Massey Energy: WV’s own

By Jeff Young

In Whitesville, evil is a big letter "M."

Horns grow from each of the letter’s humps, just above a pair of sinister eyes. A pointed tail trails behind.

It’s a poster in the front window of the office of the activist group Coal River Mountain Watch. The horns and tail are instantly recognized icons in these God-fearing parts. And in Boone County, a big, bold "M" is almost as well known. Everyone here knows "M" equals Massey.

Massey Energy, Inc., dominates the region’s coal business. The Richmond, VA,-based company is West Virginia’s largest coal producer and the nation’s seventh largest. Roughly 5,000 people work for Massey in the Virginias and Kentucky.

"I dreamed about that ‘M’ with devil horns," Judy Bonds remembered. Her troubled sleep came after the stream that runs by her family property had been blackened by waste from Massey’s Marfork Coal operation.

"I could see the tail swishing in my nightmare," Bonds said. "I thought, I’ve got to put this down on paper."

So the evil "M" was born. And it got me to thinking: Is Massey Energy evil?

The nature of evil

Thanks to George W. Bush we’ve heard a lot about evil lately - axis of evil, evil doers, the evil one, that sort of thing. His rhetoric sparked a lot of discussion about just what the word means when applied to politics.

Evil is often considered a moral condition and the word is often defined in that way. Having or exhibiting bad moral qualities, morally corrupt, wicked.

That’s from Webster’s. But it doesn’t tell us much about evil in any practical terms. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t Webster’s first pick in defining the word. This definition gets top ranking: Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness. And later, there’s this: Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury or calamity.

Now we’re getting somewhere. This is an evil we can get our arms around.

It’s tangible. There are criteria here.

Current use of the word clearly comes from this more practical definition. When individuals fly airplanes into buildings they clearly have "qualities tending to injury and mischief." The folks at Coal River Mountain Watch would say the same is true for those individuals who destroy mountains and streams and seem to take the lives of workers and neighbors for granted. But the president’s use of the word implies something far beyond individuals - whole countries, groups of countries, even, are deemed evil. If that’s so, what about a whole company?

Why pick on Massey?

As spokesman for the WV Department of Environmental Protection, Andy Gallagher usually takes a diplomatic tone when it comes to coal companies. But when the name Massey came up diplomacy was out.

"Fuck Massey!" Gallagher shouted into the phone. "Fuck," he repeated deliberately, "Massey. And you can quote me on that."

OK, we get the point. But what is it about the name Massey that triggers such an outburst?

At the time of this exchange, DEP was near the final stages of negotiations with the coal industry over what to do with the state’s woefully inadequate bonding system for reclamation of mined lands. DEP needed a deal, so it shut out environmental voices and met in private with industry reps.

But despite the DEP’s backbends of accommodation for big coal, Massey rejected the state’s plan and nearly sabotaged the payment system the rest of the industry had agreed to.

Not long after that, Massey dropped out of the WV Coal Association, the group most observers view as a hardcore mining advocate and regulation opponent. Even among an industry notorious for environmental and worker safety problems, Massey stood out, a true poster child for bad corporate behavior.

Disturbing numbers of miners died in Massey mines. Towns choked under Massey dust. Rivers and streams ran black with Massey waste. [See accompanying article for the lurid details.]

Finally, even the state DEP could no longer look the other way. The agency went after three Massey operations that had made a habit of spilling coal sludge and slurry into streams and rivers. The crackdown has resulted in permit suspensions for all three companies. Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, has an explanation for all that.

"Regulatory and environmental requirements exceeded any measure of reasonableness," Blankenship recently told company shareholders. "We know that Massey’s high visibility has drawn a disproportionate share of negative media attention," he continued, adding that it was probably the union’s fault.

"The state leadership is heavily influenced by the United Mine Workers."

So, is Massey evil?

"I certainly think the people who make the decisions have to have some evil in them, to mine the way they mine coal," Judy Bonds said.

Now, Whitesville is a small town and Massey is a big company. So, naturally, Bonds knows a lot of people who work for Massey. Does she think all of them are evil, too?

"Not everyone in the company is. But those who make the decisions, yes, I do think that’s evil," she said.

Many of Bonds’ fellow activists agree the company evil lives high on the chain of command. Or maybe it is the chain itself; the entire corporate "I" doing things that no individual member would even contemplate.

Others who have given the idea of evil some thought aren’t so sure it’s the right word for the job.

Matthew Riegel is chaplain of the Lutheran Campus Ministry at West Virginia University.

"In some religious traditions a business enterprise can indeed be evil," Riegel wrote. "In others, however, such a proposition is categorically rejected."

Riegel says evil has always been a topic of theological discussion with a variety of definitions and arguments. But often the use of the word isn’t about exact definition. It’s an almost innate recognition that something is just not right.

"So, imprecision in language, while irritating to the erudite, does not prevent the common man from saying, ‘Hey boys and girls, there is a problem here,’" Riegel wrote, "and ‘evil’ is the word that lets them do that."

Ethics columnist Randy Cohen dismisses the whole idea. Cohen writes "The Ethicist" for The New York Times Magazine.

"It is not at all useful to brand companies or people as ‘evil,’ Cohen wrote. "It is the task of ethics to discuss actions, not actors. That goes for corporations as well as people. Thus, as an ethical matter, an act can be bad, but it’s not my concern to judge a person in this way."

Cohen doesn’t see much good coming from the use of the word "evil."

"It’s as if we were being attacked by scary demons," he wrote. "This approach is not likely to result in greater understanding or wise policy."

Cohen never lived downstream from a Massey mine. Judy Bonds did.

"Of course I think it does good to call evil ‘evil,’" Bonds said. "Why is there so much apathy? Why have people set back and let corporations become the masters they’ve become? I think it’s because the companies aren’t being exposed for what they are."

She listened a moment to what the deep thinkers had said on the matter but stuck to her convictions.

"I’m just a country girl, but that’s how I see it."

If the horns fit ... a short list of Massey’s sins

Is Massey evil? Consider the sins and decide for yourself. These accounts came from the Associated Press, The Charleston Gazette, The Charleston Daily Mail, WV Public Broadcasting and government reports over the past two years.

Massey has a poor health and safety record for miners

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) says Massey has "the nation’s worst fatality record" among coal companies. Massey’s CEO says the UMW is picking on his company because Massey is primarily non-union. But even a former assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor pointed to Massey as a problem company in mine safety. Davitt McAteer, former head of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Admin., reported to WV Gov. Bob Wise last year that Massey Energy Inc. was responsible for nearly half of the state’s 13 coal mine fatalities that year.

Massey avoids responsibility for miner deaths and injuries

Former MSHA chief McAteer said Massey tries to mask its poor safety record by reporting fatal and nonfatal accidents under the names of contract mining companies, allowing Massey to "claim that its safety record is much better than it actually is."

If the dead were contract workers, Massey doesn’t have to claim them. "This year [2001] Massey Energy has on its official record two fatal accidents because only two of the six or eight men who have died on Massey property and in Massey mines were Massey employees," McAteer wrote.

Massey fired a worker who pointed out safety problems

In December, former Massey electrician James Stafford won a $2.5 million decision against Massey for wrongful dismissal. Massey fired Stafford after he reported safety problems to federal regulators.

"We were getting people hurt. I felt I had no other alternative," Stafford old The Charleston Gazette. "There were ventilation problems and high concentrations of methane gas."

Stafford said the mine’s escape passages were often covered with water. Conveyor belts were so overloaded and poorly maintained that they sometimes caught fire. MSHA records show Rocky Hollow, a Massey subsidiary, was cited 788 times for safety violations during the previous three years.

"The best thing would be if people who work for Massey today would start to speak up," Stafford told the Gazette. "The company is run like a dictatorship."

Massey company site of region’s "worst environmental disaster"

A massive slurry impoundment at Massey’s Martin County Coal Company failed in the early morning hours of Oct 11, 2000, sending an estimated 250 million gallons of the thick waste into tributaries of the Big Sandy River. It destroyed two sizeable streams and blackened the rivers downstream for some 60 miles. Environmental officials called it the greatest environmental disaster in the Southeast U.S. An engineering study found company records misidentified the amount of rock layer beneath the slurry impoundment. Another federal report faulted Massey for not correcting problems after an earlier leak at the same site. Massey disputed those findings and at one point called the spill "an act of God."

Massey repeatedly pollutes waterways

These are too numerous to list entirely. Last year, The Charleston Daily Mail reviewed five years of environmental enforcement actions against WV coal companies and found Massey to be the state’s clear leader with 531 violations. Even WV’s Department of Environmental Protection, notorious for its lax enforcement, could no longer look the other way. DEP took action against three Massey companies. The crackdown resulted in permit suspensions for all three. Here’s a sample of recent violations. All the coal companies mentioned are associated with Massey.

• April 11, 2002. A Massey Energy operation spilled at least 135 thousand gallons of slurry into a tributary of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. Officials from the town of Kermit reported an eight- to 10-mile slug of slurry in the river. City and company workers downstream closed water intakes from the river.

• Feb. 22, 2002. State Mining regulators charged Omar Mining Co. with allowing coal slurry into a Boone County creek for at least the third time in seven months. The black slurry covered a half-mile of the stream.

• Aug. 1, 2001. Band Mill Coal Corp, Logan County. An estimated 50,000 gallons of slurry spilled into tributaries of the Guyandotte River.

• July, 2001. Citations were issued to various Massey operations for inadequately handling runoff during rain storms.

• June, 2001. Liberty preparation plant, Uneeda, Boone County. About 30,000 gallons spilled into Robinson Run and Pond Fork.

• May 2001. Over a 12-month period DEP inspectors cited Green Valley Coal for five violations of water quality limits for acidity and iron concentrations.

• Feb. 12, 1999, March 3, 1999. Massey subsidiary Elk Run Coal Company near Sylvester, Boone County. About 1,500 gallons of blackwater spilled into Little Elk Creek. Another discharge discolored 2,200 feet of Little Elk Creek.

• Feb. 23, 1999. Massey subsidiary Goals Coal Company. Shumate Creek operations near Naoma, Raleigh County. An unknown amount spilled into Marsh Fork of the Coal River.

Lawsuit says Massey damaged wells then provided tainted water

A lawsuit filed by residents of the Mingo County town of Delbarton alleges they received contaminated water from Massey’s Delbarton Mining Co. The company was ordered to provide residents with a temporary water supply after its mining destroyed their natural water supply. The lawsuit claims the water the company provided, stored in plastic containers, was contaminated with bacteria, including e-coli.

Massey’s CEO makes millions while he cuts wages and lays off workers

AFL-CIO’s "CEO Paywatch" Web site reported Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship earned $4.4 million in salary and bonuses alone. The Charleston Gazette reported that when you factor in additional money he earned in stock options, payouts from stock of Fluor (a former parent company) and payments to his deferred compensation account, that number jumped to $16 million. That made him the highest paid WV executive in The Gazette’s fourth survey of executive pay. Massey is 97 percent non-union. It’s asked the few UMW members working at two of its coal preparation plants to agree to drastic cuts in wages and benefits. Blankenship recently told investors that Massey Energy will lay off 400 to 600 employees in the near future in its effort to "right size" the company.

Massey illegally blanketed a small town with coal dust

Massey’s Elk Run Coal Company was cited repeatedly by WV’s DEP for not controlling dust from its operations in the Boone County town of Sylvester. Sylvester resident Pauline Canterberry told reporters the dust is stifling, even for people accustomed to it. "We’re coal mining people, and we can handle a little dust. What we’ve got now is ungodly."

Massey uses illegally overweight coal trucks

A Massey spokesman admitted during debate over regulation of overweight coal trucks that his company deliberately runs trucks hauling coal at weights tens of thousands of pounds heavier than the legal limit. Overweight coal trucks are blamed for millions in damages to the state’s roads and bridges and for highway accidents, including several fatalities. Massey CEO Don Blankenship complained, though, that coal trucking gets a bad rap, saying more people die in general highway accidents than in coal truck wrecks.

"People will get killed," Blankenship said at a recent investor’s meeting. "It’s easy to create emotion in the West Virginia and other media about fatalities. But it’s part of life for people to get injured."

Massey avoided paying millions in workers compensation

For much of the past decade, Massey fought attempts by WV officials to collect workers compensation premiums not paid by the company’s subcontractors. When the company finally settled this year, the total payment was $8.9 million.