Victims DEMAND action

WHITESVILLE -- They stood at the front of the stuffy and cramped Coal River Mountain Watch office, facing an emotional and vocal audience like criminals facing a firing squad.

Local residents stared at the six Department of Environmental Protection inspectors with concerned faces and solemn eyes, asking questions and demanding answers about their flood-ravaged communities and the strip mining companies located on the mountains behind their homes.

Director Matthew Crum of the DEP's Office of Mining and Reclamation did his best to arbitrate the public meeting Thursday evening.

"I'm sure what's on your mind is how much of the damage done by floods was caused by mines," Crum said to the 200 people who stopped working in their flood-damaged homes and communities Thursday evening to come to Whitesville, a middle-class, blue-collar, everyone-knows-everybody Boone County community much like the ones devastated by Sunday's floodwaters.

He tried to explain state and federal mining regulations to the men and women who sat in metal folding chairs, lined the walls and filled the doorways of the steamy storefront office.

He lectured them about drainage control guidelines.

He described enforcement actions against coal operators.

And he told them, for the most part, regulatory officials found no evidence that mining sites contributed to the flooding.

But the citizens -- most were from Sylvester, Seng Creek, Whitesville, Booger Hollow and Clear Fork Road, contiguous communities in Boone and Raleigh counties -- were not buying it. They believe coal companies and mountaintop removal projects caused the floods that destroyed hundreds of area houses and trailers.

So, they lectured Crum and his colleagues.

"You hold our lives in your hands," one lady pleaded.

"What are you doing to do to help us?" a man asked.

"Nothing," another man interjected. "Money is more important than lives to them."

"They say it was an act of God," a woman added. "Well, if that is the case, then God must have changed his name to Massey."

Many cried or shouted as they recreated their tales of horror, telling the regulatory officials they lost their homes, their cars, their belongings, their clothes and, for some, almost their lives.

"We live in fear," Nancy McVey of Walhonde Village said. "We live in fear that these things are going to break. We're surrounded by slurry impoundments. We've got nowhere to go. We've got no future here.''

Added Karen Davis of Pettus: "Whoever gives out these strip permits, they don't have to live here. They won't have to bury anybody if this happens again."

Others demanded political intervention.

"I think it's time the big shots in Washington, D.C., and Charleston do something," Bacon Brown of Sycamore shouted.

Crum assured the residents that action would be taken. He pointed to events this week, when DEP inspectors visited West Virginia coalfields and cited 15 companies for flood-related violations for having faulty drainage control and causing damage off their mine sites.

They determined only one, the Princess Beverly site operated by AEI Resources Inc. and located on Kayford Mountain, was responsible for flood damage.

Inspectors said a violation at Princess Beverly -- it received two violation notices and five cessation orders from DEP -- caused part of the massive destruction at Booger Hollow in particular and along Clear Fork Road in general, although they said they wouldn't know to what extent until future studies are completed.

"The rain did this," Princess Beverly spokesman Terry Whitt told The Associated Press. "We had 5 inches of rain in a few hours. That's a tremendous amount of water."

"What are we going to do when we determine that the damage was caused by a mining company? This is what we do," Crum told the crowd.

"We write violations and we issue cessation orders. We also have the authority to order them to repair the damage that they have caused. That's why we are looking now, to determine what the damage was. Our concern now is to determine the extent of damage from any of these operations."

Eullah Williams of White Oak displays a poster in memory of her daughter to local residents and Department of Environmental Protection regulatory officials Thursday evening at the Coal River Mountain Watch public meeting in Whitesville. Her daughter, Susan Shea, drowned in 1997 when Artie flooded because of heavy rains and, Williams contends, surplus water from mountaintop removal projects.

Mountain Top removale Meeting

Renee Duncan of Clear Fork, in the midst of a crowd of Boone and Raleigh County residents, explains how floodwaters destroyed her home.