Pauline Canterberry, 76 and Mary Miller, 75 at a protest against the expansion of the Goals Coal and Processing plant that sits dangerously close to the Marsh Fork Elementary School, May, 2005. The Dust-Busters earned their name after fighting through the courts for more than a decade against coal’s invasion of once idyllic Sylvester, WV
The Dustbusters
Pauline Canterberry, 76, and Mary Miller, 75, long time residents of the once idyllic town of Sylvester have stood up for their rights against Massey Energy, Inc.
Stories from Mingo County
Carmelita and Ernie, of Rawl, WV have been plagued with health problems -- doctors and scientists say that they have been environmentally poisoned, mainly through their well water.
West Virginia: Marsh Fork Elementary School, Sundial, WVa
Should a coal processing plant, coal sludge dam and MTR coal mining site be so close to an elementary school?
Behind an unsound dam of slate rests 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry which sits directly above the Marsh Fork Elementary School. More than 200 "significant and substantial" violations exist for the plant. Concerned citizens and families worry that the dam will fail, while remembering the sludge dam disasters in Buffalo Creek, WV (1972) and Martin County Kentucky (2000).
Two Decades of Underground Coal Slurry Injection: How the water table serving Rawl, Sprigg, Merrimack and Lick Creek have been poisoned through coal slurry permeating their underground drinking water sources.
Ed Wiley, a grandfather of a now former student of Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, WV has spent the last years on a one-man campaign to protect the children of this school, which sits down wind from a massive coal processing plant, including a coal preparation facility, an coal slurry impoundment pond holding over 2.8 billion gallons of toxic waste, and an active and expanding Mountaintop Removal (MTR) site, which extracts coal to be processed below and stored in the silos that stand behind the school building.
Wiley has marched up the steps of the West Virginia state capitol to see Governor Joe Manchin, III many times. Though Manchin is affable and receptive in the public eye, he has taken no action that has been able to quiet the mind of a fiercely loving grandfather.
In the Summer of 2006, Ed Wiley, followed by a caravan of supporters, walked from his home in Rock Creek, WV all the way to Washington, DC to meet with his Senator Byrd.
Looking up the right hand fork of Shumate hollow where the Goals Coal and Processing plant in Sundial, W.Va., has a 2000+ acre coal extraction operation.Steep slope mining, a typed of Mountaintop Removal Coal mining is quickly eating up the mountains of Shumate hollow behind, on two 1800-acre permits.
Aerial view of Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, WV and the Massey Energy owned Goals Coal Processing Plant which contains the Edwight MTR site, a leaky 2.8 billion gallon coal slurry impoundment, and a coal processing plant - all within dangerous proximity to the school.
Ed Wiley and Marsh Fork Elementary School