“[Just] because things is legal, it don’t make them right”

The following piece, by Julie Shepherd-Powell, won first place at the 2010 UK Appalachian Research Symposium. She interviews Pete Ramey about the struggle to stop construction of a Dominion Resources 585 mega-watt coal fired power plant in Wise County.

“[Just] because things is legal, it don’t make them right”: Natural Resource Corruption in the Fight Against a Coal-Fired Power Plant in Southwest Virginia

Julie Shepherd-Powell
PhD Student
Department of Anthropology
University of Kentucky

When I asked 80 year-old, former United Mine Workers of America underground coal miner Pete Ramey about the struggle to stop construction of a Dominion Resources 585 mega-watt coal fired power plant in Wise County, Virginia, he responded with the story of how he first became involved in environmental activism in the mountains of southwest Virginia.

Behind his house in the small coal camp community of Roda, dust and rock from a strip mine site was wreaking havoc on his home, his family, and his health. In the above quote, Ramey explained that even though he went through the correct legal procedures to try to rectify problems, they did not work. Furthermore, Ramey’s legal struggle and whistle-blowing caused the coal company to begin harassing Ramey and his family, even threatening to sue Ramey. Eventually Ramey moved to nearby Big Stone Gap.

In the eight interviews that I conducted during the summer of 2009 with members of the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS), a grassroots environmental group in southwest Virginia, every individual mentioned how the struggle against the power plant was deeply tied not just to the power company, but also to the coal industry. Ramey’s story of his home being destroyed by a coal operation, as well as the lesson he learned about his naïveté in believing that if he went through the correct legal procedures that the problem would be remedied,  resonated with many interviewees who reported similar stories of how they became involved with the struggle against the power plant.

Using interviews and field notes from ethnographic research conducted in Wise County during May, June, and July 2009, this paper examines the struggle against the power plant within a political ecological framework. I employ a theory of natural resource corruption to understand the struggle against the power plant in terms of legal and illegal tactics used by Dominion Resources, the coal industry, and politicians to gain support for the plant. I maintain that a theory of natural resource corruption is useful in revealing power hierarchies and inequalities that have made it extremely difficult to organize around environmental issues in an area that is dominated historically, politically, economically, and socially by the coal industry.  

Download full paper (PDF).
Download presentation (PowerPoint)and audio files (WAV).