Front Porch Blog

November 6, 2006

National Memorial for the Mountains Earns Nationwide Coverage

Matt Wasson

An Associated Press Story on the National Memorial for the Mountains written by Kentucky-based AP Writer Samira Jafari on November 4th, was been picked up by newspapers and television station websites across the country.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

Now environmentalists have found a way to let the rest of the world see what mountaintop coal mining has done to Appalachia: They have started a Web site that uses the Google Earth database to enable people to see aerial reconnaissance photos of the scarred countryside.

“The point is mountaintop removal has gone on under a cloak of secrecy,” said Mary Anne Hitt, the executive director of Appalachian Voices, one of six environmental groups involved in the Internet campaign. “Unless you have the experience of flying over the region in a small plane, it’s hard to understand the scale of mountaintop removal.”

Their Web site, http://www.ilovemountains.org/, has a link to the campaign’s “National Memorial of the Mountains,” which shows a Google Earth map of Appalachia. The map includes a 3-D tour of sludge ponds, blasting holes and mountains scraped of their peaks.

Below is a list of media outlets currently running the story:

Matt Wasson

As Appalachian Voices' Director of Programs, Matt has worked on all aspects of the "coal cycle" — from mining, transportation and combustion to the disposal of power plant waste — and is a nationally recognized authority on mountaintop removal coal mining and coal economics. Matt has testified before Congress and appears frequently on expert panels.

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