Looks like just what we need more people out of the area comeing in to tell us how to run things.
I know that there are alot of bad things that go alone with minning but as it currently stands anything that is done to cut out minning will hurt our economy localy badly of course these shipped in protesters don't need to worry about that
http://www.thecoalfieldprogress.com/...?viewStory=915
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Mine critics make action plans
JEFF LESTER > News Editor
STEPHENS "? Activists from as far away as Canada are converging on Wise County to protest strip mining and, if possible, stop future mines from opening.
More than 20 representatives of national and regional groups opposed to many, if not all, types of surface mining met at the Stephens community center last week with a handful of local residents to plot strategy.
Proposed activities include:
Protesting at surface mine permit hearings, to stop or at least slow down permit approvals.
Demanding to accompany state mine inspectors on trips to surface mine sites.
Using global positioning systems to verify whether surface operations stray outside permit boundaries.
Photographing loaded coal trucks to determine whether they're running over legal weight limits.
Testing water quality in streams near mine sites.
"Listening projects"? to hear local residents' ideas and concerns about strip mining.
Getting Wise County to pass a noise ordinance that would suppress late-night mine activity.
Urging Gov. Tim Kaine and state lawmakers to restrict blasting activity, prohibit late-night mining and abolish "mountaintop removal and all other forms of steep-slope strip mining."?
who's involved
Stephens residents Charlene Greene and Kathy Selvage, along with Big Stone Gap resident Carl "Pete"? Ramey, Wise resident David Rouse and a few other local people, met June 14 with activists from outside the area to discuss ways of challenging surface mine operations.
Many of those in attendance have said they oppose any surface mining that removes the natural tops of mountains, hills and ridges.
While some activists from as far away as Canada are now working in the area, many who attended the meeting identified themselves as Asheville, N.C.-based participants in Katuah Earth First! and/or Mountain Justice Summer. Most of them avoided using their last names in conversation.
According to its Web site, www.katuahearthfirst.org, members of the Earth First! movement "believe in using all of the tools in the toolbox, from grassroots and legal organizing to civil disobedience and monkeywrenching. When the laws won't fix the problem, we put our bodies on the line to stop the destruction."?
Meanwhile, Mountain Justice Summer, an anti-mountaintop removal group active in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, says on its Web site that "MJS is committed to nonviolence and will not be engaged in property destruction."?
Katuah Earth First! notes on its Internet site that the organization will hold a weeklong planning/organizing gathering July 3-10 in the Little Stony Falls area of the Jefferson National Forest near Coeburn.
PLANS
Postcards. Bill McCabe, a Tennessee-based Sierra Club organizer, urged participants to help with a postcard campaign aimed at Gov. Kaine.
Along with abolishing certain types of strip mining and late-night surface mining, the campaign urges the state to prohibit blasting within at least 1,500 feet of any structure. The current limit is 300 feet.
Rouse, who unsuccessfully fought strip mining around his former Duncan Gap home in the 1990s, said that the blasting regulations in use nationwide are based on science that's at least 30 years outdated.
Listening. McCabe noted that Mountain Justice Summer volunteers and others would in coming weeks conduct listening projects in Wise County. They planned to go door-to-door in heavily mined communities, asking residents to share any concerns about stripping activity. Hopefully, each visiting volunteer will be paired with a local resident, he said.
An unidentified activist questioned whether listening projects will accomplish anything. How will volunteers choose who to talk with, he asked, and how will they determine if local residents who speak know what they're talking about?
We already know the effects of strip mining and should instead use our time to protest and organize, he said.
McCabe said volunteers will try to talk to every household in a particular community. And a Mountain Justice Summer volunteer named Simon noted that during 2005 listening projects in Wise County, he gained tremendous insight from local residents.
Ramey said local folks first will ask outsiders, "Why do you care?"?
"You need to have a good answer for them,"? he said. Local residents are good, honest folks who may be skeptical of visiting strangers, and must be convinced that volunteers really are here to help, Ramey said.
Permit applications. Simon said volunteers hope to organize residents affected by a proposed surface mine permit to "interrupt"? the permitting process. Affected residents would turn out in large numbers at all state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy permit hearings and express concern.
At best, he said, residents may be able to stop approval of a permit. At the least, he said, they can slow down the permit process and "show how DMME simply rubber-stamps"? what coal companies want to do.
Noise. Greene and Selvage said they have sent a sample noise ordinance to Wise County's attorney, Karen Mullins, for review, and hope to discuss it with county supervisors in July. The goal is to curb mining-related noise between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Greene said the ordinance also identifies several types of noise unrelated to mining.
Water. Simon said volunteers hope to begin sampling area streams to test water quality. Rouse, a University of Virginia's College at Wise professor, said he might be able to help secure the use of a UVa-Wise lab for analysis.
Permit boundaries. Activist Bill Gurz said there are plans to review mine permit maps, then go to mine sites with global positioning systems and cameras, comparing actual boundaries to the maps.
That requires getting on the mine site, Gurz said. Volunteers will need to demand state mine inspections and/or try to arrange to go along during planned inspections, he said.
Trucks. Gurz said plans are being made to document coal truck violations. That involves photographing trucks as they leave mine sites, in part to see how much coal they carry.
Of course, he said, volunteers must stay out of sight. Once truckers see them, he explained, they'll warn other truckers to run at legal weight that day.
In a Tuesday interview, Virginia Mining Association executive director [censored] Shackleford questioned what this activity will prove.
Photographing loaded coal trucks "will tell you that there appears to be a lot of coal,"? he said. "Whether it's overloaded is another question."?
Shackleford said he thinks the Virginia State Police is much better equipped to enforce truck weight limits using its mobile weigh station technology.
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Member Opinions:
By: bigick on 6/22/06
Yankees go home !!!!!!!!!Leave us in wise county to decide what is right. We are not dumb hillbillys!!!!!!! Richard SOWARDS Pound Va.
By: poundrat on 6/22/06
i would venture to state , as the protesters arrive from foreign places and have no business what the people of south west virginia do , it would be a good time to break out the " old shotguns " and stand by for some live target pratice. i know for a fact that the people of the area have endured too much for a bunch of " idiots " to come in and tell them what they should do and not do. shootem.
bob bentley conyers ga
ex pound resident
By: common_sense on 6/22/06
As everyone knows, the coal industry is the only major industry providing jobs in SW Va. I hate to see tree-hugging individuals who have nothing better to do than to try to destroy the only job industry available in an area where they neither live or work just to bring some desperately coveted publicity to their self-serving organizations.
By: rlroberts on 6/22/06
6/22/06
Most of the citizens in Wise County DEPEND upon the coal industry for various reasons. People need to find something else better to do with their time instead of trying to brew up unwanted trouble! The coal business is a vital part of our survival. Activists and individuals who plan on protesting need to stay home and worry about their own problems in their own communities!!!! STAY AWAY AND BUT OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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