On Monday, February 20th, I saw part of a documentary called Sludge, about a coal sludge impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky, and the devastation it brought to the community. Breaking through the underground mine below, the impoundment propelled several million gallons of waste material down hillside and tributaries until stream beds and waterways were thoroughly buried, contaminated and oozing with toxic black sludge. Worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill (considered one of the worst ever environmental disasters by the EPA) this inundation of black waste spoiled the water supply for over 27,000 Kentucky residents and killed all aquatic life in Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek.
Watching footage of the aftermath of the spill brought me to tears. The black trunks of trees, stained by heavy metal molasses, the polluted streams, running a sickly bright orange, made me sick inside. And then I had to ask myself why. Sure, I feel compassion for the residents of Martin County and the injustices they’re dealing with. They can’t drink their water, can’t fish their streams and all that the mining company representatives have to say is “sorry, but it’s really not our fault and we’ve done the best we can and, you know, we don’t owe you or your children anything more.” So yes, I’m angry and saddened on their behalf, but that’s not what made me cry.
I cried, perhaps, for more selfish reasons. I cried because when I saw the water blackened (or greened or oranged –whatever unnatural rainbow color it happened to be) and the land ravaged and the black smoke pouring into the sky; when I was told that all life died in those streams and people were made sick, I could only feel that such transgressions had been done to me. Those were my streams and that was my sky. Those were my fish and my people. And these horrible things were done to them and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I cried because I took it personally.
Rick Bass describes this sort of ownership in his essay “On Willow Creek.” He claims that the land belongs to those who love it, regardless of actual property rights. I’m of the mind that no one can actually own land, but much in the same way that we feel as if people belong to us, or we to them, much as we are a part of our families and them of us, I feel that the land can belong to us and we to it… if we love it. When I heard those stories and saw that footage, my feelings can only be described as those of one who watches her loved ones being hurt and is unable to do anything to stop it.
I know that others do not often feel the same way that I do. I’ve never met another soul who feels personally wronged, when she sees a diesel truck belch out a black cloud at the traffic light and who wants to shout at the driver, with tears in her eyes, “why are you doing that to my air?” Most people don’t take it personally. I’m unsure if it’s right to suggest they should, but I think it’s a lack of ownership, and distance from the immediate consequences of these harmful actions that allows them to be perpetuated. It’s systematic. It’s complex, and many people –even after they’ve watched Sludge and seen the damages incurred- fail to see how they’re connected.
The sooner we realize that we’re part of a system, and that no part of the system is insignificant, only then can we realize our responsibility to it. That was my water and my air, as well as my coal and my mining company. As Barry Commoner so clearly pointed out in his work The Closing Circle, everything’s connected. That means you and the fish. That means you and the coal company. He also observed that there’s “no such thing as a free lunch.” You can’t have your fish without the stream. You can’t have your coal-powered electricity without the coal… and you can’t have a coal without a mine and a sediment impoundment and everything else that goes with it.
The spill in Martin County, Kentucky was my spill.
That’s why I cried.
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