95-Year-Old Activist Arrested Trying to Save Kids from Coal Sludge

Last June, Daryl Hannah, Dr. James Hansen and 29 others were arrested in Raleigh County, West Virginia while protesting outside a Massey Energy subsidiary’s coal processing plant. Hannah, an outspoken activist, got a lot of press for her role in the mountaintop removal protest – including here on EarthFirst – but perhaps the more interesting story lies with fellow protester Ken Hechler, a 95-year-old former congressman.

Hechler’s dedication to fighting irresponsible coal mining practices runs deep. In 1966, 144 people died – including more than 100 elementary school students – when a huge collection of coal waste stored on the mountain above their school broke loose and crushed them with a deafening roar. Hechler, a U.S. Representative for coal state West Virginia, was deeply affected by the tragedy, which took place across the Atlantic in Aberfan, South Wales. He knew that such a thing could happen in his area, too.

The following year, some of his friends along Buffalo Creek and other sections of Logan County, which he represented in Congress, warned him that mudslides had made a coal waste dam extremely vulnerable to collapse. Hechler immediately went to work, but his efforts couldn’t stop the Buffalo Creek tragedy.

From Hechler’s op-ed in the West Virginia Gazette:

What I saw, particularly along Buffalo Creek, horrified me. I telephoned Gov. Hulett Smith and urged him to assemble a team of officials to see for themselves the danger confronting the residents, and to figure out what remedial measures were necessary to save people’s lives. I had the disaster at Aberfan very much on my mind.

Gov. Smith said he would ask Finance Commissioner Truman Gore and officials of the State Road Commission and Department of Natural Resources to be ready for a call from me. I also asked two representatives on the Army Corps of Engineers to join the group of state officials to drive down to Buffalo Creek and other threatened areas of Logan County the following morning.

It was raining the next morning, but the officials all showed up. I also asked the local head of Island Creek Coal Co., Richard Herron, to come along, since one of the trouble spots was at Proctor Hollow near Amherstdale on Buffalo Creek.

News reporters from the Logan Banner, The Charleston Gazette and The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington ran accounts of our 1967 warning. But nothing was done – and five years later, 125 people were killed in the historic Buffalo Creek gob pile dam collapse.

Hechler was haunted by the deaths, and by the idea that it could happen yet again. In Raleigh County, a huge coal waste impoundment hangs, in Hechler’s words, “like a Sword of Damocles” a few hundred yards up the mountain above Marsh Creek Elementary School.

That’s why he was there that day, willing to get arrested to speak out against the dangers of coal mining once again. Hechler pleaded not guilty in July and is fighting the charges against him.

Read his full op-ed, ‘Ken Hechler: From Activist to Hell-Raiser’ at the West Virginia Gazette.

Link [West Virginia Gazette]
Photo: SludgeSafety.org

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