Voices, Noises, Silences: Social Responsibility & The Environment In A Crucial Coal Controversy

With one exception, the major coal companies in the U.S. have ignored growing demands for corporate social responsibility. Coal in the U.S. is a profoundly problematic industry with a history of labor violence, worker safety disasters, fatal health impacts on both those who produce and consume the product, the ruin of landscapes, myriad impacts on water and land resources, and commodity price volatility for those who would invest in it. Only the most sanguine coal backers see it as a key energy for the future; while people might fantasize automobiles without gasoline, practical thinkers have, for a generation, successfully pursued substitutes for coal. For many observers, to open a coal mine today is as absurd as founding a buggy factory. This paper is a case study of the attempt by Sunrise Coal of Terre Haute, Indiana to open a massive new underground coal mine spanning Champaign County and Vermilion County, Illinois, and the crucial step in the process of acquiring treated and untreated water, plus sewer services, from the Village of Homer, Illinois. In this controversy members of the Homer community first raised questions, then concerns, and finally arguments, about the coal mine; but at each step in the public deliberations Sunrise remained aloof from making answers, reassurances, and rebuttals. Sunrise negotiated legal obligations but did not acknowledge social responsibilities; in this negotiation process community voices became little more than background noises. Profoundly, the coal company chose not to explain its silence, and to cloak its position in as much secrecy as possible with “non-disclosure agreements” with the land owners who leased their mineral rights to Sunrise and disciplining their champion, the Mayor of Homer, when he went off script. Sunrise gave its critics’ complaints no credit, but it is likely it did not build enough trust to actually open and operate the mine.