Protesters in Richmond, Va., target Massey Energy over mining practices
Jul. 9--Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
A four-hour demonstration in downtown Richmond against "mountain-top removal" strip mining, held in sympathy with protests at the G-8 meeting in Scotland, ended without incident yesterday.
About 20 protesters lay down on Fourth Street in front of Massey Energy Co.'s
office with the intention of going to jail. Three of them stayed for two hours
on the sidewalk with their arms bound together inside PVC piping to make it
difficult to be hauled away.
But arrests for the planned civil disobedience were avoided when Massey sent
two security guards to pick up a list of the demonstrators' demands.
Throughout the afternoon, people speaking for the demonstrators called on
Massey officials to come to the street and talk over some 300 protesters'
grievances concerning company mining practices.
Massey, which mines in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, is one of the
nation's largest coal companies. It also is arguably the most controversial in
central Appalachia and draws frequent criticism from environmentalists and from
the United Mine Workers of America union.
"Blankenship, Blankenship, Blankenship," demonstrators chanted over
and over. "Come on out, Don," they said, inviting Massey Chairman and
CEO Don Blankenship to join them in the street.
After the Massey guards picked up the list of demands, protest leader Larry
Gibson asked the energetic crowd of mostly young people to march back to Monroe
Park, where the protest began.
Gibson lives on Cave Ford Mountain in Kanawha County, W.Va., about 34 miles
south of Charleston, W.Va. Massey, he said, has taken the mountain near his home
down 900 feet. The company is mining around him and underneath him, leaving the
place where he and his ancestors have lived for 220 years an island, he said.
Mountain-top removal is a type of strip mining in which the crown is removed
to get at the coal bed beneath it. Sometimes hundreds of feet are clipped off.
The mining is a violent process involving dynamite in which a series of large
holes are drilled in the mountain and packed with a mixture of ammonium nitrate
and diesel fuel, which is then set off with dynamite.
The massive explosion that results loosens soil and rock so that it can be
pushed or hauled by heavy equipment into adjacent hollows or valleys in what are
called valley fills.
Gibson said that the practice sank his well three years ago and that it has
not been replaced despite his complaints to state regulators.
"It's very important we bring people's attention to what's
happening," Gibson said. Protest is the only means of communication the
group has after efforts to correspond with Massey failed, he said.
In a statement yesterday, Massey defended its environmental record. The
company said it supports environmental stewardship and follows environmental
regulations.
Massey said it respects the rights of people to express their concerns but
said "a great deal of misinformation" has been spread about its
coal-mining complex near an elementary school. That operation, by its Goals Coal
Co. subsidiary, was singled out for more specific criticism yesterday.
Katharine Kenny said that meeting demonstrators on the street would not have
been a good forum in which to hold a conversation. The guards took the
demonstrators' demands and no one was hurt.
Throughout the demonstration, Massey workers watched from office windows and
occasionally would try to talk with protesters. Some, including one man
stationed on the roof, took photos of the crowd.
A police squad equipped with riot gear at Fourth and Franklin, four
horse-mounted officers and several other officers in the vicinity were readying
to move in on the thinning crowd when the protest was called off about 4.
The march to Massey headquarters began after a noontime rally at Monroe Park,
near the Virginia Commonwealth University academic campus. Franklin Street was
blocked off from 1 to 2 p.m. while protestors carrying banners and huge
"G-8 puppets" marched to the Massey building. A few demonstrators on
bikes led the way, circling police cruisers that were trying to direct traffic.
The march turned the corner at Fourth Street and settled in front of the
Massey building. There protestors remained, chanting slogans, making speeches,
dancing and beating drums until departing with what they considered a victory.
By that time, the group had dwindled from 300 to about 100.
About 60 Richmond police officers spent most of the day working the protest.
They got some help from Henrico County and VCU police.
No arrests were made, and no one was injured.
Several "legal observers," working with the protesters, kept a
close eye on the crowd and police, scribbling in tiny notebooks.
"We're here to make sure the demonstrators' rights are respected,"
one observer said.
By Greg Edwards and Paige Akin
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Copyright (c) 2005, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.