"We Shall Overcome," the hand-lettered signs proclaim.
 

To one man living in town, Bill "Sarge" McGhee, recovery must look beyond the water lines that tell an outsider at a glance just how far the rain-swollen streams scaled the walls.
 

What McGhee and fellow members of the fledgling Rural Improvement Appalachian League have in mind is unclogging streams.
 

"A recovery plan won't amount to a hill of beans if you have another flood and wash things away," the retired railroad worker says.
 

"I've been campaigning to clean up the rivers, control the timber cutting and the mountaintop removal and the river trash."
 

Streams are thwarted in their natural flow by such diverse objects as cut trees, old refrigerators and stoves, tires and the like. The effect is obvious. Such obstructions divert water onto land, creating ponds that ultimately wind up in town and in people's yards.
 

"We had lake after lake on account of trash blocking the bridges in the rivers," McGhee said Wednesday.
 

The Guyandotte River flows through Mullens en route to Huntington, but right inside the town limits, Slab Fork empties into it. McGhee says there are numerous feeder creeks across the county. RIAL's task envisions as much as 30 miles of river clean-up.
 

Volunteers already have pitched in to start the clean-up, including mining firms. Even the city of Beckley loaned some dump trucks for the effort.
 

At the outset of the recovery mission, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official told McGhee, an ex-Marine, the region must start thinking about some preventative measures.
 

Erecting floodwalls would gobble up much of the land in town, and in the long run, the Army engineer advised, the best approach is to keep streams flowing free of refuse, McGhee said.
 

Where Slab Fork empties into the Guyandotte, there is ample proof garbage has been ushered down both streams.
 

"I know certain people own the timber rights and certain people own the mineral rights, but we the people own the land, and from that land, we the people get our drinking water, our food and our oxygen," McGhee said.
 

Already, the group is striving to get a charter so it can apply for some state and federal grants for stream work.
 

No one disputes the effect 11 inches of rain in four hours wielded, but McGhee and others are quick to point out that any stream is at a disadvantage if old appliances and the like are cluttering its bed.
 

"All this stuff is clogging it up," he said.
 

Environmentalists already have registered some opposition, fearing stream clean-up might disturb the habitat of trout, but McGhee has an answer.
 

"Christ said let little children come unto me," he said. "He didn't say anything about bringing trout to them. We have a lot of children here who don't have no homes to go to. They're going to school but don't have a home. One young boy, maybe 12, said, 'Sarge, you can always restock a trout stream, but it takes a long time building back a town.' The wisdom of a child."