It didn’t take Betsy Lawson long to gather the orange rocks she brought with her to the rally Thursday afternoon.
Same for the water of that same tint she scooped up in the Mason jar.
Both, for all intents, were in her backyard.
“Right on the other side of our fence line,” she said.
Lawson lives in a house in the Dents Run area she and her husband built in 1978.
The view then from the back deck, she said, truly was Almost Heaven for her.
Rolling, pastoral hills.
Stands of trees that made every autumn and every snowstorm visual delights.
Now, she said, all she sees is a pure West Virginia war zone.
Gouged-out remnants of four abandoned strip mines, operations that were shut down before they even got started, now command the vista.
The characteristic orange tint staining those rocks and clouding that water that Lawson carted with her is acid mine drainage.
And acid mine drainage has been a Mountain State calling card for generations.
That’s even with the 1977 passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, which mandates site cleanup once the coal is gone.
“So here we are,” she said.
Which is why she was at the Wharf District on Thursday.
Lawson is a member of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, which dug in for the day with the Green New Deal Coalition and the West Virginia Working Families Party.
She was among the 15 or so people who gathered in front of the Donley Street offices of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., in hopes of persuading the lawmaker to change her mind.
Versions of those rallies also took place at her other state offices in Martinsburg and Charleston.
At issue is that $3.5 trillion package pushing family, health and environmental programs which will soon be up for passage in Washington.
Capito already voted yes to the opening act of that legislation two weeks ago when a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill geared to roads, bridges and broadband crossed her desk.
The Sierra Club and others are touting the environmental activism and job-creating possibilities of the new offer.
“Who here doesn’t need clean water?” asked Jim Kotcon, a WVU professor of agriculture and conservation chair of the state Sierra Club.
Kotcon said residents such as Lawson are traditionally getting short shrift from coal companies, Marcellus shale drillers and other operations that either go bankrupt – or simply bail.
While applauding Capito for her original vote, Kotcon wants the lawmaker to do the same with $3.5 trillion deal, to break the above cycle.
“We keep doing what we’ve always done, to keep getting what we’ve always gotten,” he said.
Getting the same thing, though, is what Capito wants to avoid, she said in an emailed statement to The Dominion Post after the Morgantown rally.
“The wish list items included in the $3.5 trillion reckless tax and spending spree haven’t even been debated here in Congress,” she said.
“Instead, Democrats are forgoing the committee process, regular order, and all basic logic to get their massive tax and spending bill passed that will further fuel President Biden’s inflation crisis and burden our grandchildren with debt for years to come.”
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