An Image of Environmental and Social Degradation or Kiddie Porn?

Maria Gunnoe, a prominent opponent of mountaintop removal who has won the Goldman Environmental Prize, had been invited to testify at a hearing on the Spruce Coal Mine by the House energy and resources subcommittee.

Besides her testimony, she received something she wasn’t expecting: a questioning by police on suspicion of child pornography.

Gunnoe, who has testified for the committee four times before, had always felt that the members of the committee had not made eye contact with her, essentially dismissing her testimony with visible lack of interest or engagement. So Gunnoe decided to grab the subcommittee’s attention with a compelling image of West Virginians living with mountaintop removal mining. She chose a photo by noted photographer Katie Falkenberg that shows a five-year-old girl sitting in a tub of water polluted by mountaintop mining. The bathwater is a deep disturbing reddish orange. The photo, as well as other images of mountaintop mining can be found here.

The photo was pulled from the presentation by Doug Lamborn, the leader of the energy and mineral resources subcommittee, which is under the House Committee on Natural Resources. A GOP house member, Lamborn was noted as the most conservative member of Congress by the National Journal in 2009 and 2010. He is against energy conservation measures and for ramping up the extraction of domestic fossil fuels.

            Lamborn says that he did not see the photograph and relied on the judgment of his staff, who said that the photo was inappropriate. The hearing concerned recent actions by the EPA, which is currently appealing a ruling by a federal judge that the agency overstepped its authority in vetoing a permit for the Spruce mine.

            After her presentation, police questioned Gunnoe for 45 minutes.

If only we had more people like Gunnoe, who bravely stand up to the power of big money and King Coal. It’s too bad that besides politely ignoring her, the GOP controlled energy and resources subcommittee censors her presentation and harasses her.

            Mountaintop mining has brought West Virginia nothing good. It has destroyed communities, depressed wages, and filled in hundreds of miles of streams as it has flatted hundreds of mountains. It passes the muster of law only because the Appalachians are sparsely populated with individuals who are poorer than the rest of the U.S. and unused to working the levers of power. If things were otherwise, kingpins of Big Coal would be locked up along with the scum who peddle kiddie porn.