Resistance Grinds on Big Coal

But pith and power 'till my last hour

I'll make this declaration.

We were bought and sold for English gold

Sic a parcel of rogues in a nation.

--Robert Burns, A Parcel o' Rogues

What a big week in the Big Coal Gone Wild chronicles!

UPDATE May 18th : After a long national campaign to
end banking practices for mountaintop removal mining operations,
Rainforest Action Network announced that JP Morgan Chase has made its first public announcement on halting lending to reckless mining operations in Appalachia.

Meanwhile, at the Massey Energy annual stockholders meeting today in
Richmond, Virginia, an estimated thousand protesters packed the foyers
of the Jefferson Hotel and unfurled banners: "Massey: Stop Putting
Profits Over People." According to news reports, two protesters have
been arrested. Organizer Kate Rooth, with the activist group Rising
Tide, called on Massey to stop "driving people out of their communities
and poisoning their drinking water."

The Don Blankenship Wild West Show hits the US Senate chambers on May 20th, only two days after angry stockholders and major protests gear up for Massey Energy's annual shareholder meeting.

On May 18th, the Rainforest Action Network, among other citizens
groups, will hold JP Morgan Chase accountable at its annual
shareholders meeting for bankrolling criminal mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia.

Last week, RAN published an extremely informative report card
on the banking parcel o' rogues--Bank of America, Citi, Credit Suisse,
GE Capital Corp, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, PNC, UBS and Wells
Fargo --that make up the majority of financing for MTR. According to
RAN, "Since January 2008, the nine banks examined in this report card
have provided more than $3.9 billion in loans and bond underwriting to
companies practicing mountaintop removal coal mining."

And, on the evening of May 18th, under the cover of darkness,
Peabody Energy will begin blasting away the rest of my family's beloved
Eagle Creek valley in the lush Shawnee National Forest of southern
Illinois, at their expanded Wildcat Hills strip-mining operation. The
668-acre operation will not only continue to destroy one of the most
diverse forests in the heartland, poison the area watersheds with
discharges, but will most likely continue to eliminate and cover up the
archaeological remains of prehistoric communities and African and
African American slaves in the nearby coal mines and salt wells. And
just down the holler, the Illinois Fuel Co. I-1 Mine will continue to
be out of compliance with their NPDES permit and discharging illegal
amounts of pollution into Eagle Creek and Rose Creek.

Here's a glimpse of the Wildcat Hills strip mine:

Thanks to the EPA's coal ash compromise last week, Peabody will also continue to dump millions of tons of toxic coal ash into our abandoned mines and watersheds in southern Illinois.

With nary a green job in sight, coal-reaped Saline County --where Peabody and Illinois Fuel and Crandall Canyon disaster owner Bob Murray
make millions of dollars in coal--ranks 98 out 101 counties for the
worst poverty, unemployment and health care indicators in Illinois.

And to top off the week of Big Coal Gone Wild, massive underground
longwall mining operations slated for south-central Illinois will
continue unabated, soon to destroy one of the heartland's most
productive agricultural areas.

Just ask Illinois farmer Larry Schraut, in Montomgery County, in
central Illinois. Schraut's ancestral farm in the heart of Illinois
corn country stands on the edge of the 120,000-acre (187 square miles)
Deer Run longwall mine, a highly mechanized process that removes the
traditional underground pillars and allows for the overlying rock and
surface to collapse.

According to Joyce Blumenshine with the Illinois Sierra Club:

"The impacts of longwall mining on prime farmland is the overwhelming
concern for the near-term and long-term Illinois mining permits. These
national resource lands should be protected as necessary for future
generations. How can coal mining continue to be approved by state and
federal agencies to come in and cripple lands and choke off water
resources? These agencies are failing to enforce the existing laws and
cater to the coal industry to the detriment of fundamental fairness to
the people and environmental justice."

According to Schraut, the subsidence from longwall mining--often
more than five feet--causes irreversible damage to the farmland and
aquifers, and essentially turns prized level fields into rutted swamps.
The Citizens Against Longwall Mining, a coalition of farmers, and
citizens and environmental groups, estimates that productivity drops
substantially in most longwall mined areas, forcing the removal of
multi-generation farm families in the process. The massive Deer Run
mine is only one of several permits currently under review in four
counties, in a new rush of longwall mining applications slated to
double coal production in Illinois over the next decade.

Beyond Blankenship, the mayhem of Big Coal Gone Wild marches on.