by Briana Heaney | West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A few weeks ago Pineville residents in southern West Virginia gathered in a community center where lawyers were waiting for them, forms in hand.
There has been an ongoing crisis around Indian Creek where residents say their water has been contaminated by mining – and now they are taking legal action.
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On August 9 there was a line out the door of an old Sears building, now repurposed for community gatherings. Couples in their 90’s, young families, men with black dust covering their faces all stand in line. They all have at least one thing in common: they rely on well water.
Residents lined up to sign up for individual lawsuits. Photo: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
And they are here to sign up to sue two current local mining companies: Alpha Meteorological Resources and Bluestone Resources. As well Pinn MC Wind Down Co. LLC which manages the assets of the Bankrupt Pinnacle Mine.
Chuck Massey came to fill out paperwork with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He has lived on Indian Creek for 40 years. When he first moved there Massey said the family didn’t have a lot of money, but after saving for a few years they were able to make improvements to their well, and have good drinking water.
“I had my water tested after we got the softener, and they [the company that tested his water] said I was running distilled water out of my taps,” Massey said. “It was perfect. Water tasted delicious.”
Black water flows out of an artesian well into Indian Creek. Photo: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
But recently that has changed.
“I wouldn’t dream of drinking it now. I wouldn’t it just, it’s what stinks when I cut on my water,” Massey said.
He said that a lot of the people he knows who live along the creek have had some form of cancer in their household.
“They’re killing us. We’re dying. And there’s sick people around me,” Massey said.
West Virginia has the third highest rate of cancer deaths in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“There’s people I know that are good men that have worked hard in their lives, and now, when they’re at the age where they could go fishing and hunting and enjoy camping trips with their family, they’ve got cancer, and they’re dying, and it’s wrong,” Massey said.
Massey said he feels angry, anxious and a bit hopeless about the whole situation. Like he is caught up in a story as old as time, where it’s a small low income community against a few multi-million dollar corporations.
“They make so much money they don’t care to kill a bunch of us,” Massey said.
Linda Blakenship shares those feelings. Her husband died from cancer.
Now she worries that with no access to drinkable water she will have to sell her house.
Before Indian Creek started seeping out greasy black puddles, and before it was infiltrated with a stringy white slime with a putrid rotten egg smell, Blakenship loved living along the creek.
Linda Blakenship came with her granddaughter and great granddaughter. She grew up along Indian Creek and still lives along it. Photo: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Because that’s where I was raised,” Blakenship said. “That’s where I grew up, and it’s just home to me. We used to swim in it all the time.”
She said the creek water was clear, cool and teeming with wildlife like fish and otters. She spent her childhood playing in Indian Creek and the surrounding mountains.
“It used to be a place that I grew up in, I could play in the creek. My grandkids grew up there and it’s something they cannot do,” Blankenship said. “I would not allow my grandkids to step a foot in that creek now.”
Blakenship wiped tears from her eyes, and held her granddaughter’s hand.
“It’s as if those of us that live in the community don’t matter, and I just don’t understand how these companies can do that,” Blankenship said.
Under the fluorescent lights of the old Sears department store building turned community center, Blakenship filled out the forms with the lawyer’s help.
Before the residents leave they pull their cars around to the adjacent church parking lot, where palettes house thousands of water bottles. Fire line style, men load the residents’ cars full of donated and crowd funded water bottles.
After lining up inside to sign up for the lawsuit, residents line up in their vehicles to receive bottled water. Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The lawyers representing the residents said the process is going to take awhile and the lawsuits will likely stretch out many months or years.
Until the lawsuit is resolved, residents said they want one thing: Clean, drinkable water.
