Ask the Expert: Anti-Coal Activist Elisa Young

Anti-coal activist Elisa Young. (Photo courtesy Elisa Young)

Appalachia doesn’t exist in the same America as the one recognizable from the streets of New York, the cattle ranches of Texas, or the cornfields of Iowa. It is, to paraphrase Michael Harrington’s The Other America, where King Coal reigns supreme. Coal companies wield immense power over these mountains, and their right to rule is largely unchallenged. Neither political party has escaped coal’s influence, which makes it virtually impossible to legislate against the industry

But Elisa Young is trying anyway. She lives in Meigs County, Ohio, on the edge of what we call Appalachia. There she is the founder of Meigs Citizens Action Now*, a community group that tries to combat the social and environmental damage business interests have inflicted in the community. The area hosts four power plants, and there are plans to build another five as well as an underground coal mine. Such construction would make for the highest concentration of power plants in the country. It would also dramatically affect the health of the surrounding communities, which are already subject to one of the highest lung cancer rates in the state.

Working with students from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, Young has fought against these new plants and the proposed coal mine. She has organized her community and raised awareness about their troubles throughout the country. Young has even received legal threats from American Municipal Power as a result of her actions.

Young attended Powershift ’09 late last month to speak on several panels, and Campus Progress caught up with her to ask her a few questions about the health effects of power plants, her local victories, and the fact that coal simply doesn’t lead to prosperity for the people of Appalachia.

Campus Progress: What are some ways have you tried to raise awareness about coal’s effect on your community? Have you had any victories?

Elisa Young: Back in 2006, I won an international women’s award from the Women of Peacepower Foundation that was for taking people on what we call “True Cost of Coal Tours,” and also for community organizing efforts. The tours were done for the specific reason of helping people witness what was going on in Appalachia at the hands of the coal industry. To show people that it is the entire cycle of coal that is causing problems. These companies have a parasitic relationship, sending power to places where they will never see the effects, where they will never get sick and die. It isn’t about doing one thing a little differently. If you don’t live there then you really don’t hear about those things, and if people don’t even realize there is a problem, then we’re never going to have any change.

I’ve opened up my farm, which has been in my family for seven generations, to touring groups. We will have groups stay overnight to do community service projects. It is absolutely critical that we raise awareness because one of the power plants that wants to come in to get their construction costs for the facility by socializing the costs and tying cities and municipalities into 50-year contracts. We took it upon ourselves to try to educate people about what a poor financial choice it was by visiting their city councils. Oberlin was one of those towns and ultimately they voted it down. The students got committed. They got involved in the election process and they got actively involved in getting people elected to their town council who would reflect the values of the city and vote against it. After we won, one of the city council members told me that before we came he had no idea that our community was suffering these impacts.

CP: Why don’t people hear more about it? Why do you think that all these things are happening to your community, and to communities like yours all over Appalachia?

EY: In general in Appalachia there is a lot of poverty, and there is a lot of money to be made from poor people. I think 70 to 80 percent of the coal fields of West Virginia are owned by absentee coal barons and they have no compunction and no commitment to the condition of the land after extraction. But I want you to understand that it’s all people have ever known. So there is desensitization or a general acceptance that your job may be dangerous, that your job may kill you, because that is all people have ever known. Things become so engrained its almost genetic, you don’t question it. You don’t even think about the reality that you live in.

Another piece of it is this: If you had someone who wanted to build a power plant in the Carson National Forest, you’d have people outraged. Once one power plant is there then you have people who are desensitized to it, so it’s easier to build a second one. We weren’t told about the health impacts, and we still aren’t. There is a huge disconnect between the illness we are suffering and the contaminants we are exposed to.

CP: What are the health impacts?

EY: Cancer. We have a lot of cancer—the highest lung cancer death rate in the state. I’ve had cancer. My best friend has had cancer. Both of our dogs died of cancer. I’ve had six neighbors die of cancer, [including one woman] who died of lung cancer, [even] though she never smoked. I had an epidemiologist down one time and he said we had cancer rates that were about double what he would expect.

People are afraid to talk abut it. We also don’t have the money to fight. We’ve been looking for legal representation going on seven years, no one will represent us. I’ve had to file appeals on my own. We’re politically isolated. Our state is 96 percent dependant on coal for our electricity. How do you fight against something that your whole state runs on? You ask why the site here and they typically site where people are poor, where they don’t have access to legal representation or media coverage.

CP: Why do people put up with this?

EY: The only reason people have put up with these facilities is because they think they may get jobs. That’s what you hear in the media. Coal equals jobs. But the first coal mine in our community was opened up in 1815. If we’ve had almost 200 years of this, and they’re trying to say that coal means economic prosperity, then why are we one of the poorest counties in the state? Why do we have such a high unemployment rate? I’ve seen our unemployment rates up by 23 percent. If coal brings prosperity maybe we should had a little of that by now.

CP: Is there a lot of support for you within your community?

EY: It was very divisive to start with, but as people aren’t seeing the benefits from coal companies, we are getting more support. Really the underground coal mining was the unifying issue, because it is a direct assault on your home and your land. The power plants are more of a slow death. You die by inches. At first it was just me going to these meetings, and then people started giving me the thumbs up under the table. So we did community education about how to submit things at a public hearing. And we practiced, even though it was very hard. If you speak out and, say, your dad or your brother works at one of those plants, there is a lot of backlash. But by the time the coal meeting came around we had more people than they had chairs for.

Jake Blumgart is an Editorial Intern at Campus Progress.

*This article originally stated that Elisa Young was the director of Ohio Citizen Action. We regret the error.

Related Stories

• Gender-Neutral Housing Comes to Princeton
• Campaign Communications Director, Repower America
• Toke Up Marijuana Laws
• Send a Health Care E-Card
• The Battle for Pittsburgh