Samford students hold "teach-in" on proposed Shepherd Bend mine

Published: Monday, November 01, 2010, 11:00 PM

The proposed Walker County strip mine near a Birmingham Water Works drinking water intake on the Mulberry Fork was the subject of a Monday night "teach-in" on the Samford University campus.

About three dozen Samford students heard from a professor, neighbors of the proposed mine and environmental opponents at the event hosted by Samford's environmental student group Restoring Eden.

The Samford group is joining with student groups at the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham who have organized protests of the planned mine.

Restoring Eden President Alex Gerrish, a sophomore, said the teach-in was designed as an educational forum to help students understand a complicated issue.

"We are students standing with our fellow students," Gerrish said.

Last month, the Alabama Surface Mining Commission issued a permit to a company owned by members of the Drummond coal mining family that would allow mining to begin on the first portion of the property at Shepherd Bend.

The University of Alabama is the largest owner of land and mineral rights in the area, and the company will need the university to lease or sell the land for the project to go through, according to opponents.

The Birmingham Water Works Board has opposed the mine, which would discharge water from its sediment ponds into the river upstream of the Mulberry Fork intake. The board fears the mine's heavy metals and sediment will affect drinking water quality and taste and will increase the cost of treatment.

Bob Greene, an environmental law professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford, explained to students some of the basics of the Clean Water Act. Greene said the federal act forbids putting pollutants in the waters of the United States, with permitted exceptions.

In Alabama, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management is given the authority to issue these permits. However, the agency's approach to permitting has been challenged in the Shepherd Bend case. ADEM gave the mine a permit without ever seeing the mine's plan for preventing pollution, operating under the assumption that the Alabama Surface Mining Commission would review a pollution abatement plan.

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Students from the University of Alabama congregate in spooky parameters

Published: Saturday, October 30, 2010, 6 H 45

Homework for the class of Professor Ian Brown at the University of Alabama could simply give some students the miracle.

Brown teaches a class on tombstones and cemeteries, leader of the students studying outside the cemeteries of Tuscaloosa County to forage for their research projects. This looks like a gimmick to Halloween, but Brown, an archaeologist said examines the ways people bury their dead can reveal much about the culture and how it changes.

"There is much of the information contained in stone", he said. ""It's artifacts and they are full of information".

A recent sunny afternoon class Brown has been studied in a crowded cemetery cemetery beside the main road in the town of student Cottondale.Les examined a range of markers, concrete with glass from of a rustic stained in a conspiracy with the bodies of seven babies rather than formal stones delicate fraternal images and symbols carved.

"What do you think that you are seeing here?Brown asked that perplexed students on the genesis of the cemetery in the garden of the 1834 Ruhama Baptist Church.Finally a ventured a devinée: is a Métis, rare in Alabama cemetery with graves of blacks and whites.

Brown has confirmed the hypothesis, but notes that easily recognizable in their full long markers of concrete - black - tombs seemed old and were at one end of the cemetery, whereas white serious, some of them trimmed with photographs and military honours were to another.

Brown, who is also President of the International Association studies of the Tomb, teaches the class on all two ans.Il also leads his own long term study, called "the marking serious project," which is followed by all 250 estimated in Tuscaloosa County cemeteries.

Each of its students, graduate and undergraduate students choose a research topic to work on the length of the cours.Les topics covered are the appearance of the lambs on the headstones - they have often on the graves of babies - where are located the members of the family in relation to each other.

Crystal Broussard, a graduate student in social work, working on a project on how the epitaphs reflect different representations of the mort.Comme employee hospice studied ways of handling of death and dying, she said that the class of gravestone studies gave him a new perspective.

Grief of family members, she said: "" have a vacuum in their lives, but at least they can fill a space with beautiful reflections of the person, they are missing. ""

Said Brown is one of the points is trying to convey.

"Cemeteries are for the living," he said. "This is what I always tell my students - cemeteries are not the dead .c ' is what people are doing with the cemetery that is interesting.

But that doesn't stop some students to tremble when they learn the class.

"My sorority sisters are out fear," said Rebecca Smith, a second. "Once you explain they are like "I guess it's kind of cool - but it is monstrous".?

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