Rising high above the Coal River Valley in Raleigh County, West Virginia, Coal River Mountain is one of the most beautiful and wild areas left in the coalfields.  There has been little surface mining on the mountain to date and no mountaintop removal operations, however, subsidiaries of Massey Energy Company are proposing or planning almost 6,000 acres of surface mining on Coal River Mountain.  If permitted this mine would destroy the tallest peaks that have ever been surface mined in West Virginia.  

Coal River Mountain has become ground zero in the fight between proponents of large-scale surface mining in Appalachia and community groups working to end mountaintop removal and promote an alternative economic and energy production model in the “Coalfields.”