Bo Webb (right) with James Hansen (left) at a Coal River protest last summerPhoto: Antrim CaskeyDear Mr. President:
I write to you in a moment of urgency.
In your address at MIT last week, you told students that the “Pentagon has declared our dependence on fossil fuels to be a security threat.”
Here in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, our mountain communities face a security threat that calls for immediate federal intervention.
Coal River Valley is a very narrow valley tucked in between Cherry Pond Mountain and Coal River Mountain. Cherry Pond Mountain has already been blasted into a pile of rock and pulverized to mountain rubble by Massey Energy’s mountaintop removal operations.
Many communities in the Coal River Valley have endured blasting and fallout from silica dust, fly-rock, boulders, mudslides, and floods since Massey began demolishing Cherry River Mountain.
Now Massey — infamous for its mining violations — has begun to clear cut, blast, and launch a new Coal River Mountain mining operation that will wipe out our last intact mountain in this great Appalachian range. It will also devastat... Read more
