In Alabama’s bald eagle territory, residents say an unexpected mining operation emerged

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

By Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News

LANGSTON, Ala.—In a state-owned lodge atop Taylor Mountain in Lake Guntersville State Park, the walls are covered with paintings of bald eagles. Busts of the national bird carved in stone adorn end tables in the wood-paneled lobby.

This is Bald Eagle Country, here in rural Marshall County. The birds, delisted as an endangered species in 2007 and often cited as a conservation success story, are everywhere here. The residents love them.

Through the lodge’s entrance, just past the staircase, the views of Lake Guntersville are sweeping, but a gash of felled trees breaks the impressive vista, bulldozed out of the landscape for a mine that Cathy Phillips, her daughter, Kelly, and hundreds of other outraged residents have been trying to stop.

“This can’t happen,” said Phillips, taking in the view.

Since late June, Cathy and Kelly have helped organize their community around opposition to what they say is a pit operation in their neighborhood to mine chert, a stone used in construction. 

So far, residents have heard nothing directly from the new owners of the site, listed as Patrick and Johnny White in county land records. Efforts by Inside Climate News to reach the Whites were also unsuccessful.

There are no records of any permit issued for the pit mine by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) or the Alabama Department of Labor (ADOL). 

On Tuesday, Lynn Battle, a spokesperson for ADEM, confirmed that the agency has received multiple complaints about the site on Murphy Hill Road. 

“We are planning to inspect the area,” she said. 

Agency staffers will need to assess the situation on the ground before ADEM would make any further determinations about enforcement action or permitting, she said. 

Battle said that protection of the bald eagle “would not be an ADEM responsibility,” but she has passed the information on to others for follow-up. 

Tara Hutchison, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Labor, told Inside Climate News that the agency’s mining division has not received any permit request for a chert mine in the area. Staff is “aware of the issue” after a “consumer” notified the agency last Friday of the situation, the spokesperson said.

“As such, we are planning an investigation based on the consumer complaint, and it is anticipated that we will have staff out this week,” Hutchison said.

Hutchison noted, however, that any disturbance to mine chert that is “less than five acres” may not require permitting from the Department of Labor. 

Cathy Phillips said she and her daughter, with the help of others like Sharon Collins, will continue to pressure regulators and public officials to see their perspective on the matter. This community is for preservation and peace, they said, not for environmental exploitation. 

“My heart is with the wildlife in this area,” Phillips said, pointing out the window. “You’ll probably see the fox in the yard while you’re here. … It’s peaceful. It was. But we’ve got to keep it that way.”

Down by the lake, behind the front desk at the Little Mountain Camping Marina, Collins tells visitors to wait and listen.

“It’s been just screeching and screeching and screeching for days,” Collins said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Just wait. You’ll hear her.”

It’s a bald eagle, she and other residents said, tossed out of its nest in June when trees were unceremoniously felled among lush greenery before heavy machinery began extracting chert from the land. 

She was right. Soon, just before the sun set, it came from the sky. A screech—long and constant overhead. 

What Is chert, and what’s at stake?

Chert is a sedimentary rock that occurs naturally in the landscape of Alabama. The mineral is often used by local governments in the U.S. as a construction material for roadwork. 

To obtain chert, workers can employ a range of techniques, from chiseling to blasting, to make pulling the mineral from the earth more efficient. 

Chert pits involve significant exploitation of the land on which they’re located, with any vegetation leveled to make way for mining activity. They may also disturb animals’ habitats, increase road traffic, and increase certain types of air and water pollution. 

Chert pits also come with workplace hazards. In March, a mine operator in Tennessee was trapped in a chert pit for around 12 hours while dozens of first responders worked to save him after the mine collapsed onto his backhoe. 

For Cathy Phillips, a writer, the first clue that a chert pit was coming to her neighborhood was increased truck traffic around June 20, she said. Then she saw the felled trees, a large swatch of destruction near the lake, veiled from passersby with a thin row of trees—survivors in what was now a scarred hillside. 

She was stunned. So was her daughter Kelly. 

“I just don’t understand how somebody can go to a beautiful place like this and go, ‘Oh, we should level it,’” Kelly said.

Kelly said she began asking those in the area what they’d observed around the site. Toward the end of June, residents told the Phillipses that workers there were saying the location was a planned chert pit. 

“So I started doing research to understand what it is,” Kelly said. 

What she found didn’t impress her: “That’s not something we want.”

Within days, neighbors began organizing against it. 

‘We do not want it’

Collins said the irony’s as thick as the Alabama heat. 

She said she’s fighting this development in part for animals like that screeching bald eagle dislodged from its nest: a symbol of democracy in Deep South Alabama, now protected not by public officials, but by everyday people. 

“So for politicians to sit back and let this happen is sick,” she said, her voice raised. 

Inaction from public officials hasn’t slowed Collins down, though. Nothing ever has. At the front desk of Little Mountain Camping Marina, Collins, 66, has been a jack-of-all-trades for decades—a Southern problem-solver full of drawl and drive, getting the day’s work done with a sweet tea smile. 

Now, the day’s work includes a petition typed up on Microsoft Word and printed out for everyone at the busy marina and camping site to read. And they’ll read it if Sharon Collins has any say. She does. Hundreds of members, guests and residents have now signed the petition. All the feedback from the community has been the same, Collins said. When she displays the list of signatures at the front desk, Collins flips page by page through dozens and dozens of signatures.

“They do not want this mine,” she said. “We do not want it.”

The petition, addressed to ADEM and other officials, expressed residents’ strong opposition to the operation. 

“Alabama is one of the most eco-diverse states in our country,” the petition said in part. “The beautiful scenery and wildlife make Alabama a desirable location for nature enthusiasts and drive our tourism industry.”

A chert pit would impact home and business values, the residents wrote, increase traffic and hurt wildlife in the area. The petition demands that public officials issue no permits for any type of disturbance on the property on Murphy Hill Road. 

Nancy Cornelius lives just across the street from the marina. She moved to Lake Guntersville from Tennessee a few years ago after retiring from nursing. She’d visited the area before and liked it, she said, so she decided to come back and stay. One reason to move to Marshall County was its often pristine natural environment, Cornelius said. Why someone would put that at risk for construction material or a few bucks is beyond her, she said.

“We got to get it stopped,” she said on the porch of her home, just a stone’s throw from the lake.

Cornelius said she also worries about potential air pollution from dust at the location and the potential of blasting to obtain chert from the ground at a quicker pace. 

“I don’t want to live with a mine on top of me,” she said. 

The traffic in the area caused by any type of industrial development would be particularly worrisome because the marina and a nearby resort regularly draw pedestrians and cyclists, Cornelius said. 

“They’ll be hauling stuff out, and I watch people every day—kids coming out of the campground on bicycles and golf carts,” she said. “Truck drivers may not be thinking about that. It’s going to get ugly. I can’t stand it.”

Every resident interviewed said they believe the site should be told to cease development and be fined for the work already undertaken.

“They should be fined more than what they’re going to get out of it, at least,” Cornelius said. 

Typically, state fines over environmental issues in Alabama are nominal compared to companies’ revenues, records show. Often, multi-million-dollar corporations or even local governments are fined hundreds or a few thousand dollars for a documented environmental violation. 

Alabama regulatory agencies will frequently reduce fines for perceived compliance or alleged lack of economic benefit from the violation.

Online posts reviewed by Inside Climate News reveal advertisements for chert in the Langston area as recently as the beginning of July, sold by the truckload from an undisclosed site.

State regulators said they were unaware of other nearby chert sites. 

Residents said that in the last days of June and the early days of July, the flow of dump truck and other vehicular traffic to and from the site was intense, with trucks carrying full loads of what appeared to be mineral material from the location. 

Aerial photographs taken by Inside Climate News in mid-July confirmed at least one significant pit at the site. 

“You cannot fine a person enough money for what they have done,” Collins said, thinking of the bald eagle screeching over the lakeside, its home gone. 

“There’s absolutely no money compared to what they did to that bird.”