Mountaintop Removal Has Impact on Residents, Not Just Environment

To the Editor:

Ironically, the article “In the Game of Coal Mining, the Environment Loses,” published March 31, appeared one week before the 3rd Annual Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington. The article implies, beginning with its title, that the environment alone loses. The impact of mountaintop removal on residents is downplayed tremendously. Residents of Appalachia have lost considerably in the rape of their communities, and the systematic exploitation of their home—not a “pristine mountain wilderness”—is only the beginning of the process.

Aside from the devastation cited in the article, slurry impoundments present a hazard themselves, and they can and have failed. I do not expect any coal investors will be building a waterfront home on or near one of these black lakes, and if million gallons of coal sludge flowed through the streets in New York City as it did in Inez, Ky., I doubt the consensus would be that it is the price we must pay for cheap energy. The same could be said for the situation at Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, W.Va., where a coal company built a slurry impoundment above the school.

The article also fails to mention the coal industry’s reclamation of mined land, which the federal government considers restitution for mountaintop removal. I am unsure whether these reclamation projects are for coal investors potentially interested in the aforementioned waterfront property or the poorer residents, but in either case, amenities like a golf course and a maximum security penitentiary are included. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of land has been reclaimed. I am going to write and recommend they turn some of the slurry ponds into water parks.

It is also easier to say “there are winners and losers” when many of the losers are poor and invisible. Compared to the coal industry, Appalachian residents have a small voice, which makes exploiting their home easier. Oh, well, at least this is good news for my energy bill and, let’s not forget, shareholders.

Wendy Dickinson, GS
April 1, 2008

Article’s Comparison of AdHoc to Obama Campaign Conflates Issues

To the Editor:

If Dennis Schmelzer really cares to compare Barack Obama’s remarkably successful presidential primary campaign to a fledgling undergraduate student magazine on a shoe-string budget, as he does in “Forget National Polls” (April 2), he is welcome to it. I just wouldn’t put much faith in any other careless metaphors he decides to pitch into the polemic seas. Proving that he is just another of those commentators who would rather hop on the pundit pulpit than explore a nuanced analysis, Schmelzer conflates university and national politics as if they were one beast. As a founder of AdHoc, I can attest that our humble goals were never so grandiose as that of a presidential campaign seeking to unite a nation torn by an unjust war, race and gender politics, and a stumbling economy. We did not seek a post-partisan politics—we sought merely to provide a forum for progressive issues and were well aware that the majority of our readers would be liberals (on Columbia’s campus, I’m not sure how it could mathematically be otherwise). As to AdHoc’s “failure” (like the French Revolution, I think it might be too soon to tell), it is a standard of smaller campus magazines that they fluctuate with the fortunes of ever-changing editorial boards and difficult-to-find funding. If we are to draw any greater conclusions from the AdHoc experience, perhaps we should look instead to University politics and the lack of support that Columbia provides to student start-ups and campus activism.

Kristen Loveland, CC ’06
AdHoc co-founder
April 2, 2008

University’s Treatment of Faculty House Employees Not Surprising

To the Editor:

You are missing the reality of Columbia’s promises to the community in the editorial titled “Supporting Our Staff” (April 2), which is the fact that it was never made. Columbia promises to create several thousand jobs, but NOT ONE of them is for the community.

I am not surprised at all about the treatment of the catering staff being displaced.
Do you honestly believe that Columbia will treat their employees any better than it does the community?

Columbia is a great institution endowed by God with powers and privileges beyond mere mortal men and women of the blue collar working kind.

All Hail Columbia Queen of West Side Harlem!

Jordi Reyes-Montblanc
Former Chair of Community Board 9
April 2, 2008