ProgressOhio

Mountaintop removal mining is the most devastating mining practice in the United States.  Over the years the practice has flattened more than 500,000 acres and permanently buried 2,000 miles of streams, destroying sources that feed drinking water.

Mountaintop removal mining is a form of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to blast as much as 800 to 1000 feet off the tops of mountains order to reach the coal seams that lie underneath.

Mining companies first raze a mountainside, ripping trees from the ground with huge tractors. Brush is cleared and then the debris is set ablaze. Holes are dug for explosives, charges are set and mountaintops are literally blown apart.

The resulting millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation are then dumped into surrounding valleys, burying miles and miles of streams under piles of rubble hundreds of feet deep. Mountaintop removal mining harms not only aquatic ecosystems and water quality, but also destroys hundreds of acres of healthy forests and fish and wildlife habitat, including habitat of threatened and endangered species, when the tops of mountains are blasted away.

This practice devastates Appalachian communities and cultures that have existed in these mountains for hundreds of years. Residents of the surrounding communities are threatened by rock slides, catastrophic floods, poisoned water supplies, constant blasting, destroyed property, and lost culture.

Almost 40 years ago, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said this about the Coal River Valley: ”I flew over these mountains and I saw what [the coal companies] were doing and if the American people could see what I saw there would be a revolution in this country…”

The worst offender?  Massey Energy Systems.

Turns out our own E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, serves on the Massey Energy board of directors and in 2007 (the latest record we could find) received $192,955 in compensation for doing so.

Gee has been a Massey director since November 30, 2000.  He is the Chairman of the Safety, Environmental and Public Policy Committee, and a member of the Audit, Executive, and Governance and Nominating Committees. 

Suprise, surprise . . . Gee’s place on the Massey board is not listed in his official biography on the OSU website.

Gordon Gee while representing The Ohio State University talks a good game about the environment

In a speech Gee delivered at the Brookings Institute on February 9, 2009, he spoke on the need to immediately involve universities in restructuring America’s energy supplies, advocating green energy initiatives to wean the U.S. off its dependence on fossil fuels, and create green collar jobs.

He stated, “America’s utter dependence on fossil fuels weakens us in a critical way. As supplies dwindle and our environment suffers potentially irreversible damage, we cannot sit idly by.”

Hypocrisy alert Dr. Gee.  Why are you saying one thing publicly and taking $200K from a year from the very people who profit everyday from the destruction of our environment mining those fossil fuels?

President Gee now that the truth is coming out, we strongly suggest take you this opportunity to demonstrate real leadership on Oho State's Green Initiatives by immediately resigning from the Massey Energy board.