1000 marchers, Rousing speeches and a breakaway group of about 160  people marching onto the historic Blair Mountain battlefield that is permitted to be destroyed by surface mining ended a five-day-long trek through repeated coal industry obstacles.

“The lingering feeling from the march is of stronger unity being built in southern West Virginian communities, between impacted residents  and environmentalists, in the aim to save Blair Mountain, abolish strip mining and build a healthier, more diverse economy in its place,” said Junior Walk.

Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to march or support the marchers in making this happen.

Many videos, audio recordings and photos are up on the March on Blair Mountain website.

This was an amazing event, now the fight continues!

while the march was happening …

A PETITION TO DESIGNATE THE BLAIR MOUNTAIN BATTLEFIELD AS UNSUITABLE FOR SURFACE COAL MINING has been filed with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

The Petition seeks to designate as unsuitable approximately 1668 acres along the crest of Spruce Fork Ridge in Logan County, WV. Send Comments VIA E-MAIL to: [email protected] and Randy.C.Huffman @wv.gov

The Wall Street Journal reported – “We agree that Blair Mountain is an area of historical significance , and an appropriate commemoration of the 1921 events ought to be considered,” said Alpha spokesman Ted Pile. But, he added, a commemoration shouldn’t “abrogate the legal rights of the many property owners and leaseholders in the area.”

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. of Abingdon, Va., said it doesn’t intend to conduct mountain-top removal in the historic battleground area, but acquired one active operation outside the 1,600-acre boundary when it bought Massey Energy.

But … Take a look at the map courtesy of Friends of Blair Mountain. The orange and black area are surface mine permits and the white area is a outline cushion of the designated battlefield. The black area is the Alpha camp branch surface mine,which is just one of Alphas’ surface mines set to destroy the battlefield using mountaintop removal.

Meanwhile over in Fayette county the fight against Mountaintop removal mining made news. “Fayette citizens taking aim at mountaintop removal mining” reported by Taylor Kuykendall in the Register-Herald Reporter

Activists settle lawsuit over W.Va. mining protest – an interesting story from Tim Huber.

Over in DC, Coal lost in the courtroom, the Wall Street Journal reports: Coal Firms Lose Fight Over Clean-Up Fees.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Alpha Natural Resources, Blair Mountain, citizen enforcement, Legal, Massey Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.