Archives of Horror and Hope

Appalachian Coal serves electric companies 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

PLEASE Read this writing with the lights out.....  

Sometimes all day long I collect horror stories

like an archivist of hopes for change

this horror story 

is of a coal company 

that pumped coal slurry

into an abandoned mine 

of a mountain town

the slurry 

is now in the water

and the land

and the bodies 

the bodies 

of the people

today's calls yield:

barren women

babies with cancer

and their sons

their sons

have arsenic

in their blood

on this day they are counted

in the costs of how coal 

keeps the lights on

when the water turned

the colors 

were many

orange

brown

black

grey

but in between
it sometimes runs
clear again

and the smell

sometimes like fuel

sometimes indescribable

and you think 

you'd never wash in it

but at some point 

you have to wash yourself

and your children

and yes

your babies

if this is the only water 

you can afford

at some point

you have to drink it

and be thankful for

the cool-aid flavors 

swirling in your cup

this call yields

three little ones dead

everyone knows it was the water

we hope we can prove it

some things will be easier 

to prove than others

tumors removed

ovaries removed

gallbladders removed

kidney stones

and kidney stones

and kidney stones again

then there are the cysts

cysts everywhere

in the bones

on the neck

on the ovaries

on the thyroid

and her daughter

had a cyst in her brain

pretty positive 

it's the poison in the water

don't forget the skin

rashes, boils

open sores,

blistering skin,

itching skin

it comes and it goes

nothing seems to stop it

but it started with the poison in the water

it will be harder

to prove 

the poison took 

their teeth

teeth rotting 

from the inside out

teeth dying so fast

it's as if 

they are trying to escape

the poison 

on their own

we know 

they will blame the soda

but everyone here knows

it's the poison

in the water

it will likely be hardest

to prove the heart problems

heart attacks,

heart stints,

half the heart is enlarged,

all his arteries 

smaller than they should be

and the blood pressure, 

the blood pressure, 

the blood pressure again

but heart attacks 

are pretty common in the US

even if everyone knows 

it's the poison in the water

sometimes people list their illnesses

throwing jokes in between

laughing about how crazy that last boil was

they tell their illnesses like a tall tale

that happened to someone else

they are survivors

lovers, parents, friends, children

but sometimes you can hear how sick they are

the sadness seeps into the phone

and we both get off quickly

because the tears are coming

despite all the sickness and trouble

heart and otherwise

the hearts here are stronger 

than one could imagine

beating against poison and often poverty

they know about fighting here

fighting for your life

often uncertain 

if the illness will take them

most know 

today counts

so they take care of each other 

and live and love and laugh

with or without you

they've got heart

i'm waiting on 

the heart of coal 

to change

to practice respect

for the people 

who give their lives to it

and live with it

like another family member

it costs one dollar more a ton

for coal companies

to never again create coal slurry

yet still they wash the coal

in our water 

and a host of other poisons

that poison washes

into the lives of the people here

while distanced from the mountains

people turn on the lights

like electricity

is magic

and it is

a magic in forgetting 

that electricity 

comes from somewhere

everywhere you go

and for that

the people in the mountains

often pay 

a very high cost

sometimes they pay 

with their lives 

When you turn the lights on think about asking your electric company if the coal plants who serve them create coal slurry and think about asking them why. By the time the lawsuit we're working on is settled more people will have died from the poison in the water created by coal slurry and lots more will be even sicker.  Coal companies which aren't injecting slurry into the ground are often damming it up in pools in somebody else's hometown. 


Coal companies have the technology to do what's called dry caking to process coal, which does not involve the same type of poisons in coal production or utilize clean water to create coal slurry.   Please tell your electric company you want no part of electricity that involves slurry creation.