July 22 |
OVEC Action
Alert Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition |
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Coal River
Mountain: Mountaintop Massacre or Wind Energy?
Coal River Mountain is one of the
last mountains left intact in the beautiful Coal River Valley of
West Virginia. However, Massey Energy has plans to mine 6,600 acres
of the mountain—almost 10 square miles. Fortunately, there is an
alternative to mountaintop removal mining—wind
power. This is an opportunity to move our nation and West
Virginia toward the production of clean energy and to preserve our
nation’s mountains for generations to come.
Take Action! Read more and sign the petition. We need your support for a Coal River Mountain wind farm.
Gore:
Mountaintop Removal An Atrocity, Clean Energy Now!
Check it out!
Al Gore says
mountaintop removal is an atrocity and an
outrage that is facilitated by moral blindness, and he says
coal-to-liquid is insane.
(Has he been reading OVEC
newsletters? Well, maybe the facts are just obvious...)
Gore says
we
need to commit to supplying 100 percent of our energy from cheap,
clean renewable sources in ten years.
Read
and Hear All About It
Keeper of the Mountain and OVEC board member Larry Gibson is
on the cover of the July issue of
Blue Ridge
Outdoors. Several
Coal River Mountain
Watch staff members are profiled in the article "Faces
of Coal." The issue examines the consequences of our
nation's insatiable fossil fuel appetite and focuses on the work
being done for a cleaner energy future.
The July/August issue of Blue Ridge Country looks to the future of Appalachia, with interviews of Larry, OVEC's Maria Gunnoe, Joe Lovett of the Appalachian Center for The Economy & the Environment and Kathy Selvage of the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards.
Down in Tennessee, folks working to stop mountaintop removal, and to specifically save Zeb Mountain, have been taking action and making news.
Yesterday, July 21, Houston RAN hosted a radio program—"The War on Appalachia"—on 90.1 KPFT in Houston and 89.5 in Galveston, TX. The RAN folks interviewed OVEC board member Chuck Nelson, OVEC organizer Maria Gunnoe and Ed Wiley with the Pennies of Promise campaign. You can hear the program here.
Public Radio International's Living on Earth program just aired a segment featuring Sylvester Dustbuster Pauline Canterberry, WVU health researcher Michael Hendryx and Joe Lovett. Of course, if you regularly check OVEC's daily news links postings, you already knew all this...
Hey West
Virginians: An Easy Way to Support Clean Elections
Want to make ending mountaintop removal easier? Want to advance
many other people-first issues? Then help us get the dirty money out
of state politics—please tell your
legislators you support Clean Elections.
Our West Virginia Delegates and Senators often tell us they do not hear from their constituents in support of the Public Campaign Financing Act. Now you can help us change that! Please go to our GetActive website and send a message to your legislators. It takes only a minute to send the sample email, which you can edit to reflect your own thoughts. Then, help us spread the word by asking family members and friends to take action, too.
If you would like to become more involved with WV Citizens for Clean Elections, please consider attending our next coalition meeting, August 12, at 10:30 A.M. at the ACT Foundation, 600 Leon Sullivan Way in Charleston, West Virginia. We will be joined by Karen Hobert Flynn of Common Cause, one of the activists responsible for the legislative victory for Clean Elections in Connecticut.
Help
Build a Virtual Mountain Range
The
Stop Mountaintop Removal campaign—which
includes OVEC, the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the
Environment,
Earthjustice,
Coal River Mountain Watch and the
West Virginia
Highlands Conservancy—is
building a virtual mountain range made entirely of your mountain
photos. Mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia is destroying
mountains, streams and communities. Our Virtual Mountain Range sends
a hopeful message that protecting the Appalachians is important to
all of us. Learn more
here.
Upcoming Events
All Over the Place
July 31: 5:00 p.m. The documentary
Mountain Top Removal screens at the
Woods Hole Film Festival in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
This film helped open Al Gore’s eyes to the ravages of mountaintop
removal; hence his statement that this method of coal mining is an
atrocity.
August 1: Burning the Future—A powerful documentary film featuring many OVEC members—screens at the Indie Gathering Film Festival in Cleveland at 6 p.m. on Friday, August 1. Visit the festival's website for the complete schedule, location and tickets.
Aug. 5 - 11: Southeast Convergence for Climate Action.
August 21: 6:30 p.m. Paepcke Auditorium, The Aspen Institute, Aspen, CO. Burning the Future screens at the American Renewable Energy Day conference.
September 19-21: Appalachian Community Economics conference, held at the Southwest Virginia 4-H Educational Center in Abingdon, Virginia.
PATH of
Destruction Across West Virginia? Please Attend These Meetings
A member of the
West Virginia
Environmental Council notes: "The
Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) is a $1.8
billion theft of your ratepayer dollars in order to pump more
coal-fired electricity to the East Coast, undercutting cleaner
generation sources in those areas. The company is guaranteed a rate
of return of 14.3 % on any investment, regardless of whether the
line ever gets built, so you can be sure they will just keep
spending your money to promote this project!"
(You may have heard their
downright euphoric radio ads...)
Public meetings about the mega-power line are scheduled across West Virginia in the coming weeks. Please encourage your friends and family to attend the meetings, and please ask local legislators to attend the meetings and to oppose this boondoggle.
Open Houses will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. on the following dates at these locations:
July 22
– Glenville, W.Va. - Glenville State College, Mollohan Community CenterJuly 23
– Spencer, W.Va. - Heritage Park Community BuildingJuly 24
– Flatwoods, W.Va. - Days InnJuly 28
– Buckhannon, W.Va. - Location To Be AnnouncedJuly 29
– Elkins, W.Va. - American Legion Post 29July 30
– Mount Storm, W.Va. - Mount Storm Fire HallJuly 31
– Romney, W.Va. - South Branch InnAug. 4
– St. Albans, W.Va. - WV State University's College UnionAug. 5
– Davis, W.Va. - Davis Fire HallAug. 6
– Martinsburg, W.Va. - Comfort InnAug. 7
– Gore, Va. - Location To Be AnnouncedAug. 11
– Harpers Ferry, W.Va. - Quality Hotel & Conference CenterAug. 12
– Frederick, Md. - Holiday Inn Conference CenterAug. 13
– Boonsboro, Md. - American Legion Post 10Aug. 14
– Lovettsville, Va. - Location To Be Announced
www.ohvec.org 304-522-0246 vivian@ohvec.org |
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