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Coal mining in Greene County, PA is ever present in the lives of its residents. Veronica Coptis is working to protect the environment for the future.
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00:00This is Greene County, Pennsylvania.
00:02It's home to the Bailey Mine Complex,
00:04the biggest coal mine complex in North America.
00:07It's the size of Manhattan, and it employs about 2,000 people.
00:11It's owned by Consol Energy, which was founded way back in 1864.
00:16This is Veronica.
00:18She's an environmental activist and the executive director
00:21of the Center for Coalfield Justice.
00:23She lives here.
00:25This is not a lake.
00:27It's a CRDA, a Coal Refuse Disposal Area.
00:32Or, in Veronica's words,
00:34this is what a toxic waste dump looks like.
00:37And this toxic waste dump is just one of 24 toxic waste dumps in Greene County,
00:43all of which may be leaching chemicals from coal ash into the water supply and the soil.
00:50Consol Energy bought this valley when Veronica was a teen.
00:53She grew up exploring these woods and learning how to drive on this road,
00:58but all of a sudden she just couldn't go there anymore.
01:03Not without someone watching.
01:07It changed her life.
01:09Realizing that the coal mine could just take a valley made me aware of the power the company had over
01:17the people living here.
01:18And from that point forward, I've always spoken out on how that power dynamic is not equal
01:24and that the community members should have just as much a say as an outside corporation.
01:29For generations, coal mining in Appalachia has meant good paying jobs.
01:33But these days, it means fewer jobs for less money, as other fossil fuels get extracted.
01:40And the cost of coal, on land and on people, has become unavoidably apparent.
01:46But what's not so apparent is how to create a future here.
01:51I'm Jackie Huntington, and this is See Here Now.
01:59The Pennsylvania State Constitution entitles the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
02:04to clean air and pure water.
02:07Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people,
02:11including generations yet to come.
02:13But that right to public goods is often squared against the free market.
02:18And that's where the Center for Coalfield Justice comes in.
02:22The organization has engaged in repeated legal actions
02:26to contest Consol's permit applications for longwall mining.
02:30What's longwall mining, you ask?
02:32The longwall machine is a giant machine,
02:34and it has supports that support the surface or the roof of the mine.
02:38Longwall mining is Consol's bread and butter.
02:41Ninety percent of Consol Energy's steam and metallurgic coal is harvested using longwall mining technology.
02:48And there's a giant blade that breaks up all the coal,
02:52and then the coal falls onto conveyor belts, and it leaves the mine.
02:57As you remove that entire seam, there are no pillars that support the surface,
03:01and those supports will slowly move forward, and behind you, the ground sinks
03:04to fill that void that you just created.
03:07That sinking is synonymous with subsidence.
03:12Land subsidence can crack home foundations.
03:15People can lose well water.
03:18Public space is under constant threat.
03:21It's caused folks to sell cheap and get out,
03:23or just straight up abandon their homes and leave the county,
03:26which only has a population of about 38,000.
03:30Our focus right now is on protecting streams within a state park.
03:34Specifically, Ryerson Station State Park.
03:37Public lands.
03:38A lot of people in the community use these public lands to recreate.
03:41They're not asking Consol to stop mining.
03:44They're asking the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
03:47to not let Consol do this particular type of mining
03:50under public land or near bodies of water.
03:54Because this used to be a lake.
03:57Duke Lake.
03:58In 2005, due to subsidence caused by longwall mining,
04:02this dam cracked and the lake was drained.
04:05After years of litigation, Consol reached a settlement with the state.
04:10Consol agreed to pay $36 million to rebuild the dam and the lake
04:14with a condition that they accepted absolutely no fault for any of it.
04:19Ultimately, the whole thing fell through.
04:21The land wasn't stable enough for any of it to be rebuilt.
04:25All of that money is just tied up in state coffers.
04:28Meanwhile, Greene County lost Ryerson Station State Park as they knew it.
04:33And people are still super angry.
04:36Despite the way it treats rural landscapes,
04:39Consol is headquartered in an antiseptically perfect business park
04:43next to a country club and golf course with its own lake and artificial waterfall.
04:49All protected with threatening signs and cameras.
04:52This is definitely a battle between people and corporate power.
04:56By not getting every ounce of coal out from under the ground,
05:01they could protect the streams.
05:02But the corporate greed and the corporate power that drives this company
05:07means they need every last ounce of coal out of the ground without any regard
05:11for what happens to the community left behind.
05:16The future of our next generation, of my daughter, is what's at stake.
05:22She actually really loves herself.
05:24So she might think you're taking pictures of her.
05:26She loves her picture taking.
05:29She's very in love with herself.
05:34Veronica's husband used to be a Marine.
05:37He spent three years working in the coal mines.
05:39He's going back to school right now on the GI Bill.
05:43He and Veronica want their daughter to grow up here.
05:46Oh man, you're growing.
05:48It'd be very easy for us to leave like many other folks
05:51who may think differently than other people in the county
05:55to just go to an urban center where their thoughts are more
05:58more alike with their neighbors.
06:00But we feel our responsibility to stay.
06:04On Wednesday, he ate through three plums.
06:07But he was still hungry.
06:09I haven't been too concerned about my health growing up next to this.
06:13But now that I'm responsible for this beautiful little girl,
06:17I'm very concerned.
06:19You want to just sit in your crib?
06:21And there could come a day, if her health is jeopardized,
06:24that we do have to walk away from a place we call home.
06:45Veronica is checking in with supporters of the Center for Coalfield Justice
06:48to record their concerns.
06:55Hi.
06:56Hi.
06:57I'm Veronica.
06:58I'm with the Center for Coalfield Justice.
06:59Do you have time to talk about why you care about Ryerson today?
07:04This is Randy.
07:11She lives just a few hundred feet away from a coal prep plant.
07:17The coal train passes through several times a day
07:20and sounds like a ghost storming its way through her backyard.
07:25My dad was a coal miner.
07:27My grandpa was a coal miner.
07:28My brother is a welder.
07:30They're blue-collar.
07:30I'm the only one that went to college in my family.
07:33I grew up in the coal fields.
07:35I grew up playing in coal ash.
07:38And I thought it was actually pretty cool.
07:41Didn't know what it was.
07:46Conveyor belts crisscross the county.
07:49They ferry coal through its stages of mining, cleaning, and disposal into CRDAs like this one,
07:55which has overtaken this valley.
07:58The scale here is massive.
08:00This truck is just a regular-sized truck.
08:03Can you imagine standing down there?
08:15Dan?
08:16This is Dan.
08:18I own 84 acres here.
08:20I have great water supply.
08:23I have streams coming down the hills.
08:26They're on the back side.
08:27I think they'll be destroyed because they're going to longwall that.
08:34They're going to start 500 feet from back of my house.
08:39They think that my water won't get destroyed here, but they think.
08:45They used to say it wouldn't.
08:46Now they say they don't think it'll be destroyed.
08:50Why is it so important for you to stay and not just leave like so many other people have done?
08:58This farm's been in my family since 1851.
09:03I like it here.
09:05I want to stay here.
09:07And you're not buying me out.
09:14It's not on now, but this used to be bright, like it was lit up like a ski slope.
09:19Right, right.
09:19So when I was in college, I thought it was a ski slope.
09:22I thought it was a roller coaster when we moved here.
09:24If we can just be done with the actual trains, how great of a bike trail would that be?
09:30That's like a dream, you know?
09:32Yeah.
09:36I guess the good thing about living down here, the trade-off is I don't live on the main street.
09:40The traffic.
09:42Yeah.
09:42It's one or the other.
09:43I don't think so.
09:57It's been aup to you.
10:08That's fine.
10:12I think so.
10:13one-star vitriol. All I can say is you people tried this stuff for a lack of
10:19better term before but at Bailey we will be mining and if we take your water the
10:24law says we must provide you with water until your water situation is resolved.
10:28I can assure you that Kinsall Energy does not in any way wish to harm the
10:32environment. Most of the employees at Kinsall are very avid outdoorsmen and
10:37love the outdoors. Veronica doesn't think that arguing on the internet amounts too
10:42much. She doesn't respond to these comments. She invites folks to call her
10:47or come into the CCJ office to talk in person. This is a company who relies on
10:52donations from multi-millionaires to line their pockets while trying to put the
10:57hard-working people of this country out of jobs to prevent the environment from
11:01being disturbed even knowing it can be restored to as good or
11:06better than it was before.
11:12I would say it gets really hard sometimes hearing multi-millionaires lining
11:17their pockets when I probably struggle more financially than most of the people
11:23that are writing the comments.
11:32The Center for Coalfield Justice won its appeal contesting Kinsall's permit sparking a
11:37landmark legal change. When applying for permits from the Department for Environmental Protection,
11:42extraction mining companies cannot budget to rebuild what they expect to destroy.
11:48Now their mitigation plans can only go so far.
11:52In November, people bust in to march on the business park where Kinsall and other energy companies are headquartered.
11:59Veronica was involved in a road blockade that interrupted the business park's morning commute.
12:04So that the people that worked there for one day could actually feel the same exact impact
12:09that folks on the front lines feel every day.
12:13I wanted to talk to the people on the other side of the story.
12:17My colleague Taylor reached out to some of the commenters on CCJ's Facebook page
12:21and found a co-worker and his wife were interested in talking to me. They were excited. I was excited.
12:27I planned to meet them over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend during one of this guy's rare days off.
12:33He just had to clear it with Consul HR. He said he wanted to connect me to some folks at
12:38Consul
12:39who could tell me what was really going on.
12:42But when I arrived in Pittsburgh on a Saturday night after flying in and renting a car,
12:47I got a text message from his wife.
12:50I just found out that I am unable to interview the Consul employee that I was planning on interviewing
13:00who is down to be interviewed and Consul won't let him do it.
13:07And I found this out because his wife said that Consul said that they reached out to me
13:14and told me that he was unable to have contact with the media, but they didn't reach out to me.
13:22I looked through my phone calls. I looked through my emails. There's nothing from them.
13:28And now I'm just here, and what am I supposed to do? Figure it out, I guess.
13:37I should have expected this. In the past, Consul has threatened to fire employees for talking to media.
13:44Which sucks, but I get it. What incentive do they have to let that guy talk to me?
13:51I spent the weekend grasping for a plan B and singing along to Christmas songs on the radio.
13:58I visited workwear stores. I saw lots of oil and gas workers traveling in from out of town to work
14:05there.
14:05It was a holiday weekend and the beginning of hunting season, and no one was getting back to me.
14:12I visited the CCJ office.
14:24Veronica was putting together a donation page for Giving Tuesday.
14:33Consul recently split its company into two companies, separating out oil and gas from coal.
14:40Ensuring they'll be primed to suffer minimal financial losses as the coal in the ground is continually depleted,
14:46becoming more expensive to extract.
14:50The Center for Coal Fuel Justice continues to focus on protecting water.
14:56It's the only economic asset in our community that is not tied to the fossil fuel industry.
15:01And we know that the coal industry is not going to be around forever.
15:05No matter what happens with regulations, the resources themselves are just going to be depleted.
15:10And it's important while we have coal mining in the area to protect and preserve what we're going to need
15:15in the future as well.
15:20Living in Greene County seems like a compromise.
15:25Many people bank on the promises of a big employer at the expense of natural resources.
15:31And that can seem like a pretty safe bet.
15:34Nature appears abundant in southwestern Pennsylvania.
15:38What's one valley filled with toxic coal waste when you have another just across the ridgeline?
15:44But homes, streams, and parks have been undermined, literally and figuratively, by Consul Energy.
15:53It could be only a matter of time before the clean air and pure water is an unquestionably broken promise.
16:00If they continue to make these decisions, they have to be held accountable for them.
16:05And it's clear that our legislators are not holding them accountable.
16:08Our regulatory systems are not holding them accountable.
16:12And so those of us that are living in these communities are going to do what it takes to defend
16:16our homes and our families and protect our futures.
16:22I'm sure that Consul would rather see us stop doing everything we're doing, but that's a day, as long as
16:29I'm living here, they will never see.
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