Every Mine Has a Dog

“Coal is a curse…mining is the most dangerous job in the world.” --Jim Webb

“Reclamation is like putting lipstick on a corpse.” Harry Caudill

CAM (Central Appalachia Mining) 3 Mile Job
Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (MRCM)

We ride our bicycles up a steep rocky road next to a river bed. Eventually we are in the middle of a dry canyon surrounded by dense conifer trees. A lone Pepsi vending machine is perched on an outcropping, bright blue and red against the sandstone.

A white truck covered in hardened cracked mud plows down the road. When the dust settles, we ask Johnny Sexton if we could go up over the flattened hilltops to look at the mine. Unfortunately we can't because everyday at 4:30 the mine is scheduled to blast. It is 4:15. A series of hefty trucks appear on the horizon of the hill, tearing towards us like a herd of spooked cattle. “You see everyone is leaving for the blast…we had a guy killed here last week, rock came out of the sky landed on the other side of the ridge-line; hit him on the head. It was terrible. Nothing like that has happened in five years.” Johnny cracks the door, and spits at the ground, a black puddle of tobacco sludge. “Just terrible, I was called to a supina, had to testify in court, was held responsible for a freak accident...I’ve seen a lot of people die, in Vietnam in car crashes... I am an emergency technician, when this guy went down, I grabbed my bag and ran towards him, but it was too late.”

Johnny concedes that mountaintop removal damages the ecosystem. “How could it not? Here we are busting up solid rock. It messes up the entire water table.” He says that because of increased levels of toxins and sulfur in the ground water most small towns in Kentucky that had previously run off of well water are now on a city reviser. On the other hand, he loves the adrenaline rush. “You think you get high when you get speed...try blowing up a mountain! We work all day, set up, make sure every things in place and then I get to push the button. We’ve got systems now where you can be a mile away and still cause the blast."

Sirens blare over the intercom in his truck. It’s hot and I can smell gasoline burning—I’m thinking about what it’s like to blow up an ancient mountain. “Siren means, all clear, set to blast in one minute.” He turns the engine of his car off and we wait in the silence for the sound. Kate says "It’s like waiting for the world to end." All three of us hold our breaths. But we hear nothing. “Well, that’s it. I bet you girls can head up and get a look around."

Every mine has a dog. CAM 3 Mile Job has two dogs. A brown and white dog called Killer Bobby, and a fierce looking black dog named Susie. We met Greg, the night shift foreman who’s worked at this mine for 16 years. He, like the majority of miners we’ve talked to, has been in the business for 30. He works 4--14 hour shifts a week on a yearly salary. Although he's been in the industry for over half of his life, he still does not have the power to decide what gets blasted. He said a lot of big businesses like Wexford Holding Company in NJ own and operate these mines deep in Kentucky.

He wanted to be an accountant, but his wife had to have a hysterectomy at 28 and options changed. He drives us up the mountains, deeper into the mine. Over his intercom we hear something about "copperhead and pigtails," a statement undoubtedly referring to the two of us girlies riding in his truck. We laugh and tease him about how lucky he is to be showing us around. He says he'll probably get a lot of shit for it tonight.

Three mile job is extensive. First we pass through a series of partially reclaimed mountain tops. Perfectly curved flattop hills covered in native grasses and a few sections of reforested Locus. When asked if he remembers what the mountains use to look like on this site he replies, yes of course. We drive over the ridge line into an arid moonscape of pillars of cracked rock and deep craters. An army of massive trucks, with wheels twice the size of human beings, stand ready to battle the stars.

Greg believes that Surface Mining and Control Reclamation Act (SMCRA) is a good thing. After coming down a steep chute, we approach a series of artificial ponds which are used as part of SMCRA to catch the water and sediment from the mine. I asked if the ponds held toxic material and he replied that they didn't. He disagreed with Johnny saying that the MRCM did not directly destroy the drinking water in the area. He reiterated that if MRCM is done mindfully it is a safe a reliable way of extracting coal.

The explosive is comprised of 94% Ammonium Nitrate and 6% Diesel. He says that the process of clearing the shot rocks is very efficient. A front-end loader relocates all of the rock debris. The revealed seam of coal is collected and loaded onto trucks and taken to trains where it is shipped to the highest bidder, usually ending up in a power plant blast furnace. We drive on top of the newly revealed coal seam which is 6-18 inches thick. The next seam of coal below this one is an estimated 26-28 feet underground; it is a 4 foot deep seam. We examine several revealed seams, the dense black is filled with waves of a rustier color. Greg explains that the rust is sulfur, but that the coal in this job is relatively low sulfur. This coal has a high British Thermal Unite (BTU). The area that was blasted today is a typical size: 51 feet of mountaintop were blasted off in a 90' by 90' area. Before blasting, 40 holes, spaced approximately 16 ft apart, were drilled in a grid pattern across the 90' square surface. The mostly sandstone and shale shelf is drilled with a 6 ¾” or 7 7/8” diameter rotary drill all the way to the top of the desired coal seam, in this case 51 feet deep. Each of the holes is filled with 40 lb. of explosives--ANFO. The top 8 feet of the hole is filled with drill cuttings.

Greg projects another 100 years of coal in these mountains. As we ride out of the mine we all imagine that a long time ago all of these mountains were covered in seaweed at the bottom of the ocean.