Coal Country

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Eventually I called Mickey McCoy, whom Greg Preece had suggested I talk to. McCoy was once mayor of Inez, and with his wife recently testified in Washington against the destructive practices of Appalachian mining, so I figured he wouldn't be shy. He agreed to meet for breakfast at Grandad's Diner. He had a piratical look, with dark shirt, hair, beard, and eyes. Randolph McCoy, a principal in the Hatfield-McCoy hill-country battles of the late 1800s, was a distant relative. For breakfast McCoy ordered the special, which he pronounced "spatial," drawing out the word savoringly. He teaches English at the local high school, where his wife, Nina, teaches anatomy, physiology, and biology.

We had fun talking, and when he left for work he invited me to come for dinner at his house. Nina and their fourteen-year-old son, Josie, drove by my motel in the evening to show me the way there. Nina's maiden name was Dull, and perhaps in reaction her personality is the opposite. Auburn-haired and vivid, she speaks in a manner that highlights the important parts of what she's saying as if with a slash of yellow marker. We talked in the kitchen as she made dinner, and after Mickey came home we sat down to eat and they talked some more.

Nina: "The story of this spill just goes on and on. After it, what worried everybody, and what keeps worryin' everybody, is the water supply. Our tap water comes out of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, and we don't know if chemicals left from the spill are contaminating it. At a meeting with the EPA a while ago, a lady from Inez stood up and asked them to test the water, and the EPA's answer was, 'We've not been asked to test the water.' The lady said, 'You don't understand -- I'm askin' you!'"

Mickey: "Meanwhile the EPA team is up there on the dais drinkin' bottled water."

N.: "An independent test had said that there were six heavy metals, including cadmium and arsenic, in the drinking water, and finally the EPA said, 'We'll check into it.' And we still don't know if our water's safe or not."

M.: "An EPA lawyer at that meeting told everybody, 'Listen, people, coal mining is a dirty business, and you-all better get used to it.'"

N.: "People around here hear you criticizing the coal companies, and they start moaning, 'But what'll we do if the mines shut down? What'll happen to those jobs?' I sympathize to a certain extent, but I also tell them, 'Lots of places in America don't have coal, and don't have coal companies, and they manage to support themselves OK.'"

M.: "'Jobs' is a sacred word. It's a word like 'shareholders.' To some people, I'm the turd in the punchbowl because they think I don't believe in jobs."

N.: "And how good a job is it, anyway, if you have to risk the lives of the same people you employ?"

M.: "If people are all scared about jobs, that gives the coal company more power and makes it seem more important than it is already. That's what happened with this cleanup -- the coal company announced what it planned to do, and the government and everybody basically just rolled over and said, 'OK.'"

N: "A coal company is a coal company. It'll do what it has to to make money. But when the EPA joins up with them -- when you see EPA lawyers and coal company lawyers leaving public meetings together -- that's when you despair."

Appalachian mining produces plenty of lawsuits. The McCoys are part of one, brought by a group called Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, against "mountaintop removal" mining; that suit does not involve the spill of 2000. Recently a group of Inez homeowners settled a property-damage suit deriving from the spill. Other spill-related suits against Martin County Coal have yet to be resolved. As for the drinking water supply, EPA's Art Smith says state tests showed the spill did no long-term harm.

Continued...