Mountaintop Removal Tour

Twenty interfaith leaders from across the United States converged at 7:30 a.m. May 1 in the parking lot of St. Clare Catholic Church in Berea, Ky., to begin a whirlwind two-day “Mountaintop Removal Tour for Interfaith Leaders,” led by Glenmary Father John Rausch. The next afternoon, at a prayer service overlooking mountaintop removal in process in Perry County, they signed a statement calling on their respective faith communities to work to stop the practice of mountaintop removal and to examine how their own lifestyles are driving this environmental disaster by the constant demand for cheap electricity from coal.

“Care of creation represents a common thread for all people of faith,” declares the interfaith statement read aloud and then signed during a prayer service on a precipice owned by McKinley Sumner of Montgomery Creek, Ky. Twenty-five feet of his part of a mountain has been illegally blasted away by ICG (International Coal Group), the mining company conducting mountaintop removal throughout Central Appalachia. The statement goes on to state: “From our observations and the testimony of many, we conclude that mountaintop removal destroys God’s garden.”

Mountaintop removal is a form of mining that razes forests, scraps away top soil and then blasts up to 800 feet off the tops of mountains in order to allow giant machines to scoop out the layers of coal. In most cases, millions of tons of “overburden”—the former mountaintops—are pushed into adjacent hollows creating “valley fills” that permanently destroy the streams below. What are left are flat expanses absent all topsoil where nothing much grows except non-native grasses.

From the mining company’s perspective, this is the cheapest way to extract the valuable low-sulfur coal that underlies the mountains of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and, to some extent, southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee.

But many, who experience the real costs of this method of mining firsthand, say it is anything but cheap. Tour participants heard testimony at an evening gathering at the Hindman Settlement School in Hindman, Ky., from local residents who insist that these costs must also be counted:

the cost to their water supply which is being slowly destroyed by the arsenic and selenium leached out of the overburden once it is dumped onto the headwaters of mountain streams.
the cost of foundations cracked and nerves frayed by almost round-the-clock blasting at mining sites so close to family homesteads that fly rock hits their roofs.
the cost of increased flooding and mudslides that destroy homes and threaten entire communities.
the cost of the constant dust stirred up by the endless caravan of coal trucks that damage mountain roads, leaving them to be repaired at local taxpayer’s expense.
the cost of the biodiversity of forest habitats scraped into oblivion and the loss of the natural beauty of the mountains they love and call home.

Informed by this testimony and by flyovers of the devastation that has already taken place in northern Perry County, signers of the interfaith statement promised these four actions:

to “examine our own wasteful and extravagant lifestyle that causes the destruction of the mountains by demanding cheap energy from coal.”
to “insert mountaintop removal into the growing conversation about global climate change.”
to “pledge voice and vote” to encourage full enforcement of “existing regulations that ensure clean water and…a ban of mountaintop removal as a method of mining.”
to “make this a spiritual issue in our own lives and to invite the members of our faith communities to do likewise”—thereby “engaging people’s conscience toward moral action and praying with the people of Central Appalachia.”

Members of various faith traditions—Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Ba’hai, Christian—were invited to participate in what Father Rausch describes “as much a pilgrimage as a tour.” But the final roster included only members of various Christian denominations and one representative of the Ba’hai faith. Christian participants included Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Mennonites, Methodists, Lutherans and members of the United Church of Christ.

Nonetheless, the tour attracted the attention of a film crew from Boston preparing a two-hour documentary on religion and the environment to air on PBS stations next spring. They particularly focused on several nationally known Evangelicals on the tour, including Dr. Matthew Sleeth of Wilmore, Ky., a signer of the 2006 “Evangelical Call to Action” prepared by the Evangelical Climate Change Initiative. Other participants well known in Evangelical circles included: Peter Illyn of Restoring Eden, La Center, Wash.; Chris Elisara of the Creation Care Study Program, Julian, Calif.; and Allen Johnson of Christians for the Mountains, Dunmore, W.Va.

Dr. Sleeth, author of Serve God, Save the Planet is a nationally known Evangelical speaker and writer on environmental concerns. His articles appear regularly in Christianity Today and he has a regular program on the Moody Broadcasting Network. He gave up a 15-year career as an emergency room physician six years ago to devote himself to caring for another kind of patient: Planet Earth. Ever since, he and his family have been consciously changing their lifestyle to consume less and to reduce their “carbon footprint.”

He proudly displayed his most recent electric bill of $15 to tour participants. This is the result of moving from a 3,500 sq. ft. home to one less than half the size, washing dishes by hand, hanging laundry out to dry, changing incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents, and turning lights off when not in use.

His life-changing decisions stand as a challenge to all people of faith to live the closing words of the “Litany of the Mountain” prayed at the close of the tour just before members came forward to sign the Interfaith Statement on Mountaintop Removal:
We pledge to live in new ways,
to reduce consumption and energy use,
to promote conservation and sustainability,
because the earth belongs to God and not to us.

The full text of the Interfaith Statement on Mountaintop Removal and a complete list of signers is available at www.kftc.org.