More than a thousand people showed up at the state Capitol to protest against mountain top removal mining in Kentucky. The Appalachian residents and citizen activists were joined by environmentalists at the “I love Mountains” annual rally.
Steve Boyce is the chairman of “Kentuckians For The Commonwealth”, which organized the rally. Boyce, a retired Berea College professor, said that they were there as a part of a growing new clean power movement that stretched from the Appalachian Mountains to the tar sands of Alberta and beyond.
Teri Blanton, a fellow with the group of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth said that six-hundred thousand acres of some of the most diverse hardwood forests in the world, had been destroyed forever, reduced to rubble. They had pollution in their waters, the heavy metal that used to be encased in the earth is now flowing down the creeks and into the rivers and back through our faucets Blanton added.
This was the seventh year that the rally was organized. It has grown from a group of lobbying lawmakers to a rally that annually attracts hundreds from across the state. Bus loads of participants came from Louisville and a small group of people also walked nearly 140 miles from Prestonburg to Frankfort in an effort to support the anti mountain top mining cause.
Speakers at the rally called for the law makers in the state of Kentucky to take a stand against the process of mountain top removal mining. The process is known to use blasting to scrape away the layers of vegetation and earth on top to reach the coal seams lying below.