Wind Mills on Coal River,not Blasting

This:

Not this:

Please read this article about the Coal River Wind Project, where residents of the Coal River Valley are trying to save Coal River Mountain from certain destruction from mountaintop removal coal mining. This is one of the most important campaigns going on in the fight to end mountaintop removal.

This campaign shows that the central Appalachian region does have alternatives to destroying mountains and mountain communities. By investing in wind energy, this region can still produce electricity and provide jobs (and actually more jobs than mountaintop removal could) in a more sustainable manner.

Please spread the word. You can get more info at http://www.coalriverwind.org/

Blowing away King Coal By Jeff Biggers
Can a scrawny young wind-power activist topple the biggest, dirtiest industry in West Virginia?

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.

Read the rest here....


Wind Map for Coal River Mountain: This map shows the average annual wind speeds along the ridges of Coal River Mountain. Class 4 wind speeds and higher (yellow to red) are required for utility-scale wind development.