What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
How to
Spot a Police Spy
How about
the guy who buttonholes you on the peace march and pushes personal
questions at you about terrorism and "fighting back"?
Jennifer Van Bergen reports, first-hand on FBI infiltrators and
other provocateurs. PLUS
more hard facts from physicist Manuel Garcia and engineer Pierre
Sprey on why "controlled demolition" theories about
the World Trade Center are dead wrong. What you just missed, but can still
get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse
of America. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by subscribers to CounterPunch newsletter.
Please support this website by buying a subscription to our exclusive
print or pdf newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't
find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost
of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
OK, here's the deal. If you just give
me the rights to strip mine coal in your "fish and wildlife"
preserve I'll you lots more already stripped land, and by the
way, don't worry about the mercury, arsenic, boron and sludge
we dumped there. It's perfectly safe.
Thus, went the meeting with
area sportsmen as Indiana State officials tried to sell the public
on a plan offered by Black Beauty Coal Company (more widely known
as Peabody Energy) to strip mine around 1,000 acres of hardwood
forest in the Glendale Fish and Wildlife Area near Montgomery,
Indiana.
In 2004, Black Beauty went
to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the DNR, asking
for an exchange of land so they could strip a forested part of
the preserve. They were told to bring the idea back because they
did not want to create a highly charged political issue during
an election year. The man who told them that was John Davis,
a DNR deputy, who also happened to be then Lt. Governor Kathy
Davis' husband.
Davis told the story before
a packed meeting room in Montgomery, Indiana the center of Indiana
coal country these days. State officials described the nefarious
deal to a skeptical crowd.
Kyle Hupfer, DNR director withstood
more than an hour of questions about the deal using members of
his staff to answer what he could not. It was part of what he
insists will be an open process as it is decided whether to make
such a swap.
Hupfer asserted no decision
has been made, and it was early in the process.
Large obstacles remain, and
the room full of disgust at the very idea is foremost. But the
pot is sweet. Hupfer claimed a trade could create as much as
15,000 to 20,000 acres of new hunting and fishing habitat in
the state. A few minutes later he boasted 20.000 to 30.000 acres.
But that was after he insisted that he knew nothing because the
initial geological study was not complete.
Hupfer professed his objectivity
but it was clear that Black Beauty had the upper hand. He averred
that once a state issued "request for proposal" was
complete, anyone could bid for the coal. But then he said there
would be no coal processing "on site" which essentially
means Black Beauty would be the only bidder since they had processing
facilities near by.
Most of more than 200 people
in the room applauded the question of why they used eminent domain
to secure important sections of the preserve and now proposed
to give it to a private party the rip apart.
Sentiments were not universal.
About ten percent of the crowd were beneficiaries of Black Beauty's
largess and they spoke well of the company, mainly their own
lifestyle coming from wages working in the existing mines. They
know their jobs end when the coal is gone and that this deal
will seal a more secure future. This is a scenario played out
hundreds of times where coal is king.
But coal mining does not enlist
the support of everyone in coal country although they would like
for everyone to believe that. In fact, Hupfer tactfully asked
the crowd this long question.
"I hate to ask this question
and I won't, I guess because it is premature, but I will go ahead,
just so we have it for the record so you guys can get it in.
How many folks think that under no circumstances and regardless
of the dollars, regardless of the land, no matter what we bring
to you, your answer would be 'Hell No!"
About ninety percent proudly
raised their hands making it known they thought the deal was
bad.
When he asked the simpler question,
"how many think it is worth taking the next step?"
the section from Black Beauty let their support be heard.
Clearly disturbed at the response
of the assembly, Hupfer chimed in, "I truly believe that
the folks and they can speak for themselves, but the folks who
believe that this shouldn't take place aren't saying it because
it is Black Beauty and aren't saying it because of any coal company
and aren't opposed to coal mining. That is something that I recognize
at least that the folks that are concerned for this area mining
aren't opposed to coal mining in general."
Asked later where he got his
data to make that determination, he replied, "I don't think
this tonight or hopefully anytime turns into a pro-coal, anti-coal
- how many hunters in this room, how many fishermen are not opposed
to coal mining in general though you would not want it on this
property? Pause. "So there, there are thirty or forty."
It is easy to understand their
reluctance to make it a coal issue. Everyone knows that once
coal comes to your neighborhood, your life will forever change.
Blasting alone will change your life and the endless dust clouds
and noise of all the heavy machinery becomes an omnipresent assault
on the serenity of your countryside. Your objections to the pig
farmer down the road suddenly become moot.
The Glendale Area was like
I remembered most of southern Indiana being as I grew up. Lots
of nature, fewer cars and a pictorial mixture of prairie and
forest. But today it is an oasis of more than 1,400 areas underwater
and 8060 acres of land. It is mostly supported by sales of hunting
and fishing licenses and taxes levied on sport hunting and fishing
equipment.
Dogwood Lake is its aquatic
centerpiece sporting catfish, crappie, bluegill and largemouth
bass. Eagles are nested "on the south end" but the
area in question is to the north, according to one official who
said that if an eagle's nest was found on the proposed site,
"I assume that would be a deal breaker."
"If this was just about
coal," claims Hupfer, "we would not be here. Again,
this is a unique funding opportunity. If the hunters and anglers
of the state don't want this say 'we hate it,' we'll just end
it. But if you are DNR, it's important for us to find new opportunities."
WordNet at Princeton University
defines opportunity as "a possibility due to a favorable
combination of circumstances. Chance."
Both may be apt in this case
since it is a combination of circumstances but the chance is
dependent on the amount of trust one has for the principals of
the deal.
Hupfer is wrong when he claims
that this should not be an issue about coal. Strip mining is
the most ecologically destructive industrial practice there is
in Indiana. Sometimes it appears that coal interests will stop
at nothing to extract personal wealth from our common weal. Even
suggesting exploiting one of the rare nature preserves in SW
Indiana as a stripper pit is arrogant and condescending.
Time will tell if Hupfer meant
his rhetoric since it's clear he wanted to ignore the reality
of his meeting and the anger most of those in the room felt toward
his proposal.
John Blair is president of the environment health
advocacy group, Valley
Watch and earned a Pulitzer Prize for news Photography in
1978. He can be reached at: Ecoserve1@aol.com
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
