Notable Quotes from the Past

“Like a mountain mined for precious metals, he is a man whose judgement is unsound.”

Ancient Sumerian Proverb

“We cannot afford to waste another day, another hour, another minute if want our children and our children’s children to enjoy clean water.  We simply won’t have world to live in if we continue our neglectful ways.”      Christopher Shay (R-Conn)

“We shall achieve conservation when and only when the destructive use of land becomes unethical – punishable by social ostracism.”     Aldo Leopold

“Whether we like it or not, West Virginia’s hills will be stripped, the bowels of the earth will be mined and the refuse strewn across our valleys and our mountains in the form of burning slate dumps.  This refuse will continue to be dumped into our once clear mountain streams.  We are paying a fearful price to allow the coal to be extracted from the hills of West Virginia.”

Governor William Marland (WV 1953-1957)

“Both stripping and the recreation and the tourist industry which employs four times as many people are today growing rapidly.  But they cannot both continue to grow.  One must force out the other.  Either we will have a state of beauty that West Virginians and Americans can continue to enjoy at great profit to ourselves, or we will have a stripped state enjoyed by none at great profit to a few giant, absentee corporations.”

Former WV State Senator, Si Galperin, in 1971

“What is not mined today may be mined tomorrow, unless it is determined it cannot be mined under the Clean Water Act, in which case it should not be mined today or in the future.”

The late Judge Charles Haden, II

Congressional Record – House   

July 22, 1974   p. 24469

Congressman Roncalio of Wyoming introduced an amendment authorizing mountaintop removal. He was supported by WV Congressman John Slack of Charleston .

Mr. Slack.I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would permit the mountaintop and valley fill type of surface mining presently used at several model mines in West Virginia creating useful plateaus without highwalls. Mountaintop mining produced flat land sorely needed in many hilly regions with minimum damage to the environment. This is a form of mining which should increase, not decline on the basis of its proven results.

Mr. Hechler of West Virginia .  I thank the gentleman for yielding. I should like to ask the gentleman from West Virginia whether this, indeed, does not weaken, negate and gut the permanent standards on steep slopes insofar as mountaintop removal is concerned and thereby do great damage to a State like West Virginia .

p. 24470

Mr. Hechler of West Virginia . Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, mountaintop removal is the most devastating form of mine on steep slopes. Once we scalp off a mountain and the spoil runs down the mountainside and the acid runs into the water supply, there is no way to check it. This is not only esthetically bad as anyone can tell who flies over the State of West Virginia or any places where the mountaintops are scraped off, but also it is devastating to those people who live below the mountain. Some of the worst effects of strip mining in Kentucky , West Virginia , and other mountainous areas result from mountaintop removal. McDowell County in WV, which has mine more coal than any other county in the Nation, is getting ready right now to strip mine off four or five mountaintops. There are displacing families and moving them out of those areas because everybody down slope from where there is mountaintop mining is threatened. I certainly hope that all the compromises that have been accepted by the committee, offered by industry in the committee, that now we do not compromise what little is left of this bill by amendments such as this.