Julia Bovey's Blog: Living Sustainably

You can move a mountain, it takes five guys and some dynamite

2009-01-22T21:13:33Z

I recently returned from a trip where I saw environmental destruction worse than anything I saw during my week in China. I saw something that I just can't believe is happening in the United States of America. It's called Mountain-Top Removal Mining. Basically, coal companies blast off the top of a mountain, dump the top into the valley below, creating an earthen dam that destroys streams, and spew toxic chemicals all over the whole thing. Then, they move on to the next mountain.

I've heard about this practice for years, seen photos, met people who live in these communities. But seeing it with my own eyes was truly transformational.

I shot video with my Flip camera - this one shows the tiny town of Montgomery Creek - one of the remaining creeks in an area where many creeks no longer exist. The beginning is shot from a car window. The car is being driven by a salt-of-the earth man who took us to his hometown and into his home to show us the devastation. In the back seat of the car was the oxygen tank he uses because he has black lung from being a miner.

The second video starts in the plane, taking off from a flat runway where their once was a mountain. What's left behind looks like Southwestern mesas. And there, beside those flat-top mountains, instead of valleys, there were more flat bridges to the next mesa, where the mining waste had been dumped.

Frequently, the filled-in valleys served as dams to hold back ponds of chemical waste, unnatural in color, hovering above the valleys below.

In addition to the flat mountaintop removal sites, we also saw what's called contour mining, where machines go around the mountain, creating level steps, and take the coal out there. I'm told that contour mining can be done responsibly, as miners take the coal out of one section, they can replace the rock and dirt they've moved aside to get the coal. But we saw no sign of this alleged responsible contour mining. We saw bare rock steps, with the dirt and topsoil dumped below.

We met people who live amongst the mining. They were united in their fight against mountain-top removal, but divided on what to do about coal in general. Many of them worked in coal mining - in deep-shaft mines where more than a thousand men would work, often for good wages. Now, they tell me, it takes 5 men to blow apart a mountain and plow out the coal, and bulldoze the rest into the valley to create a hollow fill. Five men, thanks to technology. And someone is getting rich. But not the people who live among the destruction. They are poorer than they were a generation ago.

Usually when I think and write about energy I look to technology to solve problems. And though technology has hastened the ruin of Eastern Kentucky, technology can also be the answer there. Eastern Kentucky needs an economic base. Jobs. A future. Without mountain-top removal mining.

Take a look at the map of wind energy that exists or is being built across the US. Notice that one of the states with no wind whatsoever is Kentucky.

Now look up close at the potential wind map for Kentucky. There is clearly potential for wind in exactly the areas of south-eastern Kentucky that are being flattened -- -- but of course the potential for wind there decreases when the mountains disappear. So Kentuckians are trading their mountains now for their clean energy future. And it's permanent.

Greetings from a soon-to-be greener China!

2008-10-23T01:43:23Z

Greetings from Beijing, China, where NRDC's multi-year effort to reduce pollution from factories got a major bump from Wal-Mart.

I was here in the room when Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott told a room of Wal-Mart's 900 Chinese suppliers that they will have to waste less energy and stop polluting (as much) if they want to keep making goods for Wal-Mart. (See the Wall Street Journal's coverage; subscription required.)

If you're wondering whether this is big - the answer is YES... if Wal-Mart sticks to its commitments and IF there is expertise and capital for the suppliers to really figure out where their waste is occurring and how to fix it. That's what NRDC is doing for 10 factories here, so that we can then create a set of best practices that we hope factories here in China - and eventually all over the word - can use to be cleaner, greener, and even save money.

NRDC's Linda Greer has been behind this effort from the get-go, and she was on the panel here at the Wal-Mart conference to try to explain to the suppliers how energy efficiency will help them and the planet. Afterward, NRDC's booth at the "trade fair" was swamped with Chinese manufacturers asking how to implement Linda's ideas.

More to come on this soon, but now I am packing up from Beijing and we're heading to Wuxi to see a rayon factory. Yesterday I was telling a Chinese journalist that we were going to try to figure out how to make rayon without so much devastating pollution and energy use. She said, "Yes, that already exists. It's called silk."

Tysons Corner, USA

2007-07-19T07:09:24Z

On June 1st my husband was riding his bike home from work when he was hit by a car. Of course he was. He works in a place called Tysons Corner, Virginia.

He's going to be fine, though he's still pretty banged up and his mouth is crocked from the way they sewed him back up. But he could have been killed, so I'm not complaining about the crocked mouth thing too much.

Even if you've never been to Tysons Corner, you know exactly what it's like, because if you live in the United State of America, you likely have a Tysons Corner of your very own. Two major and two minor highways meet there, so in about 1980, someone decided to build a mall there. Then a movie theater. Then an office building. Then more office buildings. Then another mall. Then fill in the parts in-between with strip malls. Then more office buildings and a couple of hotels.

What didn't they build in Tysons Corner? Sidewalks. Bike paths. Public transportation. So if you want to get to Tysons Corner, you drive. And if you want to get from, say, Tysons Corner Center, which has dozens of shops, four department stores, and a 16-screen movie theater, to Tysons Galleria, which has 120 stores and six restaurants, then you have exactly one way to cross the road that runs in-between them. You drive your car. It was biking across this road that my husband was hit.

The Major Corporation for which my husband works was very proud when it built its headquarters in Tysons Corner about six years ago. Back then, we lived in Boston and when he traveled to the headquarters everyone said to him "Isn't this great! We have a Starbucks in the building!"

What cracks me up is that the Major Corporation paid an architect a zillion dollars to design this really nice-looking building, but when you drive up to it guess what you see? A massive, poured-cement parking garage.

And, as you know from visiting your town's own version of Tysons Corner, the traffic is outrageous. In the evening it takes my husband one hour to drive the 13 miles home to DC from Tysons Corner. Most of that time is just getting out of Tysons Corner. By biking he was saving time.

But not anymore, because a) his bike is in a million pieces, b) he's scared, and c) bikes really have no business being in Tysons Corner. Neither do pedestrians.

When people at Major Corporation ask why we live in DC, my husband says "so my wife can take the Metro to work and we can walk to shops and restaurants." People look at him like he's mentally ill. They point out that if he lived near Tysons Corner he could have a bigger house. But not a shorter commute – because people who live mere miles from Tysons Corner also have an hour commute because they are in absolute gridlock the entire way home.

Here's the disconnect for me. People say they like communities. They say they like biking and walking. They say they hate traffic and concrete. They say they want to save money on gas. So why are we getting more and more, bigger and bigger Tysons Corners? How on earth can we move America beyond oil if we need to work or shop in a place that's only accessible by car?

And here, gentle readers, is the punch line. A mere 25 years since building the first mall at Tysons Corner, a train is now planned to bring commuters there and on to Dulles Airport. But, after much pleading to do otherwise, local authorities have decided to build the train ABOVE ground, rather than putting it in a much-recommended tunnel under the malls and office buildings. So, while most trains are heralded for getting people out of their cars – this train will in fact make the traffic at Tysons Corner WORSE.

Hmmm, maybe that means no cars will be going fast enough to make a dent in my husband.

Nature Bites Back

2007-07-10T03:42:47Z

My husband stepped on a bee and now he's icing his foot. I could not get up to help him, as I am bandaged and resigned to bed having just had a massive poisonous spider bite cut out of my thigh by the heroic overnight staff at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital.

Ah Nature. I work all year to protect it. Why has it turned against me on vacation this year? No sooner had we left Washington than we were assaulted by everything from rain, pollen, fog, sunburn, poison ivy, and — addition to the aforementioned insects — ticks, mosquitoes, and a disappointing lack of fireflies.

I am an urbanist, meaning — to me — that I live in the city where people should dwell so that during the week I can enjoy a 10-minute subway commute, lively community, and an energy-efficient, low-impact existence. Sure trees were cut down to build my neighborhood, but that was 100 years ago.

Then, for weekends and vacations, we head out into Nature, the kind without McMansions or 7-Elevens or even jet skis. We swim where there's no chlorine, walk where there's no pavement, cook where there's no roof. Through this, I remember many of the reasons why working to protect the environment is endlessly worthwhile despite the occasional frustrations of, say, the Bush administration denying that heat-trapping greenhouse gasses are pollution. During these sorties into Nature, I also hope to instill in my children this love of the outdoors that trumps their admiration for TV and dump trucks. Usually, it's blissful.

We came for our bite of nature. This summer, nature bit back.

Now I am hard at work at coming to terms with this. That, in its essence, our attempts to make a world in which no one gets bitten by a poisonous spider, steps on a bee, gets sunburn or poison ivy, or even gets wet in a rainstorm, are a big part of what got us in this heap of trouble we're in with Nature.

So here's where I'm at. In my little world of a small townhouse in Washington, DC I will expect to stay adequately warm, dry, cool, shaded, clean, and — after inspecting all my screens once I can finally travel home — insect free. I will expect the same in my office at NRDC. However — despite the searing pain in my leg and all the other ailments Nature has inflicted on my family members, I will not expect the same in Nature. I am here to be in the Outdoors on its own terms. I am not interested in some Nature-lite where a dozen cans of herbicide and pesticide later I can sit on a plastic chair on some mutant-bred imported species of carpet-like lawn-grass. One of the reasons I value Nature is that it must be on its own terms — otherwise, it's not Nature anymore. Any attempts to control it ruin it for me. However, keep in mind, as I write this, I am on a high dose of painkillers.