mountaintop removal

Mountainfilm 2011 special guest Maria Gunnoe sent us the latest PSA from Mountaintop Removal Stops Here (MTRStopsHere.org), filmed while she was in Telluride.

From MTRStopsHere.org:

Many neighborhoods and communities in West Virginia have been obliterated by mountaintop removal mining. The small West Virginia town of Twilight, in Boone County, is now in the crosshairs of mountaintop removal mining. Less than two miles from Twilight, the community of Lindytown was annihilated in 2010, to make room for more Massey mountaintop removal coal mining. OVEC and community members in Lindytown tried to save the community, and we’ve learned important lessons that will help us try to save Twilight from the same fate at the hands of area coal companies.

The Last Mountain, a film about mountaintop removal which prominently features 2011 Festival special guest Maria Gunnoe, opened this month in Washington D.C. and New York and is screening in theatres around the country throughout the summer.

The documentarty, and Gunnoe, were recently profiled on documentary.org:

Every day the detonation of four million pounds of explosives echoes through the West Virginia mountains as a small army of companies lays bare the coal formed under the mountaintops over 200 million years ago. Like all wars, even environmental ones, there's collateral damage. 

"It's like living in Afghanistan or Pakistan," says Maria Gunnoe, whose childhood home where she still lives is just below ground zero for the Jupiter Mine's explosive mountaintop-clearing operations in Boone County.

"Everything this industry does is illegal, it's a criminal enterprise," - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On Saturday, a 50-mile march against mountantop removal mining ended at the summit of Blair Mountain. Kennedy joined the protestors, giving yet another powerful voice to the cause.

From The Charleston Gazette:

Hundreds of protesters reached the summit of Blair Mountain on Saturday, marking the end of a weeklong, 50-mile march to raise awareness of mountaintop-removal mining and labor rights in West Virginia.

The protesters came from far and wide to participate in the journey, hailing not only from West Virginia, but also Kentucky, Utah, North Carolina, Tennessee, Australia and Japan. The five-day march was an effort to preserve Blair Mountain as a historical site and to prevent coal companies from using it for mountaintop-removal mining.

Next week we'll be welcoming artist Antrim Caskey, who will be exhibiting her work at this year's festival. She was recently announced as a winner of the 43rd Annual Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for her work 'Dragline,' a photographic expose of mountaintop removal coal mining.

We caught up with her to learn more about her work on mountaintop removal and why she believes strongly in art as a medium for activism.

Mountainfilm: How long have you been working on photographing mountaintop removal?

As part of this year's festival, we're happy to welcome Maria Gunnoe, a lifelong resident of coal country in West Virginia who fights against the crucial issue of mountaintop removal mining and valley fill operations. She was a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2009, and she has been featured in numerous documentaries on the topic.

What can you do about mountaintop removal mining? iLoveMountains.org is an excellent resource for staying up to date on the issue of mountaintop removal. Their current action asks for people to call their Representatives and ask them to stop big coal from dumping toxic mining waste into the streams of Appalachia.

From ilovemountains.org:

Please call your Representative today and ask them to become a cosponsor of The Clean Water Protection Act.

This bill will protect our headwater streams where our rivers–such as the Mississippi and the Ohio–are born. Over 2,000 miles of streams have already been buried and polluted. But we can stop this.