This article originally provided by Charleston Daily Mail

May 23, 2006

Mountaintop removal activists to meet in Jackson County

About 400 expected to attend conference on mountaintop removal

Kris Wise
Daily Mail staff

The nation's largest mountaintop removal conference will be held in Ripley this weekend in an effort by state activists to bring the debate back home.

Publicized debate over mountaintop removal seems to have died down in the Mountain State recently, even though controversy here helped start a nationwide dialogue on the subject that has only escalated elsewhere in recent years.

The Ohio Valley Environmental Council is co-hosting the event this weekend at the Cedar Lakes Conference Center, combining its annual meeting with the 16th annual Heartwood Forest Council, a meeting of the nation's top advocates against deforestation.

"We think it's time to launch this to a larger network of people," said Janet Keating, co-director of the Ohio Valley council. "Those who are forest activists might not be familiar with mountaintop removal, and this is an opportunity to educate and to combine forces."

The conference is expected to include up to 400 participants from across the country, but so far only 150 have registered.

Groups from 18 states and Washington D.C., already have signed on.

Speakers include Jack Spadaro, the former Mine Safety and Health Administration official who blew the whistle on government cover-ups of questionable mining operations to former West Virginia Secretary of State Ken Hechler, a vocal opponent of mountaintop removal and strip mining.

Keating said a new generation of West Virginians is growing up with mountaintop mining and valley fill mining going on in their own backyards. Advocates fear people in the state might be starting to become desensitized to the destruction.

"It's kind of ironic because on the national level we're starting to get lots of attention and there's lots of concern in other states where the problems have only just recently started," Keating said. "Here, if we're holding a protest it's like, ‘Oh, they're just doing another protest.'"

It doesn't mean the issues here are any less troubling than they were eight years ago."

Conference participants will be able to take airplane flights over Jackson and Kanawha counties this weekend to get a real view of how various mining operations have changed the area's landscape in recent years.

"You really don't have to go very far," Keating said, citing removal areas throughout Cabin Creek, near the West Virginia Turnpike and up some hollows just off Corridor G.

"It's a real indicator of how quickly things are happening," Keating said. "Used to be, companies like to keep what they called a ‘beauty strip,' an area that was separate from the clearing and more visible to people driving by. That doesn't seem to be as much of a priority anymore."

The Memorial Day weekend conference coincides with environmental council's annual Mount Justice Summer and several months of demonstrations.

This year, teenage and young adult participants will be waging a door-to-door campaign in places like Parkersburg and the Eastern Panhandle, where advocates say communities lack information about how mining operations are affecting vast portions of the state.

"The destruction of our natural heritage and the obliteration of our mountain communities would be considered an act of war were the damage perpetrated by a foreign power," Andy Mahler, a Heartwood Forest Council organizer, said in a news release on the conference.

The conference also will include book readings and film screenings on the subject, an excursion to Kayford Mountain and strategy sessions led by people whose homes have been affected by mountaintop mining.

Contact writer Kris Wise at 348-1244.