News
Kathy Mattea speaks out against mountaintop removal coal mining
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
July 11th, 2007
Kathy Mattea, 2-time Grammy Award winning country singer and WV native, toured Kayford Mountain, WV, took and aerial tour of the mining region, and spoke at a press conference on the steps of the State Capitol.
In her speech in Charleston, she explained that she had recently been trained by Al Gore to give a version of his presentation on the effects of – and solutions for – global warming. When researching coal mining to personalize her presentation, she encountered iLoveMountains.org, “I began to get picture of what was happening in West Virginia that I didn’t expect to find. It was bigger and it was more rampant that I knew.”
Click here to listen to an NPR story about her visit. Video and news articles are below.
What I saw today shocked me – Mattea looks, listens to mountaintop removal
– by Tara TuckwillerCountry music star Kathy Mattea spent Tuesday sitting at the edge of an enormous chasm of naked rock – a West Virginia mountaintop removal coal mine – and listening to people’s stories.
One woman told Mattea about the reservoir full of coal waste that looms upstream from a Raleigh County elementary school full of 220 children.
Another showed her photos of the trains that haul millions of dollars worth of coal every week out of the mountain near her house, while her Kanawha County community remains in poverty.
And Mattea wept as a Boone County woman showed her photos of the mountain that used to be behind her house. It’s not there anymore. A coal company blasted it apart, she said, into boulders that would fly through the air, big enough to kill her children. Then a big rain came, and ran off the stripped mountain and destroyed her homeplace.
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Originally published in the Charleston Gazette in Charleston, WV. Click here to read the entire article.
Click here to watch another great video courtesy of the Charlestton Gazette.
July 13th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Probably one of the best that I have seen from ILOVEMOUNTAINS.ORG. Something that I have no hesitation in forwarding to friends and aquaintenances I know. Hope it helps.
July 14th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Thanks for this info. It is sad and like the words in Roy’s song, “only the lonely”, comes to mind for the widowed women of men killed in the mines and those that have died from black lung and related illness. My father and father-in-law died of lung desease caused by working in the coal mines of KY/WVA.
Now being added to the broken hearts and bodies of the families which were and still are being added to the list of disabled workers and dead fathers, is the destruction and ruination their environment. I looked accross the mountain and what did I see? Natural beauty made ugly, clear and drinkable water made smelly and contaminated; running creeks and brooks backed up and filled up with rock, dirt and discards; home sites eroded away and sway back houses tither waiting for the fall at the end of a washed out road. The mountains of yesterday look beat and cut up from a fight with a knife and hickory stick.
Dubtful that the mountain stewards can stop the large corporations and coal operators, but it would be a shame to go down without a fight. It look like it is the 12th round in a 15 rounder. The bigger are winning with lots of cheering and money from the boys in Washington, DC, and Wall Street. If I were a betting man, I would give the odds and the bigger boys, but in my heart, I would be rooting for the Mountain Stewards. KEEP ON FIGHTING!