To Save the Land and People
To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia. By Chad Montrie. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Pp. 245. Notes, bibliography, index. $18.95 paper; $45.00 cloth).
While many accounts of environmental activism focus on middle-class suburbanites and upper-class city dwellers, Chad Montrie’s To Save the Land and People concentrates instead on the environmentalism of “common” folk. Because surface coal mining during the 1960s dramatically impacted such people’s communities in the Appalachian coalfields by contributing to the poverty and chronic unemployment of the region, parts of Appalachia witnessed the growth of grassroots militancy aimed at abolishing surface coal minin. The poverty and unemployment that marked Appalachia were not due to “a lack of modernization or because of inhibiting cultural traits” (17), as legends of the “coherent region inhabited by a homogenous population” (13) with a uniformly backward culture might otherwise suggest. It was, rather, small payrolls for local labor at the mines, under-assessed coal reserves, and meager property tax payments by the extractive coal industries that, for example, “hampered local people’s efforts to build and maintain schools and roads, and to provide various public services” (2). The foremost reason why most of the Appalachian people did not profit from the coal industries was, then, Montrie argues, because “the great wealth of the land flowed out of the highlands never to return” (16-17).
Montrie’s study examines the southern section of the Appalachian mountain range that extends from eastern New York to the middle of Alabama. Not only did surface coal mining along these stretches ruin good crop land, it stripped vegetation from millions of acres of steep slopes and rolling hills, caused soil erosion and surface runoff, and deprived animal and plant species of habitat. Erosion led to siltation of streams, which killed equatic life and caused heavy flooding, while acid mine drainage polluted streams and groundwater. Blasting cracked the foundations of people’s homes and sunk their wells. Some landslides only destroyed property, some buried people alive. Such abuse of the land generated social consciousness and activism among “farmers and working people of various sorts, originating at the local level” (3), and was understood by many as a struggle “primarily between property owners over the legitimate use of privately held land and its resources” (3). Surface mining threatened agricultural productivity, “violated God’s injunction to be stewards of the land, and destroyed the aesthetic values of a pastoral scene” (26). When lobbying, petitioning, and working through the courts thus proved ineffectual, abolitionists substituted tactics drawn from another American tradition of active protest by, “shouting at mine employees, sabotaging mine machinery with explosives, illegally occupying strip-mine sites, and blocking haul roads” (4).
Though Montrie’s many accounts of legislative struggles to regulate strip mining are often long drawn out and repetitive, To Save the Land and People includes much Tennessee history, including the Tennessee Valley Authority’s role as a public agency; and the roles of two Tennessee groups (Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, and Save Our Cumberland Mountains) who proposed bills to stop strip mining abuses. More importantly perhaps, Montrie demonstrates how grassroots militancy and non-peaceful protest may be rightfully legitimate responses to rampant exploitation of the land and people.
Reviewed for Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Spring 2004, p. 64.
Montrie’s study examines the southern section of the Appalachian mountain range that extends from eastern New York to the middle of Alabama. Not only did surface coal mining along these stretches ruin good crop land, it stripped vegetation from millions of acres of steep slopes and rolling hills, caused soil erosion and surface runoff, and deprived animal and plant species of habitat. Erosion led to siltation of streams, which killed equatic life and caused heavy flooding, while acid mine drainage polluted streams and groundwater. Blasting cracked the foundations of people’s homes and sunk their wells. Some landslides only destroyed property, some buried people alive. Such abuse of the land generated social consciousness and activism among “farmers and working people of various sorts, originating at the local level” (3), and was understood by many as a struggle “primarily between property owners over the legitimate use of privately held land and its resources” (3). Surface mining threatened agricultural productivity, “violated God’s injunction to be stewards of the land, and destroyed the aesthetic values of a pastoral scene” (26). When lobbying, petitioning, and working through the courts thus proved ineffectual, abolitionists substituted tactics drawn from another American tradition of active protest by, “shouting at mine employees, sabotaging mine machinery with explosives, illegally occupying strip-mine sites, and blocking haul roads” (4).
Though Montrie’s many accounts of legislative struggles to regulate strip mining are often long drawn out and repetitive, To Save the Land and People includes much Tennessee history, including the Tennessee Valley Authority’s role as a public agency; and the roles of two Tennessee groups (Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, and Save Our Cumberland Mountains) who proposed bills to stop strip mining abuses. More importantly perhaps, Montrie demonstrates how grassroots militancy and non-peaceful protest may be rightfully legitimate responses to rampant exploitation of the land and people.
Reviewed for Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Spring 2004, p. 64.