Waste Dumping In West Virginia
Research Question: What are the causes and effects of waste dumping on the inhabitants in West Virginia?
The Appalachian region is diverse geographically, environmentally, and ethnically. In fact, the mountain chain itself is one of the oldest on Earth. The plants, animals, and organisms that make up a diverse ecosystem throughout the Appalachia Mountains have survived and prospered for thousands of years. However, the wildlife as well as the people in the Appalachia has been recently challenged and threatened by the pressure of waste dumping throughout their homeland. This affects the land, the people, and animals.
The causes of waste dumping in West Virginia are magnified by current infrastructure issues in West Virginian counties in addition to the pressure of coal companies that lobby to dump tires and mining byproducts. According to Zero Waste America, there is only nineteen landfills in West Virginia. With these existing landfills there seems to be an under budgeted waste management solution for the state. The inhabitants of West Virginia struggle with taking their trash to landfills since the drive can be extensive so they end up dumping their trash illegally. In addition, many inhabitants are uncomfortable with dumping their trash on their land, so they take their trash to open grasslands, forests, and streams to do this.
As I researched the findings of waste dump causes, I was surprised to learn that there are people that are not fully aware of what effects this has on their health and the environment. In the Roanoke County Public School System, we were taught what the environmental impacts are of dumping waste. More specifically, we were encouraged to recycle our trash to support the environment and the people living in it. I assumed that everyone that was enrolled in a public school was exposed to the same teachings of the harms of waste dumping. The Solid Waste Management Board of West Virginia says, “FY 2012, only about 5% of the SWMBs grant funding went into public education.” (6–6) They go on to say that the reasons for this meager amount of investments into educating the public is because of the rising prices of insurance and other government expenses that the under budgeted state is trying to afford.
Also, it is important to note that although there is some awareness in the West Virginian counties about the impacts of waste dumping there appears to be a catch-22 going on. For example: People want to eliminate waste dumping but either can’t afford to drive to waste dump facilities or pay off a coal company that propose to dump tires or mining byproducts in the area. People are concerned about their health and the environment but that is hard to dissuade people from enjoying their paychecks even more. Coal River Mountain is an example of this. Some people lobbied against the company that proposed tire dumping. I’d imagine much more people would lobby against them if they weren’t reliant on coal as their source of income. “The fact that the coal industry gets away with calling a surface mine as a “remediation project” is a clear example of the complacent nature of our state regulatory agencies,” Junior Walk, an advocate of the Coal River Mountain Watch said. (Willie Dodson, 1)
The ways that waste dumping has affected the people of West Virginia and environment surprised me when researching. Contaminated drinking water, ruined crop soil, and disease rates have been directly linked to the act of waste dumping. I always knew that water and soil pollution could be attributed to diseases, but I did not expect that some West Virginian counties dealt with contaminated drinking water. (David Holzman). As I am from Roanoke County, our drinking water is high quality. I was naive to think that contaminated drinking water still affected America which isn’t a third world country.
My conclusion to improving waste management and tackling the issue of waste dumping is that the public should be given knowledge to raise their awareness. I was surprised that a very small amount of money goes into educating the public in West Virginia. Education funding by itself is low. This gave me the idea of introducing a creative component that is an educational PowerPoint collage of the effects of waste dumping and what it does to the environment and people.
Within this PowerPoint are pictures that depict several instances of waste dumping accidents. The pictures also show the statistics of disease rates of several counties were waste dumping was prevalent. Also, pictures of environmental damage are also showed to depict the harmful effects. So, this PowerPoint comes full circle and shows how waste dumping affects the land, wildlife, and the people living in the West Virginia counties affected by waste dumping.
Annotated Bibliography:
Landes, Lynn. Landfills. Zerowasteamerica.org, Zerowasteamerica.org, 14 Mar. 2010, www.zerowasteamerica.org/index.html.
This website exposed me to several realities of the waste dumping situation in West Virginia in addition to the US. This website serves as an informational website and is non-profit. It explains to the public what they can do to help prevent waste dumping and what the effects of waste dumping has accumulated. I used this article to list several points in my research and statement as well as using some pictures from this website in my creative element portion.
Dodson, Willie. “Alpha Natural Resources Wants to Use Coal River Mountain as a Tire Dump.” Appalachian Voices, Appalachian Voices, 24 Apr. 2018, appvoices.org/2018/04/19/coal-river-mountain-watch-wont-back-down/.
This article gave me concrete evidence about the causes of waste dumping. In specific, how a coal company is proposing to dump tires in Coal Rive Mountain. This article discusses interviews of people that are lobbying against the coal companies as they’ve seen the company exploit the town people and the environment to their own monetary gain. Tire dumping in this area would be another win for the company and would also negatively affect the land. I used this article to write about how the public reacts to these proposals. Also, I used one of the quotes in this article to solidify the catch-22 I mentioned above. In addition, this article was also useful in my creative element to provide pictures that depict a coal company proposal to dump tires in three sites on Coal River Mountain.
Jones, BJ. “The Geography of Open Dumps in Rural Appalachia.” Mds.marshall.edu, Marshall University, 2008, mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125.
I used this article mainly to explain some of the history and background of the Appalachia and the mindset that some West Virginia counties have when they dump waste in my research statement. What surprised me reading this was how people were unaware of the effects on health and environment that waste dumping has. They simply didn’t know that it was bad for the land. This article goes in depth on the methodology of gathering data to show the amount of waste dumps. Many factors were considered especially average income and households living under the poverty line. Some inaccuracies occurred because not all open waste dumps can be accounted for since they are sometimes hidden from sight in addition to some areas that are restricted to company access only such as coal companies.
Holzman, David C. “Mountaintop Removal Mining: Digging Into Community Health Concerns.” Environmental Health Perspectives, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Nov. 2011, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3226519/.
For my research statement I used this article to go in depth on the effects of waste dumping on the environment. Also, I used several pictures from this article to show the impacts that mining byproduct dumping has on the environment. This article describes how slurry from mining can absolutely devastate aquatic life in the rivers and contaminate the drinking water for communities. Article describes how mountaintop removal can also displace towns because of mining waste and this can also encourage flash floods. There have been incidents of this before in which dozens of people were killed.
United States, Congress, Solid Waste Management Board, et al. “West Virginia Solid Waste Management Plan 2013.” West Virginia Solid Waste Management Plan 2013, West Virginia Solid Waste Management Board, 2013. www.state.wv.us/swmb/State%20Plans/2013%20Complete%20State%20Plan.pdf.
I used this article primarily in my research statement. It explains some of the budget plans and cuts that West Virginia had to use. One of these cuts is the reason there isn’t full awareness of Waste Management in West Virginia. This article goes in depth in data and analysis of the costs of recycling, material costs for recyclable items, amount of waste accumulated per person, etc.
Creative Element Below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_EvqlQPi1fcs42OZx94Mr-gGzXlatWaF/view?usp=sharing
