Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  “What’s Ackerly’s problem with the mine?” prompted Charlie, anxious to get to the heart of the matter.

  “The problem is that the coal isn’t down in a mine; it’s halfway up a mountain. And the best way to get the coal out, the most economical way, which of course is what Ackerly and OntAmex are both acutely interested in, is through a surface-mining operation.”

  “So they need some permits.”

  “More than just permits.” Lucien frowned as he thought about the situation he was about to describe. “Charlie, are you familiar with term mountaintop-removal mining?”

  “Sure. It’s a surface-mining technique. But I thought it had been outlawed in most places.”

  “You’re right. A federal judge handed down an injunction barring the EPA from issuing any permits in West Virginia, where, as you might expect, it was doing the most damage.” Lucien hesitated, reluctant to put his company and himself at odds with an important client. “It’s an insidious practice, Charlie. It’s an environmental crime that for years was rationalized in the name of jobs and local economics. The mining companies would say, in effect, if you want us to continue mining operations here, and you want the jobs and the tax revenue, then you have to let us destroy your mountain and fill in your valleys and streambeds. And, down there, the mining industry and the EPA and the Corps of Engineers have been embedded with one another for so long, it’s hard to tell who’s regulating who. The environmental requirements placed on strip miners simply say that, after you’ve exhausted a surface mine, you’re required to return the land to its approximate original contour—”

  Charlie interrupted Lucien. “But in Montana and Wyoming, they were basically digging a big shallow hole. When you fill it, the contour of the land is just reshaped a bit.”

  “Right, but in Appalachia it’s not that easy,” Lucien continued. “Because of the way the seams run in Kentucky and in the big Pocahontas Coal Field in West Virginia and Kentucky.” Lucien ran his hand in an up-and-down pattern to demonstrate. “There’s a lot of coal up in some of the mountains, usually right around the midpoint of the elevation. Back in the seventies, the coal companies said, since we’ve got all this huge land-moving equipment, like those monstrous draglines, let’s do surface mines, like we did out west. But the whole thing is a ruse, Charlie, it’s semantics. These mountain sites can’t possibly be returned to their original contour, so the variance basically says, do your best and return the land to a condition that’s in harmony with the natural habitat.” Lucien grimaced. It didn’t surprise Charlie that his boss had strong feelings about the subject. Lucien was a consummate environmentalist.

  “So they go up in the mountains and they blast away, on a huge scale. Charlie, there are mountaintop sites down there where they used more explosives than both sides used in the Civil War. Two hundred, three hundred feet or more of overburden, covering an area as large as ten square miles. And they push everything—trees, vegetation, animal habitats—down into the valleys, covering the streams and the meadows with rock and sand and mineral deposits to expose the coal seam.”

  A knock at the door curtailed Lucien’s tirade. He took a deep breath and smiled at Charlie. “That would be Summers.”

  Lucien opened the door and welcomed Terry Summers. The young engineer wore a chic light-gray summer suit with a black shirt and a dark gray tie. He had a wide, classically handsome face, with dimpled cheeks and brilliant white teeth, which he revealed often with a practiced smile that he flashed on and off as a kind of visual emphasis to his words.

  Lucien gestured toward the couch. “You remember Charlie Burden, of course.”

  Summers turned and took Charlie’s outstretched hand. “How are you, Charlie? Congratulations. It’s great, you’ll be taking over in West Virginia.”

  So Summers had already been told. Charlie wondered if Summers’s comment was another subtle show of arrogance. Or did he actually think that the West Virginia post would be a promotion? No, he’d have figured out that Charlie had been chosen as Jack Torkelson’s sacrificial lamb in case the situation in West Virginia led to the blowup of the Continental merger. And he’d have figured out with whom he would align himself in order to come out of West Virginia in an advantageous position.

  “Hello, Terry. Nice to see you again.” Charlie smiled as Summers sat down.

  Lucien continued the discussion. “Of course, not everyone agrees with my position on mountaintop removal,” he said, an obvious invitation for Summers to join in.

  Summers unbuttoned his jacket and sat back. “If you took a poll today of McDowell County, you’d have a tough time finding anyone who would oppose a surface-mining permit. The county needs the three hundred good mining jobs and millions of dollars of tax revenue. It would be crazy to take all that away from those people just to save an otherwise worthless mountain.”

  “And that, Charlie,” said Lucien, “is our official position on the matter. We support our client OntAmex Energy, and the Ackerly Coal Company, in their efforts to get a surface-mining permit in West Virginia.” Lucien added, “No matter how distasteful that prospect is to some of us.” Lucien looked drained. He’d obviously had a contentious meeting with Torkelson and Tuthill the night before.

  It occurred to Charlie that he hadn’t officially accepted the job in Red Bone. That’s what Lucien had wanted to settle before Summers arrived, but he’d gotten sidetracked. Lucien would be in a fix if Charlie turned the job down, which, as a partner, he could very well do. But he could never refuse his boss, his great friend, though Lucien must be agonizing over his decision.

  Charlie turned to Summers. “Terry, first of all, give me our options on the pond. Then we’ll talk about surface mining before we meet with Torkelson and Tuthill.” It was clear Charlie was taking charge of the Red Bone project. Lucien turned his eyes toward him, and Charlie flashed him a quick wink across the room.

  “There’ve been a number of scenarios discussed—” Summers sounded as if he was ready to occupy the floor for a while.

  Charlie interrupted him. “Just give me the top two.”

  “Okay, well, there’s fast and cheap, and slow and expensive. Fast and cheap, we relocate the pond to some open acreage on the site, just inside the northern border of the property. We’d have to make the pond a little deeper and build a levee along the road for about a hundred or so yards, but it would be easy excavation and the levee would be cheap to build. That’s what Paxton planned to recommend.”

  “So what’s the problem with fast and cheap?” Charlie knew there had to be a catch, or the problem wouldn’t have reached New York.

  “The problem is the unknown,” Summers continued, “in the form of the town planning board. To move the pond, we have to get a variance to the site plan from the planning board at their next meeting, which isn’t until September. Before this we haven’t needed them. The project was settled in Charleston between OntAmex and the governor’s people. That’s the way they like to work, at a high level. OntAmex doesn’t like to screw around and, you know, when you’re ready to spend a billion dollars in a state as poor as West Virginia, you can sidestep a lot of the local crap.”

  Terry Summers got up to pour himself a cup of coffee. “So, the problem is, now we go before the board for the first time and we don’t know if they’ve got some beef with the whole project, like maybe one of our cowboy iron workers ran over one of their dogs or something. We go in there with our Charleston lawyers and tell them that we need to move our pond, and these hillbillies look at each other, laugh, and say, ‘Hell, no!’ Then they get up and high-five each other, drop the gavel, and go fishing. It could happen.”

  “And then we’ve got a real problem.” Charlie knew enough about rural politics to realize that Summers’s scenario wasn’t far-fetched.

  “Then we have option two,” Summers continued. “Slow and expensive. We stick with the site plan and blast through the bedrock.” Charlie knew what was coming and almost didn’t want to hear the gory details. “All work on th
e plant stops for four months minimum, all the subs leave, and we have to reschedule all the work until the springtime. We blast away the rock and move it to who-knows-where. We postpone delivery of the turbines, which is going to cost a fortune, and when it’s all done, we’ve come to the biggest problem—”

  Charlie finished his sentence. “The structural integrity of the plant that’s already been built after all that blasting so close to the main building. We’d be lucky if we didn’t have to tear down the whole thing and start over.” Charlie did a rough estimate of the cost of slow and expensive. It was a minimum of a hundred million dollars.

  “Okay, then,” Charlie said quietly, “our only option is to make sure we get the variance, and then we take them fishing. Now tell me how Torkelson’s planning to get the other variance, for the mountaintop-removal permit.”

  Summers squirmed a little before answering. “As I understand it, they’ve got a superior court judge who’s going to lift the injunction temporarily, on some technicality that will allow the EPA to issue the variance. It’s all being handled out of Charleston and Washington. The EPA has already told their West Virginia people what’s going on. The governor’s office is handling the environmentalists and the DEP. The state’s going to cancel a big road project up in the northern part of the state that the environmentalists have been fighting for several years. It’ll be a major victory for them, plus a couple of big developers get it stuck up the ass, which the tree huggers always love. So, the judge lifts the injunction, the EPA issues the variance, and bam”—Summers clapped his hands for emphasis—“a few weeks later the court issues a statement saying the technicality has been cleared up, the injunction is back in force, and the environmentalists are satisfied. It’s all about this one mountain.”

  Charlie envisioned all the hushed conversations that must have taken place in unofficial venues in Washington and Charleston to put this deal together. OntAmex would’ve put all their lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians on it. But there would be no paper trail. A lot of cash would have been spread around, plus some tickets and junkets for the bureaucrats; contributions—both hard and soft money—to the politicians and their phony foundations and PACs and to both parties. That’s how OntAmex worked. They would have taken care of everything at a high level. That meant the problem must be on the ground, locally, in Red Bone.

  Summers spread his arms wide in summation. “Charlie, the low-sulfur coal at Redemption Mountain will make the Red Bone plant the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired generator in the world, and it will bring economic prosperity to the families of McDowell County.” He flashed a high-wattage smile. “And what OntAmex wants, OntAmex gets.”

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Charlie, Summers, and a young lawyer from DD&M’s legal department were seated at the boardroom table for the meeting with OntAmex. Jack Torkelson took a chair at one end of the table, separate from the rest of the OntAmex team lined up across from Charlie and Terry Summers. Larry Tuthill was in charge of the meeting. He began by introducing two men from OntAmex’s legal department and three lawyers from Kerns & Yarbrough, “the most prestigious law firm in Charleston.” Charlie wondered how much Kerns & Yarbrough was soaking OntAmex for. Fifty thousand a month, anyway, plus expenses. In the legal business, there was nothing quite like having a deep-pocketed utility for a client.

  Vernon Yarbrough was broad, tanned, and distinguished-looking, with silver hair, a large silver pinky ring, and a gold Rolex. “Hara you, Mister Bur-dan. Anything you need in West Virginia, you just call us, and we’ll git it done.” Charlie wondered if sometimes Southerners didn’t pack on a little extra accent when they came to New York. Charlie glanced over at Jack Torkelson, who hadn’t said a word so far.

  Charlie wondered why Torkelson was in the room at all. He and the other OntAmex people were meeting later with some financial writers about the merger, but why was he bothering with this pond issue or Redemption Mountain? It was out of character for him. Normally he’d let Tuthill handle operational matters like these.

  Jack Torkelson was in his early sixties, completely bald, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and wire-rimmed glasses. A Harvard grad, Justice Department lawyer, and a former counsel to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Torkelson was Duncan McCord’s handpicked architect of OntAmex’s strategy for managing the deregulation of the utility industries. This was Jack Torkelson’s mandate. The method of coal mining used by an insignificant vendor in West Virginia was not. He must have real concerns that it could interfere with the CES merger. If that were in fact the case, Torkelson’s career with OntAmex would be over. The merger was friendly—at the premium OntAmex was offering, possibly too friendly—because Duncan McCord didn’t have the time or the energy to waste on a hostile takeover. It was supposed to be a slam dunk. If Torkelson screwed it up, he’d be gone.

  When Charlie refocused his attention on the meeting, the lawyers were droning on about a liability clause in the master contract. Enough was enough. Charlie raised his hand and interrupted. “We’ll go before the planning board in September and get a variance to build the pond on the north end of the property and on schedule. Now let’s move on. I’ve got some packing to do.”

  Across the table, Larry Tuthill grinned and slapped the table. “Goddamn straight, Charlie! That’s the attitude we need here. You go on down there, you and Vern, and take care of this. Do what you have to do, but get it done.” He glanced sideways at the Charleston lawyers, who nodded their enthusiastic agreement.

  “And we’ve got this to help you prepare.” Tuthill slid a manila folder across the table. “It’s the bios and some other info on the planning-board members. We had a private investigator do some homework. Some interesting stuff on these boys in there.”

  Charlie slid the folder into his notebook. Typical Torkelson and Tuthill. Hire a private investigator. Find some dirt to use. Nothing was ever simple with OntAmex anymore. It was more fun when he worked directly with Duncan and his right-hand man, Red Landon, the big, affable Canadian who never took himself as seriously as his replacement did.

  “I’ll read it when I get down there.” Charlie didn’t want to get into a discussion about the personal lives of the Red Bone planning board.

  Before Tuthill could continue, Jack Torkelson spoke his first words of the meeting. He spoke softly to force the attention of his audience. “Charlie, it’s good that you’re taking over the project. Now, about the Redemption Mountain issue, I’m sure Lucien has given you his synopsis of the situation, but I’m afraid Lucien doesn’t understand rural West Virginia. There’s nothing nefarious or underhanded about this project. Everyone agrees that the judge’s injunction against variances for mountaintop mining was misguided and unfair—to the industry, the miners, and their families, to the people of West Virginia.” Torkelson was ably pleading his case. “You’ll find hardly a soul down there in opposition.”

  Charlie knew that someone had to be against the project, but he’d let Torkelson make his case. Sooner or later he’d get to the real problem. Torkelson looked at his watch. He reached down for his briefcase and stood up as he resumed speaking. “The Redemption Mountain coal will make Red Bone the most efficient non-nuclear generating plant in the world. There’s a lot riding on this, too much to let one old hillbilly farmer screw it up. You get down there, Burden, spend some money if you have to, but make sure this thing goes our way.” Torkelson turned and walked out the door.

  One old hillbilly farmer. Charlie almost laughed. Some old hillbilly farmer in West Virginia had Torkelson by the nuts. It was going to be hard not to root for the farmer.

  Tuthill dismissed all the lawyers, except the three from Charleston. He reached into his briefcase and brought out another thin manila folder and slid it across the table. “The farmer,” he said with a grin.

  Charlie saw the name DeWitt written on the tab of the folder. He added it to his notebook. Some private investigator was having a pretty good year on OntAmex, too.

  “So, the
farm is in the way? The mountain can’t be mined without taking the farm?” Charlie wanted to fully understand the situation.

  Tuthill snickered. “Charlie, when Ackerly starts blasting the top off that mountain, it’s going to be like the siege of fucking Khe Sanh on that farm.”

  Charlie looked over at Yarbrough. “What does the farmer say? I assume we’ve made him an offer.”

  “Yes, sir.” One of the Charleston lawyers joined the discussion. “Mr. Yarbrough and I went up to see him, beginning of summer. Offered him a hundred thousand, which was just our opening number, you understand, but a good price for that kind of property—which isn’t really worth anything.”

  “Turned us down cold,” Yarbrough added. “Wouldn’t discuss selling. We went back up a few weeks later and increased the offer, but still no interest.” Yarbrough leaned back in his chair. “This farmer DeWitt’s a hard-boiled character. A real hillbilly. Probably hasn’t been out of the state more than a couple times in the last sixty years. Born on that farm and poor as a church mouse. Doesn’t know what money can buy.”

  “What’s the actual number? How high are we willing to go?” asked Charlie.

  Before Yarbrough could answer, Larry Tuthill slapped the table lightly with the palm of his hand for emphasis. “One million,” he said. “You guys can go to a million for the farm, but we need a deal by the end of October. Our judge is going to vacate the injunction against mountaintop variances in mid-November. But he wants to see that we own that farm before he does anything. We’ve got to get our variance and blasting permits and be in operation by December, and we’re not going to get dick if that farmer isn’t long gone from Redemption Mountain.”

  “Well that’s a shit pot full of money,” said Yarbrough, “but, thing is, I don’t think we’re going to need anywhere near a million to make a deal with that farmer.”