Andrew and Mountaintop Mining

Mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) is a hugely controversial practice of surface mining that has spread through several states in central Appalachia. As much as 1,000 vertical feet of mountain are explosively leveled to get easy access to the thin coal seams below, and the resulting debris - trees, rocks, dust and everything else - is pushed into the adjacent stream valleys. These stream valleys help feed watersheds and groundwater for communities in the valleys, and often communities near MTR operations are destroyed or abandoned by longterm residents when they become unlivable.

The resulting "valley fills" are often used as enormous impoundments for coal dust slurry, sometimes holding as much as 1 to 2 billion gallons behind earthen dams rising several hundred feet above the valley floor.

Andrew first became aware of MTR in 1998 thanks to his friend and fellow songwriter Glen Simpson from Hardy KY. His visit inspired his song "Company Town" which appears on his 3rd CD Turning Pages as well as Moving Mountains: Voices of Appalachia Rise Up Against Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, a compilation CD of protest songs released in 2004 by Aurora Lights. Since then, Andrew has thought, spoken, studied and written much about the difficult conundrum of the economic wellbeing of Appalachian residents and the absolute and total destruction of their regional environment with its rich biodiversity and vital headwaters for much of the east's rivers (read his essay "Where Mountains Were").

Andrew, current Beyond Borders bandmate and founding Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member Les Thompson, and past WV state Fiddle Champion Chance McCoy wrote and recorded "Made by Hand" (click for free MP3 download) for Still Moving Mountains: The Journey Home, a second CD of songs produced by Jen Osha and Aurora Lights to raise public awareness of MTR's heavy impacts. Through 14 musical tracks including Kathy Mattea, Del McCoury, Blue Highway, and Great American Taxi as well as Andrew's dear friends and labelmates at Falling Mountain Music, Keith & Joan Pitzer and Debra Cowan, and additional interviews with coalfield residents and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new CD mourns the devastation of landscapes and communities by MTR and celebrates the courage and legacy of coalfield resistance. The CD has been profiled on CNN and CMT, and Headon Radio's reviewer Jon Fox called out "Made by Hand"; "The fiddle solo gave me goosebumps. This is a truly wonderful piece of writing, arranging and execution. It may just be my favorite on the album."

Andrew has appeared at many MTR-related events over the years, including CD release events in Virginia & West Virginia, a screening of the movie Coal Country in Norfolk VA, and the 2004 Moving Mountains tour of the southeast produced by Appalachian Voices. Andrew and his Beyond Borders bandmates performed at Rising Appalachia in DC as well as at Mountain Aid, a 2009 concert at Shakori Hills in NC that also featured Kathy Mattea, Donna the Buffalo and Si Kahn. He developed "What Moves Us to Move?", a Special Music Service for churches, in response to the June 2011 march to save historic Blair Mountain from destruction.

MTR has devastated huge swaths of West Virginia and Kentucky, but the practice is spreading through southwestern Virginia and northeastern Tennessee as well.  Over 1,200 miles of streams have been buried in West Virginia alone. Most operations remain largely unseen by the public, as it is usually done out of sight of major highways and roads. Much of the catastrophic flooding that has been in the news in recent years is in areas of West Virginia that have been heavily mountaintop mined, and have not historically been prone to flooding.

While MTR is less lethal to miners historically than deep-shaft or longwall underground mining, its scars on the landscape are essentially permanent. To obliterate mountains that are nearly half a billion years old for short-term profits and to feed a voracious appetite for energy are leaving deep and troubling questions about the future for area residents and their descendants.

For more about the environmental impacts, legal battles, and the people who've been impacted by MTR, please visit AppalachianVoices.org or read recent articles from The Washington Post and Charleston Gazette journalist Ken Ward's mining industry blog The Coal Tattoo.