Yesterday, despite cold weather and chance of snow, hundreds of concerned citizens gathered in front of the headquarters of West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in Charleston, W.Va. The protest and rally was held to demand that the DEP halt the blasting on Coal River Mountain.

Impacted residents, members of the clergy, musicians and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. were among the list of speakers who raised their voices for the protection of the last intact mountain in the Coal River Valley.

Blasting has already started on Coal River Mountain; this beautiful ridge has been shown to be an excellent location for a commercial renewable energy wind farm. Lorelei Scarbro, the widow of an underground miner whose home rests in the shadow of Coal River Mountain, has led the fight to stop proposed mountaintop removal mining in order to build a sustainable wind farm. Lorelei asked a jeering crowd of counter protesters to “stand with us, come to Washington D.C, and demand job diversification in the coalfields.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of late U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy, decried the practice of mountaintop removal and the companies that operate strip mines. “This is a moral issue,” he said. “We don’t have a right to destroy what we can’t re-create. It was God who made these mountains, and it’s [Massey Energy President] Don Blankenship who is tearing them down.”

For more on this story see Ken Ward Jr’s blog post on Coal Tattoo: Coal Tattoo

Excellent short film on the Protest and Rally produced by Jordan Freeman:
DEP Protest