Protesters Tell It On the Mountain in Coal Country

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5128/protesters_tell_it_on_the_mountain_in_coal_country/

Tuesday November 3 9:56 am


Protesters outside the Dominion Wise County coal plant, in Wise County, Va., in 2008. (Image courtesy Rainforest Action Network)


By Michelle Chen

Coal River Mountain in West Virginia is rumbling. Last week's Mountaintop Removal Day of Action unleashed a wave of protests around the country, with activists demanding that the Obama administration halt the coal industry's pillage of Appalachia and foster the development of renewable energy.

Since the area has been designated as a potentially huge wind power resource, Coal River Mountain occupies a critical pivot point in the transformation of the country's energy infrastructure—as well as an economic crossroads for workers in a deeply impoverished region.

While demonstrations have pushed people into the streets, into treetops and behind bars in recent weeks, Massey Energy (recently the target of an employment discrimination lawsuit) has continued to blast through the region's fragile landscape, reports Jeff Biggers at HuffPo.

Activists want the EPA to block the company's mountaintop removal plans, following the agency's recent intervention against a similar project slated for Spruce Mine in West Virginia. Environmental groups are also pressuring the administration to take bolder action to undo Bush-era policies that encourage mountaintop mining pollution.

As we've reported before, strip-mining mountains to feed the country's coal addiction has outraged environmentalists, but posed a sharp dilemma for workers whose livelihoods are entwined with the industry.

In an AP report on a public hearing in Kentucky about ending mountaintop removal, one miner voiced a common concern: “It’s going to put a lot of people out work,” said Junie Halcomb. “We can’t survive without coal money.”

FULL story at link.