Stuff You Should Know - What is mountaintop removal mining?

Episode Date: May 10, 2011

Mountaintop removal mining is (to say the least) a controversial practice. But what exactly is it, how does it work and -- most importantly -- why should you care? Listen in to learn more about the effects of mountaintop removal mining. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that makes this Stuff You Should Know. Right? That's right. How you doing? I am well sir. How are you? I'm pretty good. It's lovely here in Atlanta. It is. It's like 75 degrees. Beautiful. It's like San Diego

moved here. Yeah. Hey, you hear that music, Josh? Yeah. Yeah, that's Ben Soli, who we'll meet later, right? That's right. I could listen to that stuff all day, man. That cello music, Apple Action. Awesome. I love it. Yeah. Let's get into this one. All right, let's do it. This is the shortest intro ever. Okay. Okay, but it's telling. It's a good one. And you would think that I would have had it ready since it's the intro, you know? Yeah, that's right. But I like to play things fast and loose, kind of by the seat of my pants. And I also like to see how much time I can fill up while I look for things, right? Yeah. Like I've done just then. But Chuck, I'm going to give you a shocking statistic. There are going to be a lot of those in this one. In the great state of West Virginia,

which is next to Virginia, just west of it though. Okay. Since 1979, the number of employed miners in that state and mining is the number one industry in West Virginia. Yes, coal mine country. The number of miners in since 1979 in that state has declined from 60,000 to 22,000, according to the state's Senator Robert Byrd. But coal mining itself has dramatically increased over that time. So how do you explain that? Well, as a matter of fact, the whole podcast that we're about to do explains it very clearly. Yes. A type of mining process called mountain top removal mining. Yeah. Or strip mining. Well, it's a type of strip mining. Yeah. Apparently, one person called it strip mining on steroids is very much responsible for the ability for

coal mining to just go through the roof in Appalachia while requiring fewer and fewer people. Right. So while coal has increased, unemployment has increased as well. Yeah. And I guess let's just get right into it because this one is chock full of stats and stories. And this is an unusual podcast for us. And by the way, this one is officially yours. Why are you giving this one to me? You did the legwork for this one. Yeah. And we should add at the end of this podcast, we're going to have a interview with in our first musical guest ever with singer, songwriter, and cello player, Ben Soli, who is an activist for against mountain top removal coal mining. And it's on, you know, the sub pop label with his music. And he's going to interview with us

and play a song. And it's going to be pretty cool. So stick around. Yes. Don't go anywhere. Yes. In the middle of the podcast. All right. So let's get into it. So Chuck, traditionally, when you think of mining, you think of basically a hole in the side of the mountain held up with timbers that men covered in coal dust are going into with pickaxes and headlamps. Right. Extremely dangerous job. Yeah. But a job that's traditionally been able to support families. Yes. Long has its roots in Appalachia. Right. This is a totally different kind of mining. Mountain top removal mining is where a traditional mining you bore into the mountain with mountain top removal mining, you blow the top off of the mountain to expose the

coal seam rather than digging in to get it. Yeah, coal seams run horizontally through a mountain. So what happens is, and this is the how it works portion. Yeah. And it's pretty amazing how they do this. Yeah. And even Ben has told me it's pretty amazing, even though he thinks it's an awful practice, it's pretty amazing on the last show. They clear cut the forest. They scrape away the top soil, lumber, herbs, all that stuff. Herbs? Herbs. Yeah. Wildlife and habitat. The wildlife habitat is destroyed. Vegetation is destroyed. Well, in their defense, they usually, customarily, they send a guy in with a machine gun who just fires into the air for like a full day. And then he comes down

the mountain. Then they start clear cutting. So they do all this. Once they've done all that, they blow up the top of the mountain as much as 800 to 1,000 feet I've seen. Yeah. The mountain is just gone. That's why they call it removal. Yeah. And it's flattened out and it looks like a barren moonscape instead of a forest and a mountain. Yeah. That's the term that's used by just about anybody who has anything to do with either supporting or opposing coal mining, mountaintop coal mining. Moonscape is the word that everyone always uses. Right. That's what I was trying to get out. From that point, they have these big shovels that come and dig into the soil, haul that stuff away into the valleys nearby. Yeah. Because it's not like this stuff

disintegrates. This thing that's called overburden by the mining industry, which is rock, soil, dirt, trees. Land. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't just evaporate. You have to get rid of it. Yeah. Got to put it somewhere. And then something called a drag line, which is one of the more impressive machines I've ever seen. Yeah. It's huge. Yeah. How big are these things? They said somewhere 20 stories. Yeah. And they weigh up to 8 million pounds. Yeah. And apparently they're yeah. So you saw that picture? Yeah. It looks like an oil rig on like tracks. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. So the drag line comes in to expose the coil, digs into the rock. These machines scoop out the coal. The machines that scoop out the coal. Yeah. Their buckets

can hold up to 20 compact sized cars. Wow. That's large. These are massive operations. And the result of this is the narrow valleys have been filled. It's called valley fill. And one, we got a bunch of stats. Here's one. Coal companies have buried more than 1200 miles of headwaters and streams, rivers and streams buried underneath the stuff gone forever. Yeah. With the overburden. Remember the stuff that they blew the top of the mountain off of? Yes. You have to get rid of it. There's two ways to do it. One, you truck it off of the mountain and dump trucks, which is done, but it's also extremely expensive and time consuming. Right. Or you move bulldozers up there and you push the overburden into the valley below. Right.

And typically in a valley, there's going to be some sort of stream, water supply ecosystem. People living there? Yeah. And if you have a permit, if you apply for a valley fill permit, you can, you're usually granted one and you just push that stuff into the valley and then start getting to the coal. Right. And so that's, there's a lot of problems with this. And we're going to try and hit on all of them, the myriad issues. It's not what you think. We could just stop right here. We probably could. Another one of the issues is something, when they wash the coal, it's called the result of the wash is what they end up with is called coleslurry. Right. And you wash coal because coal comes with a lot of other organic and

inorganic toxins, metals, compounds, like nickel, cadmium, mercury that keep it from burning as well. Right. Yeah. And there's chemicals. They're noncombustible. And there's chemicals added to the wash as well, which end up in the coleslurry ponds. Right. So you're, you're, you're washing it for market, but this water's got to go somewhere and it's extremely toxic. Mercury alone would make it extremely toxic. All these other heavy metals just make it even worse. So you either inject them into old mines, all the banded mines is one thing that would do with coleslurry. Or you wash them into holding ponds, which are basically earthen dams built into the side of the mountain. Yeah. Which can be precarious as we'll find out. Yeah. And if you've seen coleslurry,

I mean, just type it into Google images. It looks like, like soupy black sludge. Yeah. Is about the best comparison I can make. Sure. So these ponds, one of these actually busted the dam broken in 1972 in West Virginia at Buffalo Creek. And 132 million gallons of this stuff rushed through the valley, killed 125 people, injured 1,100 and 4,000 people were left homeless. And these by and large are very poor people, which is one of the keys here that we're going to keep hitting on. Yeah. I think Wise County, West Virginia, that the average income is like 18,000 for a family, something like that. Yeah. Graduation rate is about 60%. And the poverty level is exactly what it was during the, was it Eisenhower? I think so. Eisenhower administration, when he

went there and said, we have to end poverty in West Virginia, it's the same. Oh, LBJ. Yeah, Johnson. So once this whole operation is done, there may be more than one seam and there's different ways to get into it. Like you can dig in from the side, high wall lining, or you can blow the top off the mountain, or you can do both. Right. But once the mountains exhausted, and these are massive sites, there's one in Virginia, I believe that's like 35,000 acres. Yeah. Which that's one site. Yeah, that's just one mining operation. Or you could also call it one former mountain. When the time was when you left, that was that. You got your colon, you got out of there, and the mining operation was abandoned. Right. Nowadays, you are supposed to most most mountain top

removal permits come with an addendum that you have to do some sort of reclamation. The reclamation process typically is supposed to involve basically piling rock and stuff back up, regrowing this area, and trying to basically simulate a mountain again. Yeah. And then 1977 was when that was first introduced, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act established standards. They said back then that the goal was just to get grass to grow, anything to grow. Right. And reclamation is a good thing in theory, but one of the knocks that activists like to point out is that what happens on paper isn't always what happens in reality. And there's been studies that show that the soil is still not the same. Decades later, it's just not the same.

You can't make it what it was. Right. There is one sterling example of what can be done. It's called the Powell River Project. Yes. So the Powell River Project is in Virginia, I believe. And it's 1,100 acres. It's a former mining site that was just a leveled mountaintop. And some care was given to it. And now it is basically a wildlife preserve. It has strawberries and blueberries growing on it and sugar maples and cattle is grazing on the turf. The wildlife that's come back are screeching, barred owls, coyote, bear, turkey. They're basically, this mountain is getting back to nature, right? Yeah. Primarily financed by the coal industry. Yes, must say. Gotta say that. And I think the deal is if everything went down like it's going

down at Powell River, there would be fewer issues. But that's not the case, unfortunately. Right. That's just a sterling example of what could be done. Well, this is what happens when you spend decades and lots of money on this one particular site. For the most case, I think you told me that they just throw some grassy down over the old site. And that's that. Right. And I guess we should probably start now talking about the environmental impact. There's basically two ways you can classify the impacts that this has. Three ways. One, economic, which looks like it should be good. Right. But if you look at the rates of unemployment and the continuous poverty in Appalachia, you'll actually see that it's not so great,

the economic impact, the environmental impact, and then the human impact. So let's talk about environment. We're talking about coal slurry, right? Yes. You have to put that coal slurry somewhere. The earthen dam, like you said, at Buffalo Creek in 1972 collapsed, spilled 132 million gallons and killed 125 people. Right. That's right. In 2000, in Kentucky, there was another dam break. 250 million gallons of sludge flowed into the tug fork of the Big Sandy River and affected streams and rivers up to 100 miles away. More than a million fish and other wildlife died. One of the biggest environmental disasters in this country's history, and a lot of people probably never heard of it. Yeah. It's apparently the areas of exposure was 20 times that of the

Exxon Valdez disaster. Yeah. And I believe it was either this one or the other one. One of the coal company heads called it because heavy rains is what eventually caused the dam to break on top of the slurry called it an act of God. Yeah. And I believe that's how it was left. So sort of washing our hands of it. It was because the heavy rains, and that's what happened. So you also mentioned Valley Fill where streams have been affected just by being buried, which means no more stream. I got a stat for you there. Okay. 6700 Valley Fill permits in the United States. Since 1985? Yeah. 6700 times this happened. Actually, I think it's more than I think it's like in the 7200s because that was between 85 and 2001. Okay. And we found another one, Chuck, that there's been

about 500 or so from 2001 to 2008. Yeah. Things have really ramped up here in the last decade. Yeah. As far as the MTR goes. So back to the streams as well. Apparently, there was this this study in science where 12 environmental sciences got together. In science magazine. Yes, I should. You know, in science. In January, this past January of 2010, 12 environmental sciences got together and did a survey of the literature on the environmental impact of mountaintop removal mining. Yeah. And the valleys, you said, I think something like 1200 miles of valley streams and headwaters have been affected. These guys sampled water in 73 of 78 streams or they did a study on this and found that 73 of the 78 streams they sampled

had deformed fish carrying toxic levels of selenium, which is a heavy metal, which is not good. And if your fish is deformed, that's not good in general. Yeah. The Simpsons classic episode of Blinky. Sure. How many eyes was it? Three eyes? Three eyes. Almost said four. We would have heard it about that. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government

uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that

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your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Drinking water is another problem because of cold slurry. These earthen dams are a temporary solution to begin with, but they can leak and that cold slurry can enter drinking water. Yeah. And you know, just to recap real quick, though, on the reclamation that I did find that study from earlier. The study said that 15 years after a mountaintop was leveled at this one site, trees had still not regrown

because they just can't make the soil like it used to be. And the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and that's for the land. When it comes to the streams, the Army Corps of Engineers said under oath in their testimony that there is not a successful stream creation project. In conjunction with this. Yeah, or they don't know of one. Yeah. Like basically, all right, we can try and reform the mountains to a rough semblance of what it once was, but you can't just make new streams. And we haven't found out a way to do that. It's kind of like taking a sword and severing someone's head and then just kind of balancing it back on the neck again. Yeah, sadly. Yeah, it's there, but it's not really working any longer. Right. Yeah. So

that's some of the environmental. You're also talking about the drinking water. It is, which kind of is, it straddles the environmental and the human impacts. There are people in this literature that we've been researching for this podcast, whose families have lived in these areas for like 230 years or so, right? Like these are straight up Appalachian folk. Oh, yeah. Right. Hillbillies, they call themselves hillbillies. And the hillbillies have been there for a while. And before, I guess it was probably a very quiet place. But as we've mentioned with mountain top removal mining explosives are a major part of it. So when you blow the top off of a mountain, first of all, it takes a lot of explosives, but it's very loud. Apparently, in 2003, 67% of all

explosives produced in the US were consumed by the coal industry. Yeah. And in West Virginia alone, that figure led to an estimated 3 million pounds of explosives being used a day. Yeah. A day to blow up mountains. People live on these mountains still, right? The same mountains that they're blowing up. Yeah, in the valleys. So you've got the noise. You have a very dangerous condition called fly rock, which is exactly what it sounds like when you blow a mountain top up, rock flies everywhere. And if somebody's living there, it can go into their house and kill them. Yeah. And that was the case in 2004 at 2 30 in the morning. Bulldozer operating without a permit. Again, 2 30 in the morning. This bulldozer was working on mine site. Without a permit,

it dislodged a thousand pound boulder, rolled 200 feet down and crushed a three year old Jeremy Davidson in his bed who was sleeping at the time. Yeah. And the company was fined $15,000 for that. Yeah. For gross negligence. Yeah. So I don't even have a comment on that. Yeah. We'll just leave that to the listeners. I have some more deaths here if you want to be dark for another moment. Sure. In West Virginia, 14 people drowned in the last three years because of floods and mudslides. In Kentucky, 50 people have been killed and 500 injured over the last five years by coal trucks that were illegally overloaded. And on the flooding thing, I think they said that in this one spot in West Virginia that there were three, what they call a thousand year flood or a hundred year flood

in 10 days. Yeah. 300 year floods in 10 days in this one region. Yes. That's not supposed to happen. No. And you're talking about deaths. That's just directly from drownings, injury, that kind of thing. If you take all of the public health hazards into account, as a public health reports journal study did this year, or I think last year, I'm sorry, anywhere between 1,736 and 2,889 people die in Appalachia each year as a result of the coal mining industry there. So there is a lot of death, but there's also a lot of potential death too. Sickness, yeah. We talked about Buffalo Creek where the slurry dam, the slurry pond dam broke and killed 125 people. That was 130 million gallons of coal slurry, right? Yeah. Killed 125 people. There is a place called Marsh Fork Elementary

School. Yeah. I saw a documentary on the school. So Marsh Fork has, I believe, 200 something students going there every day. And just above the elementary school, there is a coal slurry pond above it on the mountainside that holds 3 billion gallons of coal sludge. Yeah. And there's a whole operation. There's a silo 300 feet from the school. Right. So rather than the 132 million gallons, we're talking about 3 billion gallons poised behind an earthen dam right above an elementary school. So there's a lot of potential for disaster as well. Right? Yeah. That's Massey Energy. That's one of the bigger coal companies in the United States. You might remember Massey's name by the upper big branch mine explosion that happened about a year ago from two days ago. Oh, yeah.

It was April 5, 2010. Right. That explosion killed 29 miners and leaving three others trapped. So Massey is, like you said, big in traditional mining, surface mining, and regulation, actually. One of their former executives was named a deputy energy secretary for fossil fuels a couple years back. That's right. President Bush appointed, what was his name? His name was Stanley Subaleschi. He was appointed in 2007, December 2007. To the Department of Energy. Yeah. Okay. Back to Marsh Fork Elementary School. Actually, one of the documentaries I saw yesterday was on that school specifically. And West Virginia activist Bo Webb, he's one of the leading activists on this cause, found that 80% of the parents are saying that their children

are coming home from school with a variety of illnesses like nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, shortness of breath, wheezing, asthma, long-term effects, kidney damage. There's been a lot of kidney damage in that area. Liver damage, spleen failure, bone damage, and cancer of the digestive tract. And Bo has, actually it wasn't Bo, but one of the other activists there, they were trying to raise money in this documentary to build a new school not near, you know, not 300 feet away from a coal mining operation. And they were trying to raise it by donating pennies. And they, in the documentary, they marched and had a rally at the governor's office in West Virginia. And it was hardcore, man. It was hard to watch. Like, literally, the governor gave him a minute and he's glad

handing and talking to people. And, you know, they bring out this little girl from the school. And he's like, well, what are you interested in? And you sure are cute. And what do you want to be when you grow up? And basically, the kids just like, I don't want to live under a coal mine. And I don't want to be sick anymore. And they called this guy out, the governor, out big time. And it was really one of those uncomfortable scenes to watch when politics gets, when it's clear that this guy has no answer. And the big coal has their lobbyists that are, you know, on the side of, you know, big coal mining. And it was just very uncomfortable and disturbing to watch. But you should watch it nonetheless.

And that was, that was Marsh Creek Elementary's in West Virginia, right? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, it's in Rock Creek, I see. Chuck, one of the reasons why the governor would have been embarrassed or felt awkward is because there is a ton of money at stake here. That one public health reports journal study that said, you know, between 1,700 and 2,900 people die each year from coal mining. It was an economics paper, really. And it said that the coal industry generates about $8 billion in economic contribution to Appalachia every year. Right?

Yeah. Which is a lot. That's like, you know, you can't, that's a lot of money spent on that area. The problem is this same paper, using the same model, figured out that it costs about $42 billion in health care costs and the cost of life. So, that's a big picture. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're actually losing. And you can just look at, you know, the poverty in Appalachia

and see, oh, well, these people who are literally next to these mines are not benefiting from this at all. Right. And there's another stat. Activists will point out that only about four or five percent of our nation's coal energy comes from mountain top removal mining. So, it's not like, oh, you know, like 80 percent of the coal that we use comes from this practice. So, we really, really need it. They will tell you that conservation alone, we could save an average of 20 percent of our energy demands, which far outweighs, you know, by what, four or five times the five percent that we're using.

Right. I've seen up to 10 percent comes from strip mining or from mountain top removal mining. Oh, really? But that's being used pretty greedily because the United States gets about 50 percent of its electricity. I think in 2009, it got 45 percent of its electricity from coal. So, usually, it's around 50 percent. Yeah. And we're exporting coal, too. Coal is an important part of our energy plan. Yeah. Can't ignore that.

Yeah. So, where does that leave us, Chuck? Well, there's a couple of things. Josh, one reason that I wanted to do this show and that you got on board and we're way behind it, too, is because... Oh, no. I'm just doing this for you. ...is because this is a problem that affects poor, rural people, for the most part. People in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee now, and they don't have the same voice that other folks do. One of the leading... I think it was Bo Ebbigan said if this wouldn't happen in New England, that biggest environmental disaster east of the Mississippi River happened

and the New York Times didn't report about it for four months. And I guess a lot of the listeners out there probably looked at the title, What is Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining? and said, Yeah, what is that? I've never heard of it. But we've all heard of the Valdez. We heard about all these disasters obviously need attention. I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay attention to things like oil spills, but it gets a lot more attention when it's on the Gulf of Florida with Destin and Seaside right there than it does in the rural mountains of West Virginia. Yeah. So somebody used to be talking about this and a lot of people are. And another problem is the coal lobby and the fact that

companies can donate money to political campaigns and get in the hip pockets of politicians and favors are paid back. And it's the same old story with, you know, big industry like this. It's just sad to see it happening. Well, it is. It's a big, it's a, there's a big debate going on right now about just how much the EPA should have teeth in regards to Mountain Top Removal Mining, right? Yeah. And the EPA's new chief is pretty progressive and pretty hardcore and not a friend of big business. And she is making some waves coal miners are against these actions. Are you talking about Lisa Jackson? Yeah. Okay. And she's a bulldog. I read that Rolling Stone interview on her and she's,

she said her job is just to look out for the environment. That's the only thing she wants to do. And, you know, if you're in her way, she's going to try and knock you down. Well, we'll see. But that's still not enough for a lot of people. I think the general consensus among activists and probably people who live in school buses on the side of a mountain nearby, a mountain top removal operation, is that it should be banned outright. Yeah. That process, not mining those particular sites, but that, that type of mining, that method of mining, should just be completely outlawed. Yeah. I mean, most of these permits were issued during the Clinton and Bush administrations, second Bush, obviously. And there were certain

key provisions to the Clean Water Act that were rewritten to reclassify waste associated with strip mining as benign film material. Yeah. Federal judge rejected that. But then, that change was upheld in 2003 by fourth circuit court judge. And then Obama comes in and people said, all right, dude, you're the environmental guy, get rid of this all together in the first 100 days. Didn't happen. But Obama has introduced stricter guidelines now and the EPA has on to curtail mountaintop mining, hailed by certain environmentalists. But if you talk to Bo Webb, he'll say that ain't enough, brother. He's like, you got to outlaw mountaintop removal mining, period. And anything less than that is just playing into the hands of big coal.

It's surprising that it has been allowed to go on. I mean, the idea of blowing the top of a mountain and pushing it into the valley below, covering up the stream, and then introducing coal slurry to this local environment in an age where there's such a thing as Earth Day. And people are like, I will never use a paper or a plastic bag. I use my own that I bought and brought from home. That this is going on. It's startling. Yeah. Well, last, you know, I said that there were some efforts by the Obama administration to curtail this. Last Thursday, this is just over the wire today, two senators from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul introduced a bill trying to restrict the EPA from clamping down

on it, giving the EPA a 60 day deadline to veto clean water act permits issued by the Corps of Engineers. And activists are saying, yeah, this is tricky. So they put in that 68 thing. Everyone knows nothing in the government can happen in 60 days. So it's sort of a facade. Red herring. The bill would also prevent the EPA from retroactively vetoing permits. So that was Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and Rand Paul from Kentucky. If you're from Kentucky, you know all about your senators. 2010 said, like, you don't need me to tell you about this guy. In 2010, he said in an interview, quote, I think they should name it something better. The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these

knobby little hills that are everywhere out here. I don't think anyone's going to be missing a hill or two here and there. And that was Rand Paul straight from the horse's mouth. And Chuck, I think that you know, as well as I, people are going to be like, you guys are getting political. Stop being political. And I just, I'm trying to figure out how to frame a response to that because this is super political. It's above politics. It's basically incredibly well financed industrial interests and average people who have no money. That kind of dying dying and getting sick. That's not political. That's not the right or the left. That's right or wrong. Yeah. Well said, sir. Thanks. We're talking about

an EPA study. It's estimated 400,000 acres have been wiped out. And like we said, between 700 and 1000 miles of stream. And that was in that those are the 2001 numbers. So it's a lot higher by then. Well, do you want to talk to Ben solely? I do. I'm looking to see if I have anything else. Oh, you know what? We should plug a couple of things. Jonathan France's new novel freedom. It's a big subplot, mountain top removal mining. Yeah, I heard the TV show justified. Have you ever seen it? No, it's awesome. Timothy Oliphant season two has a big subplot on mountain top removal mining. And all these things, you know, raise awareness on certain levels. The wild, wonderful whites of West Virginia. What's that? It's a documentary,

you know, the dancing outlaw. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's a follow up to that. It's his family. And they are crazy. It's actually produced by Johnny Knoxville's production company. Really, it's worth seeing. So Ben will be in here in a second to give us some more organizations. But if you want to just look into this little more, there are three places I can recommend you go. One is I love mountains.org. Great place to start. There's a group called the Mountain Justice Summer. They're they are well organized. I think they're the oldest one. Yeah, that's mountainjusticesummer.org. And then Appalachian Voices, APP Voices.org. Go to any of those websites, look up some pictures, do your own research, see if it matters to you or summer's coming up. And if you want to go

join a protest, they have them all over Appalachia. Yeah, if you've ever wanted to see a person with dreadlocks in working in conjunction with the hillbilly, this is the place to go. It's a good point. So Chuck, let's let's pause a second here while we bring Ben Solin. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government

uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first

month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now, and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing

your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money has got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we are back. It seemed like a brief second to you, but it was about 10 minute stops. At least something like that. And in the studio for our first ever musical guests, we have Mr. Ben Soli. Welcome Ben. Hello, fellas. Ben is a singer, a songwriter, and a cellist. Check. He is a Kentucky native. Right. And he is a mountain top removal coal mining activist. And in 2010, Ben, you put out an album on the

sub pop label produced by Mr. Jim James of My Morning Jacket with Daniel Martin Moore called Dear Companion. And it was a, do you call it a concept album or just a theme album? That's a good question. Some folks refer to it as a protest album. Some folks refer to it as a album of an issues based album. And we just kind of looked at it as a tribute album to a really beautiful part of the country. Okay. And bringing that part of the country and that sound and kind of our heritage as Kentucky musicians into like the urban context and mixing all that stuff. Well, since that was one of my questions anyway, just tell us a little bit more about that project. I know did 100% of the proceeds went to ILoveMountains.org? Yeah. Well, I mean, all of the proceeds

that we would have gotten as artists. Right. Sure. Yeah. And in the record world, you know, there's, you get a portion of it from record sales. There's not just thing as a free album. One percent went to ILoveMountains.org. No, actually, it was like, I mean, to be specific, it was 13. Something percent. The portion that we would have gotten as artists. Right. So we just donated that to AppVoices mostly because they run an amazing website and called ILoveMountains.org. And the goal of the record was not to like protest anything or, you know, necessarily pick a side. It was more to like raise awareness, be catalyst for conversation. That's what we just did. Exactly. So in that way, we wanted to support the thing that was, we felt like was one of the

best things for a national conversation, which was the website where people can go and find out about how they're involved and what to do. How did you get into, where did your desire to raise awareness about MTR come from? It's a good question. I think it all started with an author that read a story. This guy's name is Silas House. He's a well-known author there in the Kentucky Central part of America region. He's an amazing writer and he came and read on a show that I was doing this, you know, beautiful entry about a lady who had posted herself up on this mountain site and she was not going to allow the machines to kind of rip up the land, which had been in her family for years and years. And that, you know, it was a, you know, I had a lot of emotion and

energy in the writing that kind of spawned the thought of it. And then more and more research I was like, wow, how can this actually be going on America? How can people actually have to live without basically a lot of their civil rights to have like clean water to be protected by their police, you know, all these things. And so I wanted to help raise awareness for it, but I'm a musician. What do you do? Like how much can a song really change anything is always one of these big dilemmas, especially a song of protest. Have you heard Europe's final countdown? That changed everything for me. You know the song. Oh, we're going to play it for you. I'm going to buy you that mp3 as a matter of fact. Oh, that's sweet. Thank you. Yeah. So tell us a

little bit more about Dear Companion and your work with Daniel Martin Moore and Jim James and Subpop and how it was packaged. You know, that was very unique. It is unique and Subpop is a really amazing record label for even taking the time to like look at putting this thing out. Right. And I think a big, big part of that is because they started as a label that was based in a community. Like they started, you know, putting out punk rock music of Seattle and they grew big and they put out music and everything now. But this is the way of reaching into a different community and being part of a conversation. And in a lot of ways folk music kind of has that punk like against the, you know, against the common thing, the establishment, against the establishment.

The man, the man, the man, whatever the industry. And so I think this really resonated with them. So they took the time and energy, put it out. Working with Daniel Martin Moore was, he's a tall, handsome, crooner sort of fella. He is. He is. And he also lives in Kentucky. And before we even met, he was very active in raising awareness about mountaintop removal with a song called Fly Rock Blues. And Fly Rock kind of describes the materials that fly off into the air when they explode them out. Yeah, it's amazing stuff. I mean, sometimes boulders as big as houses go flying hundreds of yards. I mean, this is an amazing, powerful explosive force and land in and land in places way outside the, the digging zone. Right. So that song inspired me to work

with him on this project. And then Jim James came on board also Kentucky native, also Kentucky native. I mean, he had done a lot of work with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, an organization there in Kentucky. And he just was a great voice for being able to take these influences of Appalachia, take our own songwriting and also bring them in with kind of the relevant indie rock and this kind of sound that is associated with him and my morning jacket. And quickly on the packaging, too, that was, was there a map that was included or there's a, there's a beautiful picture of Appalachia. Okay. And what's unique about the picture and the reason that we chose it is not, it's not some, you know, long shot landscape of the rolling mountains, old Appalachian fog. It's,

it's not this idealized thing. It's simply a valley. It's this beautiful, pristine valley. And that's really what the whole contention behind this is. It's not really the absence of the mountain tops that causes so much destruction. It's the filling in destruction of the valleys. These are the places that collect our water, the headwaters that come down, not only to these Appalachian communities, but also some of our major cities on the East Coast. And those waters are being polluted. And the idea that we all live downstream from those is a really provocative and, and an idea that we're all in this together. This is one big community from the ground water being polluted to the electricity that runs these light bulbs. Like we're all kind of participating

in this thing. And it's very easy when we're participating in it, turning on a light switch or charging our phone to miss the idea, not that a mountain is blowing up. That's too abstract. That's too out there. The idea that people have to live with the people make this power, right? People have to deal with the coal trucks, you know, tearing up the roads. People have to deal with the dust in the air and the shaking ground. People have to deal with the loss of land values. Like there are people that are living very hard lives to make sure that we have these things. And I think from a positive standpoint, we need to appreciate that more, right? Not just protest them, not point our fingers and look at them and say, look at those poor people, but say thank

you in a lot of ways. And that's what we try to do with your companion was to say thank you, celebrate Appalachia as a landscape, as part of our American heritage, you know, everything from the fiddler chop, you know, the man beside his cabin chopping wood or the fiddler playing while the guy is dancing. Like these American things that have been turned into musicals and shows, they all stem from those pioneers that settled in these mountains. And I just think it's such a huge part of our heritage as Americans. And it's just disappearing as these communities, they just they struggle to survive underneath the climate of things being exploded and land being devalued and water being polluted. It's hard for them to survive. And it's hard for communities

to to even keep their footing when all that's happening. So we're losing part of our American heritage. And that's how it ties in with me as a musician. That's how I found it tied in with me as a musician. Awesome. And I want to point out Ben is a guy who walks the walk. He did a an entire tour. Was it last year on your bicycle? Well, yeah, we've done three tours about bicycle. I don't know how many people there have ever tried to carry a cello on a bicycle. But this guy does it from town to town. Believe it or not, there's four or five cellists out there in the world that are really that are carrying their cellos on bicycles. Something about, you know, people say cellists are extreme people. I don't think that. But I just really got into

this idea of not being sustainable or being green, slowing down, right? The idea that I wanted to be more involved in these communities. I felt this, this unsettling feeling that I was coming through these places, putting on a show asking people about the music and then moving on to the next, right, driving eight to 10 hours the next day. Sometimes to get to some distant community where promoters willing to put on, put up money to put on a show. It felt like a little bit of a fleecing thing and somewhat dishonest in a lot of ways. It wasn't real and people romanticized it, but it wasn't really real. So the idea of getting on a bicycle, slowing down, not being able to roll up our windows or just stay on the interstate and zoom past the place. We had to really ride

through each community and be a part of their town for at least a little bit. Yeah, you notice, I've been riding my bike lately just for exercise and it's amazing how much more you notice just by walking or riding a bike than when you're zipping past it in a car. The smells, the condition of the road is a big one. The habits and nature of other drivers out there, you notice how amazing it is that we have thousands and thousands of pounds of machinery that we can just hurdle down the highway. For better or worse, you just notice what an extreme action that is. We're so used to it, but the idea that we can hop on a highway and just push this machine, very heavy big machine, float it down the highway, it's kind of like Arthur C. Clark or something. It's just right out there.

You don't take things for granted, my friend. All right, well, before we get involved with the music, maybe you mind sticking around and playing us a song? I'd love to. Okay, good. We plug iLoveMountains.org. Is that a good place for people to start? It's a great place for people to start, especially because you can, they have a tool on there where you can plug in your zip code and see what portion of your power is coming from coal. Oh, fantastic. And not only that, you can see where that coal's coming from. Yeah, it's a great website. iLoveMountains.org. That's a cool, not coal. That's a coal. So the song we're going to hear is called Electrified and it is from Mr. Soli's forthcoming album, which should be dropping right now, May 10th.

Yeah. And it's called Inclusions. So let's hear it. The trees are electrified. The streets are electrified. Your ears are electrified. My voice is electrified. Your heart is unsteady. They can make it beat the time. Your mind is confused. It will be clarified. You're old fashioned. You will be modernized. Everything is electrified. You're lost in the jungle. Use the satellites. If you're broke in the city, sneak on the bus line. You lost your job because it was mechanized. They said we have to compete when the market's globalized. Everything is electrified. Everything is electrified. Everything is electrified.

With my bare hands, touch the base of your spine. Feel you shudder and close your eyes. Move like a swallow and I'm hypnotized. Everything is electrified. Everything is electrified. Everything is electrified. Everything is electrified. Some folks are heroes. Others may be vilified. Accessual losses. Learn to diversify. Find your higher calling in evangelize. Build your congregation. Now you're televised. Everything's electrified. Everything is electrified. Everything's electrified. Man, that was awesome. That was very cool.

So cool. And those, you know, you heard clapping. I have people all over the office here that wanted to come in and hear. Obviously. Yeah, I have something else. So you can see Ben Soli on tour. He's on tour right now. And he is all over the place.

I'm looking Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, St. Louis, I mean, back through Kentucky, down through the south, go see Ben Soli on tour through the end of June. You can find that at his website. Yeah, you can also learn all about mining and energy by typing either one of those words in the search bar at howstuffforce.com, which does not trigger listener mail this time. Instead, you should just an email if you want to drop us a line. Yeah. And hey, if you go see Ben Soli on tour, go up to him and talk to him.

He's a very nice guy. Tell him that your buddy's with us. He's a very good guy. Anyway, if you want to get in touch with us, send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The HowstuffWorks iPhone app has arrived, download it today on iTunes.

Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed, that you call civil asset for. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's today's Fortnite weather report. iHeartland has been hit by a major blizzard. The snow has turned iHeartland and Fortnite into a winter wonderland with new festive games including a winter themed escape room, a holiday obstacle course, ice skating, hidden

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