Ed Wiley’s Mission To Keep His Grandkids Safe

What would you do if you knew what was making your grandchildren sick? Ed Wiley was posed with that dilemma and started fighting to make sure not only granddaughter Kayla got better but all of the kids at Marsh Fork were safe.

Since 2006 that’s just what this West Virginia redneck has been doing all the way to the state’s capitol.

Ed Wiley picked up his granddaughter Kayla from Marsh Fork Elementary in April of 2004 when he noticed that the little girl was listless and a red rash was once again on her face and neck.

“Possum, buddy, you okay?” he recalls asking her. “Tears were running down her face. And she said, ‘Gramps, these coal mines are making us sick.’”

Wiley knows coal mines. He spent most of his life working in them like most of the 10 generations of his family before him. He knew Kayla wasn’t just whistling Dixie when she blamed those mines for making the kids sick at her school. He himself had worried that the arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese, and other carcinogens from the coal slurry might leak into water that served the school. An independent study showed that fine dust from the coal silo and other mining facilities was likely being breathed in by the kids at the school. This silo was just a few hundred yards from where the kids were spending their days learning.

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The school that Kayla was attending Marsh Fork Elementry School in Sundial, West Virginia is located 400 yards down slope from a mountaintop removal mine. Massey Energy owns the Shumate sludge impoundment.

In 2006 the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed that the dust was present at the school but no other tests were run to determine the health risks.

Wiley started to look into the 385-foot-high earthen dam at Marsh Fork. He was part of the crew that built the dam for the coal companies in 2000. It is a massive pile of rocks and soil that goes across the valley. There was a dam at Buffalo Creek just like it in Logan County once. It burst without warning in 1972 killing mostly women and children in their homes. The death toll was a staggering 125. Wiley knew that if Marsh Fork dam went the kids at Kayla’s school would be goners.

That dam is holding back 2.8 million gallons of coal sludge. It stands right uphill from the little school.

Coal sludge is what is created when coal is washed to remove the soil and rock so that it can be shipped. It’s pretty nasty stuff.

“sludge contains carcinogenic chemicals used to process coal. It also contains toxic heavy metals that are present in coal, such as arsenic, mercury, chromium, cadmium, boron, selenium, and nickel.”
Sludge Safety Project

Some of the parents knew how big a risk it was, when a heavy rain came they refused to send their kids to the school where a potential disaster was waiting. Still most of the small community did their best to ignore what could be.

“All the guys in the valley work for Massey,” he says. “They like to walk around in their blue uniforms with red stripes and never take them off. They’s all young guns, who say if we complain about the coal company, the company’s going to leave us.”

Wiley went to the school board and asked them to move the school. That didn’t work. Ed Wiley isn’t a quitter. He came up with a plan called “Pennies of Promise.” Going to local neighbours Wiley started collecting pennies to help seed a new school. He marched for 40 days carrying his $400 worth of pennies to the governor’s mansion in Charleston carrying a flag with Marsh Fork embroidered on it. A news crew was on hand when he confronted Gov. Joe Manchin with Kayla by his side. Manchin promised to look into the matter and quickly was whisked away by aides.

Wiley is now an activist who has been on the Today Show in New York and jailed for protesting outside the governor’s office.

Massey Energy is planning on building another coal silo next to the school. Wiley’s reaction to that was to stage a hunger strike to stop the construction.

The government doesn’t seem to be concerned that the kids are in danger from either toxins or flood. There is no plans to move the school nor study safety issues.

Manchin’s general counsel, Carte Goodwin, who said, “If there is a need and a justification for the closing of Marsh Fork Elementary and relocating it…that is an analysis and a decision that needs to be made by the residents of Raleigh County.”

Raleigh County Board of Education president Rick Snuffer in one of the nation’s poorest counties responded with;

“The problem isn’t the school,” he said. “The problem is the coal mines, which came in after the school was there. Massey and the state of West Virginia created this mess, and they want to pass the buck to us.”

Kayla is now in middle school but her grandfather is not giving up his fight. He has two more of his grand-babies due to start kindergarten at Marsh Fork in a few years.

Wiley says, his next campaign will be to protect wildlife endangered by strip-mining and mountaintop removal. “My eyes have been opened to a lot of things,” he says. “I’ve started down a whole new road in my life.”