Recently we have seen the Clean Coal bandwagon out in full force. But what you don't see is the damage it causes small town communities. And that is for a very good reason. Bob Kincaid of Head on Radio has a very important message for anyone who can help. Friends of Coal plan to strongarm a meeting and silence this small town by packing outsiders in a meeting place. If you can spread this around, please do. It's for a important reason to help a town and their voice be heard. This pertains to a bigger issue which is not to be intimidated by big business. Thank you if you can help in any way.

The information:

"On Thursday evening, February 12, at 6:00 p.m., we have an "informal meeting" scheduled with the WV Department of Environmental Protection at Ansted Middle School in Ansted, West Virginia. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the renewal of the permit that allows the continued destruction of Gauley Mountan, directly above the town and, by extension, the community itself. Mountain Removal in West Virginia uses more high explosives on the Mountain State than have been used in Iraq. It unleashes toxins into communities, as well as the nation in general about which the coal companies have utterly no concern. Mountain Removal poisons include, lead, arsenic, manganese, mercury, barium and selenium, all of which find their way into the lives of the people forced to live with this obnoxious, toxic, criminal practice. "We don't live where they mine coal. They mine coal where we live." Coal River Valley resident Lorelei Scarbro said that about what's going on in her West Virginia community and it's no less true in Ansted, West Virginia. This area is the heart and soul of West Virginia's internationally renowned white-water rafting, kayaking, rock-climbing, hiking and biking eco-tourism region. Mountain Removal mining like that taking place on Gauley Mountain will ultimately kill that tourism industry, leaving Fayette County, West Virginia a barren husk when the coal companies pull out, as they always do. The current coal extraction area on Gauley Mountain sits between the New and Gauley Rivers and near their confluence, which forms the Great Kanawha River. This Mountain Removal Coal extraction will ruin those streams. At present, Consol Energy, via one of its sham corporations, is destroying five thousand acres. They have their eyes on destroying anouther twenty thousand. We are receiving word that the Friends of Coal (or "FoC'ers") as they're widely known, plan to send busloads of outsiders into our area to fill the meeting space and make sure none of our local voices are heard. This is a usual, typical tactic for these members of one of the worst "astroturf" groups ever to rear its head. The Coal Industry cannot compete on a level playing field, so they prefer to silence the people who oppose their poisonous plans for small West Virginia communities like Ansted. One might almost call that kind of conduct anti-American, but it's what the Friends of Coal do over and over and over. We need it widely known what these people, who don't even live near the havoc they wreak on mountain communities (or ven care about it), do in order to advance their toxic, anti-community, anti-family greed-driven agendas. "




[edit on 11-2-2009 by MRGERBIK]

[edit on 11-2-2009 by MRGERBIK]

[edit on 11-2-2009 by MRGERBIK]