Backstreet Boy hopes fame will help fight his home state's environmental
battles
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader
By Heather Svokos
HERALD-LEADER POP CULTURE WRITER
"You come out of the Daniel Boone National Forest at about 8,000 feet and on
the horizon, instead of seeing green mountain-scapes and rocks and sandstone
and limestone cliffs, all of a sudden you see, as if the mountain were a
stick of butter, literally, it's like someone took a butter knife and sliced
the entire top off of a mountain. All you see is rocks and dirt. It's like a
moonscape. It's like you're looking at Mars."
This, from a guy whose public persona is more known for making young girls
shriek and swoon than it is for waxing poetic on the evils of mountaintop
removal.
But if you look just beneath the slick, bump-and-grind veneer of the eldest
Backstreet Boy, you'll find a 30-year-old man with a solemn commitment to
the environment.
Back in June, his interest in the cause earned him non-Backstreet headlines.
It also stirred up an old debate: do celebrities and politics mix?
The brouhaha began when the Kentucky-reared pop star was added as a
last-minute witness at a congressional hearing, and a U.S. senator announced
he would boycott the hearing.
The issue before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee was
mountaintop removal mining. The practice, which has become common in
Kentucky and West Virginia, shears off the top of a ridge or mountain to
expose a coal seam, pushing dirt and rock into nearby valleys and waterways.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, did indeed boycott the hearing, saying the
last-minute inclusion of Richardson as a witness made a mockery of the
committee and the issue.
"It's just a joke to think that this witness can provide members of the
United States Senate with information on important geological and water
quality issues," Voinovich said in June. "We're either serious about the
issues or we're running a sideshow."
Richardson testified anyway, but the comments stung.
The musician grew up in Estill County, in the mountains of the Daniel Boone
National Forest. For the last few years, he's been schooling himself on such
issues as water quality and mountaintop removal strip mining. In December
2000, he started Just Within Reach, an environmental foundation. He's part
of several other environmental initiatives, including one started with
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- the Kentucky Riverkeeper, a fledgling organization
for river restoration.
"I was really frustrated," Richardson said from Los Angeles, where he's now
recording the new Backstreet Boys album. "It's a shame that he (Voinovich)
didn't do more research on me before he made those comments -- I think he
made himself look bad. He didn't know I grew up in Appalachian Kentucky,
that I grew up in those Appalachian mountains, that my grandfather was a
coal miner, and that I have a vested interest in that hearing.
"I have flown over those sites, I've seen the damage, and what it's doing to
those mountain ranges in West Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee. They're
raping the Appalachian mountain range for profit."
Richardson, who owns a farm near Lexington, says it's also a shame Voinovich
didn't attend the hearing.
"He could've cross-examined me. I'm not a scientist but I am an eye-witness.
I had every right to be there as a native Kentuckian and a concerned citizen
and the head of my own environmental foundation."
Voinovich's office didn't return a phone call seeking comment for this
story.
Some personal reasons
The singer was motivated to start Just Within Reach partly because of his
then-recent marriage to actress Kristin Willits. "We want to have children,"
he said at the foundation's launch in December 2000. "I want them to grow up
healthy and have clean water to drink."
Instead of "sitting around on my butt worrying about problems," he said
then, "I thought I'd use my status as a celebrity to ask more questions and
maybe change things."
Just Within Reach is run by Richardson; his wife; his brother, Tim; and
friends Jim and Vicki Hanna of Los Angeles.
Vicki Hanna sees nothing wrong with working the celebrity angle. "The way we
see it, the regular citizens who live with it (mountaintop removal) have
been trying to get the government to act for years and years," said Hanna,
the foundation's director of programs and publicity. "So then they get a
celebrity spokesperson and Kevin says: 'You're right, that is why I'm here.'
"Kevin has spent a lot of time the last two years educating himself on the
topic. He wants the senator to quit talking so much about the celebrity
thing and get to work on the issue."
'We have the laws'
And the issue, to Richardson, isn't about dismantling the coal industry.
"I realize that coal is an important part of the Eastern Kentucky economy,
and I'm not trying to eliminate the coal business," he said. "What I'm
trying to bring attention to is the lack of responsibility of the coal
companies, who are destroying the water tables, destroying homes and
communities, destroying people's lives."
When mountaintop removal pushes dirt into valleys, it creates "valley fill,"
and covers streams for miles. "The law says anytime you pollute a
watersource, it is illegal," Richardson said.
Last May, a U.S. District Court judge in Charleston, W.Va., agreed.
Richardson is part of another group -- Kentuckians for the Commonwealth --
whose lawsuit spurred Judge Charles Haden II to order a halt to new mining
permits. His ruling is being appealed.
"We have the laws," Richardson said. "They just need to be enforced. But the
Bush administration has provided the coal companies with a loophole, by
asking the Army Corps of Engineers to redefine 'valley fill' so they can get
around the Clean Water Act.
"There's a way to mine coal responsibly so it doesn't have as bad an
environmental impact. The Environmental Protection Agency is not keeping an
eye on anything."
The lament of the coal industry is that tighter regulations will cost jobs.
"Haden's ruling will shut down mining in Appalachia, both surface and
underground mining," Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Caylor said in
May.
"That's not true," Richardson says. "If they take care of the environment
and restore what they tore down, there will be more jobs and it'll leave the
community with hope for other things. Literally, these mountains are being
torn down. It's so sad. It doesn't have to be like that."
'People listen'
The Backstreet Boy might be a thorn in the side of detractors like
Voinovich, but some, like Alan Banks, are thanking their lucky stars for
Richardson's involvement.
Banks, director of the Center for Appalachian Studies at Eastern Kentucky
University, got to know Richardson through the Kentucky Riverkeeper, a
coalition dedicated to Kentucky River restoration, advocacy and education.
"It's been a great surprise that he has the level of commitment and
compassion that he does," said Banks, who's also on the Riverkeeper board.
"One thing I said to him, I said: 'Kevin, I really respect you as a
Backstreet Boy, but I respect you a whole lot more as an eco-warrior.' And
he just sort of puffed up, you know?"
It doesn't hurt that where Richardson goes, cameras follow. "He can talk
about when he was growing up (in Kentucky) and what his mother taught him,
and people listen," Banks said. "He helps give the whole issue legitimacy.
He's just a powerful voice -- not necessarily for anything radical -- but
for cherishing our natural resources, for following the law, for looking at
the clean water act as a powerful weapon."
Despite Richardson's passion and knowledge, some will continue to dismiss
him as the boy band singer who dabbles in a cause.
"A lot of people, whether it's on this issue, or anything, because I'm a
Backstreet Boy, they assume I'm some young kid who has no clue about
anything," he said. "I seem to be prejudged. I'm a 30-year-old man -- I'll
be 31 in October. I've been to 37 countries around the world in the past 10
years with our group. I've seen a lot with my eyes."
That still won't matter to those who think politics are best left to
politicians and "experts."
At the time of the June hearing, Voinovich said the trend of celebrities
testifying was "disturbing" because it uses celebrity witnesses to gain
media attention at the expense of substantive testimony.
"Politicians don't like it when celebrities show up in their designerwear
and their glasses and expound on things," said actress Annie Potts, another
celebrity Kentuckian, and a former spokesperson for the American Arthritis
Foundation. "Politicians think: 'This is not within your ken. Hey, this is
bureaucrats' business, for heaven's sake.'
"I know that there's a lot written about ours being a celebrity culture, but
I think we're lucky to have people like him (Richardson)," Potts said. "This
kid sounds like he knows what he's talking about. You know, they're heroes
to a lot of kids, and kids will follow their example. So if he's an
environmentalist, they'll want to look at that, too.
"I think it's very dangerous to criticize anybody for putting their time,
money and heart into a good cause. I mean, what's to criticize there? I
think they should be applauded."
Richardson's Backstreet Boy cousin, Brian Littrell, has his own cause, and
his own foundation in partnership with St. Joseph Hospital: the Brian
Littrell Healthy Heart Club for Kids. But Littrell's cause hasn't ruffled
many feathers.
"He likes to keep his views kind of private, and we don't really discuss
politics," Richardson said of his cousin. "This is kind of a battle of
mine."
And one he plans to continue in the political arena, whether Voinovich and
Co. like it or not.
His next strike? Coordinating flights over coal fields with Sens. Joe
Lieberman, D-Conn., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who already have
accepted his invitation, said Vicki Hanna of Just Within Reach.
Hanna added: "If Sen. Voinovich thinks that Kevin Richardson is going to
shut up and go away, he's very badly mistaken and misinformed."