04On Wednesday, he ate through three plums.
06:07But he was still hungry.
06:09I haven't been too concerned about my health growing up next to this.
06:13But now that I'm responsible for this beautiful little girl, I'm very concerned.
06:19You want to just sit in your crib?
06:21And there could come a day, if her health is jeopardized,
06:24that we do have to walk away from a place we call home.
06:45Veronica is checking in with supporters of the Center for Coalfield Justice to record their concerns.
06:56Hi, I'm Veronica. I'm with the Center for Coalfield Justice.
06:59Do you have time to talk about why you care about Ryerson today?
07:04This is Randy.
07:11She lives just a few hundred feet away from a coal prep plant.
07:17The coal train passes through several times a day and sounds like a ghost storming its way through her backyard.
07:25My dad was a coal miner. My grandpa was a coal miner.
07:28My brother is a welder. They're blue-collar.
07:30I'm the only one that went to college in my family.
07:33I grew up in the coal fields.
07:35I grew up playing in coal ash.
07:38And I thought it was actually pretty cool.
07:41Didn't know what it was.
07:46Conveyor belts criss-cross the county.
07:49They ferry coal through its stages of mining, cleaning, and disposal into CRDAs like this one,
07:55which has overtaken this valley.
07:58The scale here is massive.
08:00This truck is just a regular-sized truck.
08:03Can you imagine standing down there?
08:15The
08:16This is Dan.
08:18I own 84 acres here.
08:20I have great water supply.
08:23I have streams coming down the hills.
08:26They're on the backside.
08:27I think they'll be destroyed because they're going to long wall that.
08:32They're
08:35They're going to start 500 feet from back of my house.
08:39They think that I won't, my water won't get destroyed here, but they think.
08:45They used to say it wouldn't.
08:46Now they say they don't think it'll be destroyed.
08:49Why is it so important for you to stay and not just leave like so many other people have done?
08:57This farm's been in my family since 1851.
09:03I want, I like it here.
09:05I want to stay here.
09:07I want to stay here.
09:08And they're not buying me out.
09:14It's not on now, but this used to be bright, like it was lit up like a ski slope.
09:19Right, right.
09:19So when I was in college I thought it was a ski slope.
09:22I thought it was a roller coaster when we moved here.
09:24If we can just be done with the actual trains, how great of a bike trail would that be?
09:29That's, that's like, that's like a dream, you know?
09:32Yeah.
09:36I guess the good thing about living down here, the trade-off is I don't live on the main street.
09:41The traffic, yeah, it's one or the other.
09:58Consol urged its employees to be active on social media, defending the company's reputation.
10:04The Center for Coalfield Justice's Facebook page has a 2.8 rating with 267 reviews.
10:12There's a lot of one-star vitriol.
10:15All I can say is you people tried this stuff for a lack of better term before, but at Bailey
10:20we will be mining, and if we take your water, the law says we must provide you with water
10:26until your water situation is resolved.
10:28I can assure you that Consol Energy does not in any way wish to harm the environment.
10:33Most of the employees at Consol are very avid outdoorsmen and love the outdoors.
10:39Veronica doesn't think that arguing on the internet amounts to much.
10:42She doesn't respond to these comments.
10:45She invites folks to call her or come into the CCJ office to talk in person.
10:50This is a company who relies on donations from multi-millionaires to line their pockets while
10:56trying to put the hard-working people of this country out of jobs to prevent the environment
11:01from being disturbed even knowing it can be restored to as good or better than it was before.
11:12I would say it gets really hard sometimes hearing multi-millionaires lining their pockets when
11:18I probably struggle more financially than most of the people that are writing the comments.
11:32The Center for Coalfield Justice won its appeal contesting Consol's permit, sparking a landmark legal change.
11:38When applying for permits from the Department for Environmental Protection, extraction mining companies
11:44cannot budget to rebuild what they expect to destroy.
11:48Now, their mitigation plans can only go so far.
11:52In November, people bust in to march on the business park where Consol and other energy companies are headquartered.
11:59Veronica was involved in a road blockade that interrupted the business park's morning commute.
12:04So that the people that worked there for one day could actually feel the same exact impact
12:09that folks on the front lines feel every day.
12:14I wanted to talk to the people on the other side of the story.
12:17My colleague Taylor reached out to some of the commenters on CCJ's Facebook page
12:21and found a coal worker and his wife who were interested in talking to me.
12:25They were excited. I was excited.
12:27I planned to meet them over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend during one of this guy's rare days off.
12:33He just had to clear it with Consol HR.
12:36He said he wanted to connect me to some folks at Consol who could tell me what was really going
12:41on.
12:42But when I arrived in Pittsburgh on a Saturday night after flying in and renting a car,
12:47I got a text message from his wife.
12:50I just found out that I am unable to interview the Consol employee that I was planning on interviewing,
13:00who is down to be interviewed, and Consol won't let him do it.
13:07And I found this out because his wife said that Consol said that they reached out to me
13:14and told me that he was unable to have contact with the media.
13:20But they didn't reach out to me.
13:22I looked through my phone calls. I looked through my emails. There's nothing from them.
13:29And now I'm just here. And what am I supposed to do?
13:34Figure it out, I guess.
13:37I should have expected this. In the past, Consol has threatened to fire employees for talking to media.
13:44Which sucks, but I get it.
13:47What incentive do they have to let that guy talk to me?
13:51I spent the weekend grasping for a plan B and singing along to Christmas songs on the radio.
13:58I visited workware stores. I saw lots of oil and gas workers traveling in from out of town to work
14:05there.
14:05It was a holiday weekend and the beginning of hunting season, and no one was getting back to me.
14:12I visited the CCJ office.
14:24Veronica was putting together a donation page for Giving Tuesday.
14:33Consol recently split its company into two companies, separating out oil and gas from coal.
14:40Ensuring they'll be primed to suffer minimal financial losses as the coal in the ground is continually depleted,
14:47becoming more expensive to extract.
14:50The Center for Coal Fuel Justice continues to focus on protecting water.
14:56It's the only economic asset in our community that is not tied to the fossil fuel industry.
15:01And we know that the coal industry is not going to be around forever.
15:05No matter what happens with regulations, the resources themselves are just going to be depleted.
15:11And it's important while we have coal mining in the area to protect and preserve what we're going to need
15:15in the future as well.
15:20Living in Greene County seems like a compromise.
15:25Many people bank on the promises of a big employer at the expense of natural resources, and that can seem
15:32like a pretty safe bet.
15:34Nature appears abundant in southwestern Pennsylvania.
15:38What's one valley filled with toxic coal waste when you have another just across the ridgeline?
15:52It could be only a matter of time before the clean air and pure water is an unquestionably broken promise.
16:00If they continue to make these decisions, they have to be held accountable for them.
16:05And it's clear that our legislators are not holding them accountable.
16:08Our regulatory systems are not holding them accountable.
16:12And so those of us that are living in these communities are going to do what it takes to defend
16:16our homes and our families and protect our futures.
16:22I'm sure that Kinsall would rather see us stop doing everything we're doing, but that's a day, as long as
16:29I'm living here, they will never see.
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