Knoxville, Tennessee: Three Hands Off Appalachia Activists Call Out UBS Wealth Management Services for Funding Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

Bristol, Virginia: Mountain Justice Blockades Road to Shut Down Alpha HQ, Five Arrested

UPDATE 10:00 AM: All five blockaders have been removed and arrested. Please consider a generous donation to RAMPS Campaign’s legal fund! Even five or ten dollars helps! Follow RAMPS on Twitter for more info on the action.

As part of this year’s Mountain Justice Summer, five blockaders have shut down the only road leading to the headquarters of Alpha Natural Resources, which engages in terribly destructive mountaintop removal coal mining.

Read more on the RAMPS Campaign website or on Mountain Justice’s site!

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Alpha Headquarters Shut Down By Demonstrators Locked to Tank of Dirty Water

Residents Protest Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, Health Impacts and Sludge Expansion

BRISTOL, VA.— Three residents of Central Appalachia and supporters with Mountain Justice chained themselves to an industrial tank of black water in front of Alpha Natural Resources’ Bristol, Va., headquarters to protest Alpha’s mountaintop removal strip mining and coal slurry operations across the region.

“I’m risking arrest today because mountaintop removal has to end now for the future viability of Appalachia,” says Emily Gillespie of Roanoke, Va., whose work with the Mountain Justice movement is inspired by Appalachian women’s history of non-violent resistance. The tank of water represents coal contamination from affected communities across the Appalachian region.

The group called for Alpha to stop seeking an expansion of the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment in Raleigh County, W.Va. “We want Kevin Crutchfield, CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, to produce a signed document expressing that they won’t seek the expansion of the Brushy Fork Impoundment before we leave,” Junior Walk, 23, from the Brushy Fork area said.

“I live downstream from Alpha’s Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment on Coal River. If that impoundment breaks, my whole family would be killed,” Walk said, “Even if it doesn’t, we’re still being poisoned by Alpha’s mining wastes everyday. I’m here to bring the reality of that destruction to the corporate authorities who are causing it, but who don’t have to suffer its consequences.”

More than 20 peer-reviewed studies since 2010 demonstrate a connection between mountaintop removal coal mining operations and increased cases of kidney, lung, and heart diseases, as well as increased birth defects and early mortality. The ACHE act, currently in sub committee in Washington, calls for a moratorium on new mountaintop removal operations until a definitive, non-partisan study can demonstrate the reason for these community health emergency levels of health impacts.

The impoundment at Brushy Fork holds back almost 5 billion gallons of toxic sludge and is considered the largest earthen dam in the Western hemisphere. Recently leaked records show that coal slurry impoundments in Appalachia failed 59 out of 73 total structural tests performed by the Office of Surface Mining. “Alpha is only profitable because they’re allowed to gamble with our lives—and we’re the ones who pay the cost of their negligence and toxic pollution,” Walk said.

Alpha has lost numerous lawsuits relating to pollution from mining wastes in recent years, but they continue to violate safety regulations and expand their hazardous operations.

After refusing to take responsibility for the massive floods caused by the King Coal Highway and their destructive mountaintop removal mining practices, Alpha continues to push forward similar projects, such as the controversial Coalfields Expressway in Virginia.

To learn more about Mountain Justice, visit www.mountainjustice.org

“You’re not welcome here… We’ve said no from day one.”

And with these firm words the TransCanada representatives were kicked out of Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation last week. The seemingly aloof TransCanada officials showed up at the Tribal Office in Eagle Butte, South Dakota in an attempt to win the tribe over to the pipeline, but were met with a swift, firm response. Robin LeBeau, Cheyenne River Sioux Councilwoman for District 5, saw them in the parking lot and promptly told them off.

The encounter was caught on video:

Robin LeBeau:

“I don’t want no TransCanada people here…I’m going to fight hard and if I find anyone else here I’m going to bring more people in abundance to tell you guys to leave.” 

“This pipeline is the most destructive pipeline. You’re going to rape, steal and destroy everything that is for us….everything, our land, our culture, our water.”

And what do the TransCanada reps suggest the Tribe do with these valid concerns? Write a letter to the CEO. What’s his name, again? Their response:

“I don’t even know the guy’s name….. um…they have a website…”

Really?! Thats the best these guys can do? Like writing a letter to Russ Girling is going to convince this multinational corporation to stop building their multi-billion dollar project and respect the lives of indigenous peoples. This corporation has demonstrated numerous times that they only care about their profits and will bully and bankrupt anyone who stands in their way.

Tribal members know it. They aren’t buying TransCanada’s false promises and understand the threat that toxic tar sands pose to their Sacred Water, burial grounds, and historic landmarks. The Keystone XL pipeline would cut right through their Treaty Territory and some of their most Sacred Sites. (You can watch part 2 of the video here.)

Cheyenne River Crossing: Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
Google Earth map depicting proposed Keystone XL Pipeline crossing Cheyenne River at Milepost 430.07. Cheyenne River Indian Reservation is indicated. Source: NCAI Analysis – figure 4.

The last several months has seen the indigenous resistance along the proposed KXL Northern segment continue to grow. Just this last week the Native News Network reported that the National Congress of American Indians, “the nation’s oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization in the country,” publicly released a statement of opposition to Keystone XL and criticized the State Department’s flawed “Environmental Impact Statement”.

Additionally, the Moccasins on the Ground Tour of Resistance will travel to Cheyenne River in mid-June to continue to build this resistance and unite the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota peoples against this toxic intruder.

By now Russ Girling shouldn’t need a handwritten letter to know the message coming from Red Nations along the pipeline route: “Go Away!”

Our friends at Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance interrupted work at a Keystone XL construction site again this morning in Oklahoma. Today marks the eighth such action by the coalition. We’ve re-posted their action below but for more up-to-date info, check their website. Follow Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance live on their Facebook and Twitter.
___________________________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: We are speaking with Bob right now.  It seems the firefighters were using both sides of an axe in the extraction process and Bob chose to unlock as a result of duress and concern for his safety.  We full heartedly support his decision to exercise agency in regards to his own safety in the face of danger.

UPDATE: 8:50am - Bob has been extracted and arrested.  He is being taken to Hughes County jail.

UPDATE: 8:10am - Holdenville Fire Department has arrived on site to extract Bob.

UPDATE: 6:45am -Workers have arrived onsite

________

Wewoka Oklahoma-Monday, May 13th, 7AM -  Early this morning Bob Waldrop, 60, fourth generation Oklahoman and prominent Oklahoma City community member walked onto an active construction site for the Keystone XL pipeline in Seminole County and locked himself to an Excavator, a piece of heavy machinery used in the construction of the pipeline. Waldrop took a stand today in defense of the land and the human and non-humans that depend upon it to survive.

Waldrop, as a founding member of the Oscar Romero Catholic Workers House, is a part of Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a growing coalition of groups and individuals dedicated to stopping the expansion of Tar Sands
infrastructure throughout the Great Plains. His action follows an escalating number of work-stopping actions, of which there were five in April alone, in Oklahoma.

Raised on a farm in rural Oklahoma, Waldrop believes “All farmers know that if you don’t take care of your land, your land can’t take care of you. And I’m here today because this pipeline is an enormous attack on the land. Here in Oklahoma and all the way up the Great Plains and into Canada giant earthmoving machines are destroying ecosystems. They are uprooting trees, murdering birds and destroying habitat, killing little critters. They are trampling on the rights of Indigenous people of the area whose treaties are being violated and abrogated by the greed of TransCanada and its stockholders.”

“I’m here in part because of my religious faith. I’m a devout Roman Catholic, and I’m following in the example of Jesus himself who took a stand against every form of evil. Jesus set a model for all of us when he took a whip and drove the moneychangers out of the temple. I’m sure that was against the city ordinances of Jerusalem but he did not hesitate. I’m here today to show TransCanada that they can’t just run over everybody and the environment. There are people that are willing to stand up for their rights and the rights of the planet.”

Lifelong Oklahomans and Texans with Tar Sands Blockade and Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance have been constantly engaged in work stopping direct actions against the inherently dangerous KXL since August. The Keystone I, built in 2010, has spilt 17 times so far, including 12 in its first year of operation. The 2010 Kalamazoo river spill that has cost nearly a billion dollars in ongoing cleanup and the recent spill in Mayflower, AR that has left evacuated residents unable to return home nearly 6 weeks after the disaster show the dire consequences of inevitable spills of heavier than water bitumen diluted with a toxic cocktail including benzene.

There is staunch resistance to the expansion of Tar Sands mining and infrastructure growing on the heartland, long considered a sacrifice zone by the petro-chemical industry. The rise of Idle No More in defense of indigenous sovereignty across Turtle Island is in large part to protect lands and waters from toxic industries. Peoples of the Great Sioux Nation and tribal governments in “South Dakota” have avowed opposition to the Keystone XL, joining international treaties such as the Mother Earth Accord and Protect the Sacred. The Unis’tot’en Camp in northern B.C has entered the third year of their blockade of the Pacific Trails Pipeline, and a growing grassroots coalition in Utah has avowed to stop the first Tar Sands Mine in “The United States”. Many of these groups have banded together to usher in a #Fearless Summer, a coordinated direct action initiative against industrial extraction.

Follow the action live here, or on their facebook

Please consider a donation to their Wepay acount to support futher actions and legal defense!