Sam Ziemba: Free Response 2

     Today, for my course "Writing in the Environment" I took a field trip with the fire marshall to places of environmental concern around Newport News. It was very eye-opening to see the environmental destruction happening so close by. Although we visited multiple sites and discussed their impacts, the one that stood out to me the most was the notorious coal port. I have been aware of the impacts of coal on local and global environments, but seeing it up close was truly horrifying. This coal port lies directly beside the James River, with no vegetation or buffers to prevent that runoff from reaching the river. Across the coal mine, there was almost no greenery in sight, besides a road median with some shrubbery. This shrubbery was covered in coal dust. There were flagpoles outside one of the buildings on site and all of the flags were discolored and darkened by coal dust. Not only were there horrifying mountains of coal waiting to be shipped out, but there were also easily 200 train cars filled to the brim with coal. The fire marshall said that each of those train cars hold about 100 tons of coal. So in addition to the giant coal piles, there are also about 20,000 tons of coal sitting in the train cars on site. Viewing the amount of coal there was truly astounding. As I said, although I was aware this coal transport was happening, seeing it up close was a whole different experience, and a haunting one. 


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