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posted:  May 1, 2004

223 Mr. James Branscome, director of Save Our Kentucky, Inc. Mr. Branscome.

STATEMENT OF JAMES BRANSCOME, DIRECTOR OF SAVE OUR
KENTUCKY, INC.

223 Senator MOSS. You may proceed, if you would like to put your statement in the
record in full you may do that and summarize, in order to move us along, but you may proceed as
you care to.

223 Mr. BRANSCOME. I would like to request that my remarks be made a part of the record.

223 Senator MOSS. They will be placed in the record.

223 Mr. BRANSCOME. I am talking on behalf also of the Appalachian Coalition, which is an
organization made up of the antistrip mine organizations throughout the region. I am coordinator of
that group.

223 I have a button on my lapel which says "Save Our Heritage, Stop Strip Mining." That is the
essence of our message here today. I don't think there is any question but what this committee has
heard and probably understands some of the problems of the people in the Appalachian region. But
the important thing for this committee to understand is that the forces which have raped the region so
successfully in the past, now act in concert. I believe by the time I finish my remarks the committee
will understand what I am talking about.

224 Strip mining to mountain people is the last attempt of the forces of corporate America to
drive them from their land. There are many facts and many figures, many emotional claims about
brownout, et cetera, that can be advanced. But the important question is really how does it affect the
people? I have come to ask these questions. How great does the cry of a people have to become
before the Congress of this land can hear them above the clatter of profit seekers who spread false
alarms about brownouts? How many people will have to drown in the next mammoth Appalachian
flood for the Congress to hear their cries above those of the bureaucrats and TVA, who take coal and
use it to build flood control projects in Tennessee. By attempting to regulate strip mining Congress
will be overlooking the fact that the environmental damage is not nearly so great from strip mining
as it is an affront to human welfare, property rights, and the apolitical process in the coalfields. It
will also be ignoring the obvious failure of even the most stringent reclamation law. Secretary Dole
and Mr. Train have testified in the House and here that Kentucky has one of the best reclamation
laws. That simply is a misstatement of the fact. Congress would certainly be overlooking the
experience of Kentucky where reclamation has been shown to be meaningless.

224 I think there is something I should point out, Mr. Chairman, that I couldn't help but notice.
All of the members of this committee reside west of the Mississippi River and you will note that our
Congressmen, except for Congressman Hechler, are not speaking for the people on this issue because
it is so closely related to politics and we have had many instances of local politicians and in some
instances State politicians, who the people say have been bought off or however you describe it. We
have no spokesman.

224 I would urge this committee before it concludes its hearings, to come to Kentucky and hear
the people who have been damaged. Don't take a tour like the House committee did and go with the
vice president of Hanna Coal, go with Joe Beckley of Blacky and let him show you people's homes
which have been destroyed. Go with Austin Miller and let him show you where the back of his
house is going, and a silt mound blocks the entrance to his property. Go visit Ollie Holmes who
spent Thanksgiving Day last year in front of a bulldozer. Go with an 88-year-old man who stood off
17 State policemen and a strip miner to keep them from destroying his property.

224 It is important for the committee to understand that the people derive no benefits from strip
mining. We derive no benefits from the coal. I have a list here of the major strip miners and coal
producers in Kentucky. I think this shows conclusively eastern Kentucky can only be described as a
feudal state. I would like to read you a list of who owns the coal: Kennecott Copper Corp., 202,715
acres; National Steel Corp., 130,000 acres; Norfolk & Western Railway Co., 99,600 acres;
Tennessee Valley Authority, 70,810 acres; Ford Motor Co., 45,000 acres; Gulf Oil Corp., 20,368
acres; Duke Power Co., 13,000 acres; Georgia Pacific Corp., 11,000 acres; Aluminum Co. of
America, 10,700 acres; Ziegler Coal Co., 8,000 acres; International Harvester Co., 6,500 acres; and
the list goes on and on.

225 The important thing for this committee to recognize is that the real question about strip
mining in Appalachia is not shall it be regulated and not how long. The question is who will be the
ones to abolish it? I do not want to appear dramatic, but I think it is a fair statement of the people
that I work with, the people that I visited in eastern Kentucky and people who are members of my
organization, and I will say it in the words of Dan Gibson as he said it last week in front of the
Kentucky Legislature, "I have come to the general assembly for help, if we don't get that help we
will abolish strip mining ourselves." I cannot urge too strongly upon this committee the many
statements of the people throughout the Appalachian Mountains who told me they are going to start
using their guns if the political process fails them once more. It has happened in the past. There is
an argument about which process is the safest. I can assure you if strip mining is not abolished in
Appalachia that strip mining as a business will be the most dangerous occupation in America. That
is the only important question.

225 Shall the process constituted by the State work or shall the people have to, through violence,
take matters into their own hands?

225 I would like to read you some statements from these people that I am talking about, about
this new spirit in the Appalachian Mountains. It is reflected in 50-year-old Warren Wright's
conversion from Republican to an antiestablishment radical. Since 1960 he waged a legal battle.
He lost the legal battle but got his revenge last May when, with rifle and pistol, he ran strip miners
back across his property line. The coal company said they entered his property accidentally but in
10 years of legal battling Warren Wright doesn't believe in coal company accidents.

225 Listen to the words of Bessie Smith, a mother of nine, whose property has been stripped, who
laid down in front of an overloaded coal truck violating the law in eastern Kentucky last spring. She
said, "I don't think nonviolence works any more. It just gives you a chance to get run over."

225 The people are going to have to stop strip mining and we are going to do it soon.

225 Let me read you a statement from several other people, including Harry Cargie. Harry says:

225 I lament the utter ruination of the hills of my homeland and the assault surface mining has
made on my people and my blood and my name. I have well water filled to the top with yellow mud
flecked with coal. I have seen the shattered roots of broken gravestones.

225 Broken gravestones are grim realities for Mrs. Biard Richie, a member of my organization.
She stood on her front porch and watched bulldozers rip up her family graveyard to get the coal
below. "I thought my heart would bust in my breast when I saw the coffins of my children come out
of the ground and go over the hill," she later told the Governor of Kentucky.

226 Neither TVA nor the strip mining companies ever apologized because her story couldn't be
proved. For mountain people her story doesn't have to be proved, they have done it before. The
living as well as the dead may be summarily evicted by the strip miner.

226 Emmet Sexton, 68, was driven from his home last January when heavy rains loosened the soil
back above his home. His house was surrounded by 4 feet of mud. To make matters worse,
gentlemen, Mr. Sexton is a double amputee, having lost both of his hands in a mine explosion.

226 Appalachian history is capsulized in Mrs. Rich's and Emmet Sexton's experiences. The
Appalachian floods I have been talking about, gentlemen, only need a Noah to reach Biblical
proportions. In a report not released, the Corps of Engineers now says they cannot guarantee the
safety of the city of Hazard, Ky., with 6,000 residents even when the reservoir upstream is
completed. They state the water level in Hazard will be 6 to 15 feet higher than it was in 1957 when
10 feet of water came into that town.

226 It is almost impossible to believe that the Senate and the House of the United States and the
President of the United States would pass the Appalachian Regional Development Act to bring
industry and to develop economic bases for eastern Kentucky and Appalachia and sit idly by and
allow this industry to destroy that potential.

226 Dr. Wayne Davis of the University of Kentucky has saif there is not a single industry which
depends in any way upon water which could locate along the Kentucky River or the Big Sandy in
eastern Kentucky, yet this Congress has spent millions of dollars trying to improve eastern
Kentucky. It has constructed a highway system, one part of which is Kentucky 15. That road is
now destroyed by overloaded coal trucks. It is going to cost $4 million dollars to put that road back.
The department of motor vehicles in Kentucky estimates conservatively that the overloaded coal
trucks from strip mines destroy $3 .5 million worth of highways in eastern Kentucky every year.
Seventyfive percent of all trucks working on strip mines in eastern Kentucky are in violation of the
law before they drive onto the highway and yet there is no reprimand from the public officials.

226 It is impossible to believe that the Congress would allow its money and the public taxpayer's
money to be so blatantly wasted and to allow the poverty which generated the programs to begin
with to continue because strip miners are destroying jobs in eastern Kentucky and because these
companies which I read, are getting fantastically rich at the expense of the people. I want to read,
hopefully into the record, Mr. Chairman, a 393 - I won't read it all into the record, I want to submit
to you a summary of it. This is part of a 399-page report done by the Appalachian Research and
Defense Fund with the assistance of the members of my organization. It details violations -
consistent violations - of the Kentucky law by the majority of the strip mining operators in eastern
Kentucky. I think it blows skyhigh the myth that we even have regulations or the law where
regulations can work where great amounts of money confront very timid men.

226 This document points out that there are 30 companies which have consistently violated the
law and under these stringent regulations. I should point out EPA just appointed the man who
allowed this to happen to a job in Cincinnati.Let me read you a few of the companies. This study
was taken, incidentally, gentlemen, from the files of the Reclamation Department itself. These are
not studies on the outside, they are taken from their own files.

227 Senator MOSS. If you leave the copy we will make it part of the record by reference, so
we have it before us.

227 Mr. BRANSCOME. I would like to read from that report just a small example of what is
happening. These are companies that have violated the law between January 1, 1967 and June 24,
1971.

227 "A Seam" Coal Co., seven violations; Round Mountain Coal Co., three violations; Vols Coal
Inc., 34 violations; Black Eagle & Diamond R. Coal Co., 21 violations; Breathitt County Coal Co.,
33 violations; Capterton Coal, 11 violations; Kenmont Coal Inc., three violations; Jo-Anne Coal
Co., three violations; Marietta Coal Co., 13 violations; Premium Coal Co., one violation; No. 7
Corp., 16 violations; McCulloch Consolidated Coal Co., two violations; Carolina Mining Co., six
violations; Tarheel Coal Co., 22 violations; Kentucky River Mining Co., 15 violations; Kona
Mining Co., two violations; Buckhorn Hazard Coal Co., 15 violations; River Coal Co., 22
violations; Archer & Clubb Coal Co., eight violations; Big H. Combs Coal Co., six violations; Bull
Creek Mining Corp., seven violations; Conler Mullins Coal Co., seven violations; Horse Creek Coal
Co., eight violations; Tackett & Manning Trucking Co., eight violations; Stansbury & Co., five
violations; Terry Elkhorn Mining Co., 15 violations; Valley Coal Co., eight violations; Wilder
Corp., 10 violations.

227 These organizations are subsidiaries of the Fortune Five Hundred, Mr. Chairman, and this is
what the coal companies are doing to destroy the open legal and political system in eastern
Kentucky.

227 There is one thing I would like to point out about the mine safety question.

227 Senator MOSS.Would you summarize now as soon as you can, we are pressed for time.

227 Mr. BRANSCOME. OK. The companies which never cared about the men's lives before are
suddenly concerned about miners' lives because most of them are also strip miners in Appalachia.
They went around supporting Congressman Hechler and others informed people when they were
getting the Mine Health and Safety Act passed. So long as we have strip mining producing cheap
coal, they will be forced to run the mines at the continued frenzied production rate which is the cause
of most accidents to begin with. There are strip miners in eastern Kentucky right now getting the
contracts of the deep coal operators. There are men in Kentucky who have lost their jobs to strip
miners, because one strip mine employee can produce as much coal as five underground miners. If
we abolish strip mining right now we could create 5,000 jobs in eastern Kentucky; no poverty
program did that.We can make the mine safe if we forced the industry to become concerned about its
men. This industry doesn't care about its people. The only way we are going to be able to survive as
a people in eastern Kentucky is if this Congress tells the American mining companies that if one man
dies in mines that mine is immediately going to be nationalized and turned over to be run by the
people. There has to be some incentive other than productivity and profit and that is the only
incentive that runs the mining industry right now.

228 The first step is to abolish strip mining so we can get at that very important issue. There is
no use doing anything else in Appalachia. I quit a job after working 2 years trying to design youth
programs to keep young people from dropping out of school. I gave up because strip mining is
destroying the very basis of what I was attempting to do.

228 The problem is that this is unnecessary. It need not be happening in Appalachia. As this
committee knows, 77 percent of the economically strippable coal is west of the Mississippi River. I
would urge the Senate to introduce legislation that would immediately abolish strip mining in the
Appalachian Mountains. If the Senators from out West want them out there, there is nothing I can
do to stop it. I hope the Indians attack them when they get out there, but if you all want it take it.
But we can't stand it any longer, they are annihilating the mountains.

228 Senator MOSS. Thank you for your testimony and your sincere devotion to the issue here.
Congressman Hechler, who testified earlier, does have a bill to abolish all surface mining which I
assume you endorse because of your testimony here, and we have had other witnesses talking about
areas that might not be suitable for open pit or strip mining and perhaps all of Appalachia fits into
that.

228 Some of the things you have told us about would indicate highly improper and dangerous
things have been going on and indicate that a lot of despoilation has gone on and obviously many
people have been injured by it.

228 The problem we are trying to address ourselves to is how to regulate or control the miners so
that there will not be that kind of damage. Now, maybe some palces they just can't mine in that way
and that is rally the burden of your testimony, isn't it?

228 Mr. BRANSCOME. Yes.

228 Senator MOSS.Well, we are pleased to have that point of view and the information you have
given us and that report, if it is left, we will include it by reference in the record and consult it. We
thank you very much, Mr. Branscome.

228 Mr. BRANSCOME.Thank you.

228 (The full statement of Mr. Branscome follows:)

228 STATEMENT OF JIM BRANSCOME, DIRECTOR, SAVE OUR KENTUCKY, INC.,
LEXINGTON, KY.

228 Gentlemen: My name is James Branscome. I am Director of Save Our Kentucky, Inc., a
statewide coalition of Appalachian mountain groups and conservation organizations dedicated to the
abolition of stripming for coal in Appalachia and Kentucky. Prior to becoming director of this
organization, I was director of youth programs for two years for the Apalachian Regional
Commission.I am thus very familiar with stripmining in the Appalachian mountains. In April I
introduced a resolution which passed at the White House Conference on Youth to abolish the
stripming of coal nationwide. I am pleased to be able to share my experience with stripmining
before this committee.

228 Appalachia has suffered much at the hands of America. Its fathers have been killed by the
thousands and maimed for life by the hundreds of thousands in America's coal mines.Its children
have starved and been warped by diseases thought extinct while America prospered with coal,
timber, and labor stolen from the Appalachian mountaineers. It is important to know, Gentlemen,
that this rape was carried out and is continued by the "best" in America - its best families, its most
respected personalities and corporations. Appalachian made Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller;
she has kept Dow-Jones healthy; her sons have died in greater numbers on the battlefields of
Southeast Asia than any other minority; her rape has always been America's gain; her plunder has
meant timber for safe suburbs and electrical power for America's unquenchable thirst for industrial
progress. Gentlemen, I do not recite the history of Appalachian exploitation to appeal to your
sympathy. I do so to lead you to understand that all of these forces which have raped the region so
successfully now act in concert. They have come together to render the final assault on the land and
the people through the stripmining of coal. Stripmining is the final attempt of America to annihilate
the Appalachian people.

229 I come with no great confidence that anything I say can move the Congress of the United
States to abolish stripmining. There is not one ton of coal stripmined in Appalachia that does not
cause human suffering; yet the Congress has shown little alarm about this. I could recite you
instance after instance of cases where a man's property and home and his drinking water have been
destroyed by stripmining. But I do not believe the Congress or the country is very interested in the
human suffering. Certainly the country and the Congress have showed sympathy to the region.
They heard of starvation and sent food stamps; they heard of black lung disease and they passed a
law; they heard of poverty and they sent more welfare; they heard of suffering and they sent cameras
to film "Christmas in Appalachia." No one doubts the capacity of this country and this Congress to
react; for reaction does nothing and costs very little. The children still go hungry; the people are still
driven from their land by the bulldozers and to city ghettos by their poverty; more men die now in
the mines than they did before you passed your mine safety law because of your bureaucrats. The
sympathy of the Congress is worth little. Only when this nation is repelled by the sickness of
Christmas in the homes of the corporate executives who wallow in affluence made by Appalachia's
poverty will we expect more than just reaction. What is necessary from Congress is not reaction, but
repentance. This body is America's lobby for the continued annihilation of Appalachia by
stripmining.

229 The Congress and the country is excited about the environmental destruction that stripmining
causes to Appalachia. Once again the posture has been adopted for a reaction to the problem rather
than an appropriate response. The Congress has heard of the destroyed fish and trees, the acid
pollution of streams, and the general ecological imbalance caused by stripmining. It has acted with
some alarm. Bill after bill has been introduced in this session to put Congress on record as being
disturbed about pollution from stripmining. All of them except that introduced by Congressman
Hechler to ban stripmining outright are examples of political jockeying for the posture of concern
rather than commitment, of response, rather than repentance.

229 So long as Congress entertains arguments from those who say that abolishing stripmining will
create an energy crisis, it reveals itself to be more concerned about cheap power than it is about the
Appalachian people. So long as Congress entertains the argument that stripmined land can be
reclaimed, it reveals itself to be duped by industry propagandists and unaware of the carnage, human
and environmental, only a few hours drive from the Nation's Capital.

229 How great does the cry of a people have to become before the Congress of this land can hear
them above the clatter of self-directed profit seekers who spread false alarm about brownouts? How
many people will have to drown in the next mammouth Appalachian flood for the Congress to hear
their cries above those of TVA bureaucrats who take the coal cheaply from the people of Eastern
Kentucky and use the profit to build flood control projects for land developers in Tennessee?

229 If Congress can make no more of a response than to speak of federal regulation of
stripmining, then it is better than it do nothing.Bills such as that introduced by Congressman Hays
would ask three federal bureaucrats to do what Congress itself does not have the courage to do - to
abolish stripmining. It is better that Congress make no response than to promise relief once again
that it cannot deliver. No one who knows anything about federal regulatory agencies could possibly
believe that a new one would do anything to halt stripmining. A President who would attempt to
appoint an airline stewardess to a Mine Health and Safety Advisory Board would certainly appoint a
stripminer to lead the Federal Reclamation Department. A President who would appoint a political
hack to the job of enforcing the Mine Health and Safety Act would surely appoint three electric
power producers to the Federal Reclamation Advisory Board. If an unconcerned President (as this
one obviously is because of the weak legislation h