Oct 29

INVITATION to Kayford, WV Mountain Top Removal Site, Saturday November 3rd!

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Please Join Appalachian Studies and Mountain Justice on a day trip to Larry Gibson’s Kayford Mountain Home in West Virginia on November 3rd.  Larry Gibson’s family has lived on Kayford Mountain for more than 200 years and now he is a leading activist in the fight to end Mountain Top Removal.  His home is nearly surrounded by MTR and the coal company has even destroyed the majority of his family cemetery without his consent.  Larry is an amazing speaker with a unique and horrifying story to tell on the treatment of the people in Mining areas and the destruction of the only Mountains we have.

We will meet at the Solitude Faculty/Staff Parking Lot at 8:15. (Located across from the Chemisty/Physics building on West Campus Drive before the Duck Pond if driving up from Prices Fork).  The drive will be about 2 1/2 hours.

Anyone is welcome to come, as long as you have a ride. If groups could organize their own carpooling, that would be great, and if Individuals are interested- with a car or without- please Email Jessie Schwartz (Schwartz[at]vt.edu) by Thursday or Friday and we will work on fitting everyone in. We would love to have the extra drivers! If groups could also email Schwartz[at]vt.edu by Friday, we will know how many people are arriving Saturday Morning.

Please bring your own lunch, water/drinks, and contributions for gas expenses.

This is an opportunity you don’t want to miss; Mountain Top Removal cannot be understood in words and pictures alone.

See You Saturday!

Oct 02

Debate over fly ash use heats up in Giles

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Howard Spencer can’t understand it.The Giles County Board of Supervisors chairman says he’s figured out a way to help a county business, create a new spot for industrial development, generate jobs and raise money for the county’s vocational education programs — and some people are complaining about it.

Those people — they call themselves Concerned Citizens of Giles County — aren’t against jobs or education or local businesses. But they aren’t sure it’s a good idea to put 254,000 cubic yards of a material laced with heavy metals on the banks of the New River. The Giles County Partnership for Excellence, a nonprofit group that Spencer directs, is proposing that fly ash — what’s left over after coal has been burned — be dumped on a site in the river’s flood plain in Narrows.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/134208