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Marsh Fork Teacher Says School is Safe: ; Educator Says Protesters Don't Reflect View of Most Residents

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 July 2005, 00:00 CDT

SUNDIAL - A teacher at Marsh Fork Elementary believes claims that the school is unsafe are unfounded and that protests against an adjacent coal preparation plant are doing more harm than good.

Some Coal River Valley residents and their supporters claim students and other area residents have been sickened by dust from the Massey Energy plant and the chemicals it uses to treat the coal.

Patty Allen of Rock Creek, a special education teacher at the school where her 8-year-old son is a student and her mother is a custodian, doesn't buy that assertion. She said the protesters don't speak for the entire community.

"I feel just as safe in that school as I do as in my own home, if not safer," Allen said. "I have no complaints and no worries."

Massey operates the Goals Coal Co. facility, which includes a coal preparation plant, loading silo and 385-foot-high earthen dam about 400 yards from the school.

Protesters who have rallied twice at the facility also are concerned about the dam, which holds back millions of gallons of polluted coal sludge.

Allen has been a teacher at the school for two years. She attended the former Marsh Fork Middle School at the site when the coal facility was being built.

"Do you think we would allow our children to go to school there if there was a problem? No parent would put their own child at risk," she said.

Allen questions protesters' claims that the school has large amounts of coal dust inside and that the playground's grass is covered in coal dust.

She said the only stains her son brings home are grass and some food, and that any dust that may be found inside is residual. A coal- burning furnace heated the school from the time it was built in 1982 until a few years ago. The furnace is not used anymore, but traces of dust from it still remain.

Concerned residents met last week with Gov. Joe Manchin and state officials to discuss state permits issued to Massey at the facility. The officials made no commitments that the state would tinker with the permits.

Allen doesn't want protesters' actions to force a good school to close and thereby ruin the Marsh Fork community.

Marsh Fork Elementary has the second-highest attendance rate in the county, said Kathy Honaker, the school's faculty senate president.

Honaker said she does not know where the students would go if the school did not open. The closest county elementary schools - Fairdale and Clear Fork - are either overcrowded or near capacity.

Honaker said staff turnover is low. Most teachers have been at the school 25 years or longer.

Only a few dozen residents, only a small percentage of the community, have joined protesters' rallies, Allen said.

"I feel that this is just a handful of people - not our whole community - and our whole community does not feel this way," Allen said.

"We have an awesome school. The children have wonderful test scores. They're wonderfully behaved and mannerly, and I believe this has put us all in a bad light. ... My son is getting a wonderful education. He's a third-grader reading on a fifth-grade level. He's pushed and challenged, and I don't want that to change."

Source: Charleston Daily Mail

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