Another great article, this time on the Coal River Wind Project, an effort to install a wind farm on one of the remaining mountains in Coal River Vally, currently threatened by mountaintop removal.
From Salon.com
Also, get an update on the Coal River Wind Project, here.
Blowing away King Coal
Can a scrawny young wind-power activist topple the biggest, dirtiest industry in West Virginia?
By Jeff Biggers
Jan. 29, 2009 | ROCK CREEK, W.V. -- On Jan. 16, as Barack Obama visited a wind turbine factory in Ohio, Rory McIlmoil snaked along a muddy mountain road in West Virginia on a similar mission. He was headed up Coal River Mountain, the last mountain left untouched in a historic range ravaged by strip mining.
On a ridge, the 28-year-old activist brought his four-wheeler to a skid. He couldn't believe what he saw. Bulldozers had begun clearing the site for the first phase of a mountaintop removal operation, a radical strip-mining process that would clear-cut 6,600 acres of hardwood trees, detonate thousands of tons of explosives and topple the mountain range into the valley. A 100-foot swath of forest just below the ridge lay like an open wound.
For McIlmoil, this should have been ground zero in Obama's green recovery plan. Not a future wasteland.
Read the full article here.
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