Oak Grove residents grill Alabama regulators, politicians over coal mining destruction

Oak Grove residents including Clara Riley (left) and Lisa Lindsay (center) attend a meeting in central Alabama to discuss the consequences of longwall coal mining. (Lee Hedgepeth/ Inside Climate News)

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OAK GROVE, Ala.—The Riley family has been hoping for a come-to-Jesus meeting.

Clara Riley, 90, lives in fear that the water well inside her home will leak methane and cause an explosion. That’s what a federal lawsuit alleges happened to her neighbor, W.M. Griffice, whose home atop the Oak Grove coal mine exploded on March 8.

So on Monday, Aug. 26, Riley and her family headed to the Oak Grove High School auditorium, where dozens of their neighbors gathered to voice their concerns about the longwall mine expanding under their homes.

The community meeting, initiated by residents and facilitated by Rep. Bryan Brinyark, R-Windham Springs, was the first one held since the fatal blast—and since mine expansion began. Residents said it was long overdue.

From crumbling homes and roads to closing parks and churches, the residents of Oak Grove have seen the consequences of that subsidence and much more. And that evening, for the first time, residents communicated those losses to those they feel are responsible for helping them recover.

Alabama Surface Mining Commission Director Kathy Loves sits before an audience of Oak Grove residents. (Lee Hedgepeth/ Inside Climate News)

Kathy Love, the director of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission, said during the meeting that the state body’s focus is mining damage caused by subsidence but told residents that her staff will do what they can to ensure that a tragedy like the March blast won’t happen again.

“Don’t totally lose faith in us,” Love, wearing American flag cowboy boots, told those gathered in the modest auditorium.

Residents present criticized mine owner Crimson Oak Grove Resources and its new mystery operator for failing to show up to the meeting.

“We can’t make the mining company come and have these meetings,” said Stephen Miles, a staffer with the mining agency.

Asked directly who the new owner of the facility is, Love said that she still did not have names to provide the public. Inside Climate News has reported that Ryan Murray, son of late coal magnate Robert Murray, now claims to be president of the Oak Grove operation. Oak Grove management has not responded to requests for comment.

Brinyark called the meeting a “good first step” toward better understanding the issues in Oak Grove and whether public entities like the state legislature could address them, but residents said they’re still skeptical that anyone has their interests in mind.

“Ain’t nothing going to stop them from mining,” Riley said after the meeting. “So that’s that.”

‘We Can Do Better’

Lisa Lindsay’s pink shirt came with a message: “Fluff around and find out.”

She wore it onstage, waiting patiently as Love introduced her to the gathered crowd. Lindsay had attended a meeting of the commission, one of the state’s mining regulators, earlier in August, xplaining to its members her fears around living a stone’s throw from the site of the Griffice home explosion. Love said she was moved by Lindsay’s testimony, which she asked her to briefly summarize during the meeting.

Lindsay had spoken out before, talking with Inside Climate News on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisal from Crimson Oak Grove. At the meeting, she spoke in public for the first time from her perspective as Griffice’s closest neighbor. Griffice, a 74-year-old grandfather, died about a month after his home exploded.

“I’m not a professional public speaker, but I don’t mind standing up for something that I believe in, and I believe that we can do better,” Lindsay said. “And when I say we, I mean all of us that live here, the [Alabama Surface Mine Commission], all of their staff, attorneys and other community members, state legislators, federal legislators, state and federal agencies. We can make it better, so that what happened to Mr. Griffice does not happen to anybody else.”

Lindsay told her neighbors that despite a system that isn’t set up for their success, residents need to use the tools at their disposal to pressure officials for change, including documenting informal contact with officials and participating in formal complaint processes if needed. Their lives may depend on it.

“That night, when his house blew up, it was very traumatic,” she said. “We’ve lived there for 22 years. … It was terrifying to realize that what happened to him could have happened to us. … We do not want this to happen again, and we’re going to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Lindsay encouraged Oak Grove residents to remain engaged with state regulators and politicians about what is happening in the community and to stay united around pressuring those officials for change.

“We’ve got to take a stand,” she said.

Following Lindsay’s comments, Love outlined the regulatory history around coal mining in Alabama. Before 1977, she said, there was virtually no such regulation in the state. Now, however, federal and state law require that home and landowners be compensated following any proven losses caused by mining’s characteristic sinking of land.

ASMC Director Kathy Love told residents that the agency will try to ensure another explosion does not happen. Citizens are skeptical. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News)

To be compensated, however, residents must submit to a pre-mining survey documenting the condition of a property before mining occurs, Love and mining commission staffers emphasized.

Some residents in Oak Grove have chosen to accept settlement offers with the mine up-front, officials said, which can complicate how the agency deals with mining-related damage. Miles, the agency staffer, encouraged homeowners to allow mining officials to set up these surveys as a way to prepare for what could happen after the extraction process is complete. Signing a settlement agreement, he said, could make matters worse.

“That puts us in a particularly tough spot because you’ve already signed,” he said. “You all are adults. You do what you want to, but before you read anything, read it really good.”

What isn’t explicitly contemplated in state or federal regulations, residents quickly pointed out, is the possibility of damage, including loss of life, caused by the ignition of methane escaping from the longwall operation.

At one point, Lindsay’s husband Kenneth spoke up from the front row of the audience.

“Y’all said that you’re not responsible for the methane—just subsidence,” he said. “How many people have been killed by subsidence?”

“I do not know the answer to that question,” Love said.

“I know one who got killed in my neighborhood from gas,” he replied. “Methane gas killed him.”

Mining commission inspectors who visited the Lindsay home following their complaints in the wake of the explosion did little to assure the family, he said, instead just relaying that the regulation of methane gas from the mine was not part of its regulatory purview.

A July letter from the commission to the Lindsays reviewed by Inside Climate News confirmed that the agency’s investigation focused only on subsidence, failing to address residents’ complaints about safety concerns due to leaking methane gas.

In the end, Kenneth Lindsay said, it seems there’s little the commission is able or willing to do to adequately address the impacts of longwall mining being felt across Oak Grove.

“So who is responsible for methane monitoring? Nobody,” he said. “And that’s why our legislature needs to address it, for sure—they need to put somebody in charge. But the fact is: All compensation in the world is not going to bring W.M. back.”

“Amen,” the crowd echoed.

Later, Billy Morris, an Army veteran who also identified himself as a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan, said blasts at and around the mine have ruined his quality of life, triggering the PTSD he said he’s suffered from his military service. He told regulators that he believes a community meeting should’ve been held in Oak Grove before the mining even began.

“If Billy Morris, as a Klansman … decided to get 1,200 of his members and march down the streets of Jasper, Alabama, without notifying anyone, what kind of chaos and turmoil would that create in the city of Jasper,” he asked. “This is what this community feels like without being notified beforehand, exactly what’s going to happen to their community. … It’s just common respect—common decency.”

Asked after the meeting whether he wanted to further comment on or explain his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, which the Southern Poverty Law Center cites as the nation’s oldest and most infamous of American hate groups, Morris confirmed his membership, adding that “the Klan as a whole does not think very highly about American citizens being wronged by any form of government, business entity, individual or corporation.”

After Morris’ reference to the Klan, there was little reaction from the audience. Later, when Morris finished speaking, the crowd applauded.

“I want to tell you thank you for your service,” Love told the veteran. “Not too many people are willing to do what you did.”

Dozens of residents watch as mining officials speak. (Lee Hedgepeth/ Inside Climate News)

Alabama state Rep. Patrick Sellers, a Democrat, was the only Black person at the meeting. Sellers represents the district adjacent to Oak Grove’s, which is represented by Brinyark, a white Republican. Sellers attended the meeting, he said in an interview, because many of the coal miners who work at Oak Grove live in his district. Sellers’ father worked at Oak Grove mine for 42 years. He said it was difficult to hear a citizen openly identifying with the Klan in a public meeting.

“I always knew they were around, but to hear it in person pushes it to another level,” Sellers told Inside Climate News.

Sellers had been shaking his head in agreement with Morris as he explained his military service. Then the man mentioned the Klan.

“I just thought ‘This is 2024. Why?’” Sellers said.

“I still have to represent them. They’re citizens within the district,” he said. “Regardless of their views, regardless of their socioeconomic status, regardless of their position on life and relations, we still have to be their representative.”

Sellers said he doesn’t know how to feel about the lack of reaction to the comments in the room.

“Part of me says silence breeds consent, but I try not to judge people,” he said.

Sellers said that he’s unsure of where state and federal jurisdiction around mining lies, but that he believes mining should not be allowed under residential properties.

“I just want safety for all citizens—for folks to remain safe,” he said.

The water well in Clara Riley’s storage room is covered by a few bricks. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News)

At one point in the meeting, Clara Riley stood to speak, her soft voice rolling across the auditorium. Riley has a water well inside her home, the nonagenarian explained to state regulators, and mine officials have already notified her that the mine will soon expand under her home.

Riley quickly told mine officials about the well, she said, and aside from an initial meeting where a mine official fled when a reporter arrived, she hadn’t heard back from representatives of Crimson Oak Grove as of the Aug. 26 meeting.

“I live in constant fear,” she said. “That well is inside my house. … I’m going to get blowed away.”

Miles, the mining commission staffer, told Riley that she “always has the option” of filing a complaint about the situation with the agency but that the mine owner should be in contact with her related to the well on her property.

Miles told residents he understands their frustrations but that the state agency is confined to taking actions allowed by its regulations.

“You have to understand—the mining company has the right to extract the coal,” he said.

Love said she would work with her staff to sit down with mine officials and relay the community’s concerns, as well as trying to get them to agree to some specific improvements, like around communication involving water wells. Residents, however, questioned whether Love and the commission have the legal authority to force the mine to comply with efforts for increased transparency and accountability.

“The regulations ain’t for us,” one resident yelled out. “It’s for them.”

‘It Was the Methane’

W.M. Griffice’s grandson had tried to light a candle. That ignition source, his family’s lawyer said during the meeting, was enough to cause the explosion.

The March blast atop the expanding Oak Grove mine in rural western Jefferson County would leave Griffice and his grandson in critical condition, both flown to nearby Birmingham for treatment. Griffice died on April 11.

But when first responders arrived on the scene in early March and asked what happened, Griffice was clear, according to the lawyer, Leon Ashford. “It was the methane,” Ashford quoted Griffice as saying.

“I am here to ask you to do something that Mr. Griffice didn’t have the opportunity to do and that is to have a conversation with [mine officials],” Ashford said.

Rep. Bryan Brinyark, R-Windham Springs, speaks to those gathered for the meeting in Oak Grove. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News)

That’s a hard sell for residents in Oak Grove, where trust in mine officials is practically nonexistent.

After the meeting, Brinyark, the state representative for Oak Grove and the surrounding communities, said there may be aspects of what was discussed that could be addressed by legislation, whether at the federal or state level. The regulation of methane gas, for example, may be an area of law where additional clarification is needed. There is a lot of work to be done, Brinyark said, but the meeting was at least a step forward. Sellers said he’s committed to working with Brinyark on future steps as they find a way forward.

Tony Humphreys, a Riley family member, is skeptical. He said he doesn’t believe that any of the officials present will take the bold, concrete actions needed to help residents reverse the impacts of the mine. He’ll believe it when he sees it.

“We’re never going to have what we want until there’s legislation to stop this,” he said. “It’s all about the dollar.”