Youth in Action

Months ago, Peter Comstock, headmaster of the Glen Spey (New York) Homestead School, contacted OVEC volunteers in order to plan a class trip to West Virginia.

Students, teachers and parents spent six months preparing for the trip, learning about the many issues that need to be considered when looking at our choices regarding energy consumption.  Parent Patricia Lutfy wrote:

This was in no way going to be a one-sided issue and that was very clear from the beginning. But what was also very clear from day one is that blowing off the tops of mountains was simply wrong!

The students formed a group, came up with a mission statement and decided upon a name for themselves. The Green Power Alliance was born. The children met with Congressman Chris Carney in Milford, PA, with a strong message encouraging him to be a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act.

We began our first day in West Virginia with a 7 a.m. start to meet Larry Gibson who would take us to his mountaintop home which is surrounded by active mountaintop removal coal mining…. We found out only too soon that we were entering a battle zone. With Larry’s white pickup in the lead, an approaching coal truck challenged each of the cars in our caravan by veering over onto our side of the road.

  This harassment is commonplace for Larry Gibson. There were the bullet holes in the outhouse and the side of his home from drive-by shootings of vandals during the night. This peaceful sanctuary has been altered almost as dramatically as the barren wasteland just beyond the tree line where the mountaintop removal site was in full operation.

  On Kayford, we met Ed Wiley, whose granddaughter and classmates started experiencing sickness at Marsh Fork Elementary School. We also met Mary Miller and Pauline Canterberry, aka "the Dustbusters." These ladies brought about a lawsuit and are still fighting for the basic human needs of clean water and air in their community.

  We went to West Virginia to educate ourselves about an environmental issue, but came face to face with a human rights issue.

  What does this mean for the people in our region? We consume electricity that is generated by coal from West Virginia and therefore we are a part of this problem. My daughters and the kids of the Green Power Alliance want to be a part of the solution. It will begin for all of us as it began for all of these children – with education.

The Green Power Alliance hosted an Energy Expo and Family Environmental Day at Pocono Environmental Education Center on May 3. Larry Gibson and two other OVEC volunteers spoke at the event.

After the expo, the Homestead School’s headmaster reflected, "It’s time for an active partnership in solving the problems of global warming, environmental degradation, and the related violations of human rights issuing from the exploitation of natural resources. The West Virginians sense that a powerful wave of change is about to crest.  We want to do our part in hastening that Green Revolution.  These are momentous and exciting times, indeed."