More than 14,000 people have visited Larry Gibson on Kayford Mountain to see the tragic moonscape surrounding what is left of his ancestral home. Coal companies have blasted away more than 12,000 acres of Kayford Mountain by the most destructive form of surface mining – mountaintop removal.

In this process, trees are clearcut and then up to 800 feet of elevation are blown off the tops of ridges with millions of pounds of explosives to expose thin seams of coal. After massive draglines scrape out the coal, the resulting waste is dumped into adjacent valleys, burying headwater streams.

In Appalachia more than 500 mountains have been destroyed and approximately 2,000 miles of headwater streams have been buried. The blasting damages homes and dries up wells. The valley fills cause extensive flooding. In addition to the dumping of waste in streams, the coal-cleaning process results in poisoned water.

During fall break, eight ETSU students attended Mountain Justice Fall Summit in Rock Creek, W. Va.

The annual weekend event brings college students to the coalfields to learn from coalfield residents and activists how they can take action against mountaintop removal. On Saturday morning, we drove to Kayford Mountain to visit Larry Gibson and view the devastation that surrounds what’s left of his ancestral home. We were privileged to be able to sit and talk with Gibson in his cabin. To hear Gibson speak about the history of his family, their land, coal and resistance, is to hear the story of so many central Appalachian communities.

Though we were able to return the next day for a clear view of the mountaintop removal at Kayford Mountain, fog prevented us from seeing just how expansive the devastation was on this visit. While standing at what Gibson calls “Hell’s Gate,” the border between life on his family’s remaining land and the destruction wrought by the coal companies, Larry pleaded with the crowd of students to take some kind of action. Gibson said, “you may leave here only having seen fog, but I’ve seen the future. If you leave here and don’t do anything about what you’ve seen though, then you never should have come.”

There is a large and growing movement of resistance to mountaintop removal and other abuses of the coal industry that builds on the long tradition of struggles against strip mining and the fight to organize unions.

Gibson is at the forefront of the movement, defending the land where his family has lived for hundreds of years and where his ancestors are buried. In 2007, he was honored as a CNN Hero. While Gibson and other coalfield activists are he/sheroes to many, they are targets of coal industry supporters. Gibson has endured drive-by shootings; he’s been run off the road by coal trucks, and his dog was killed and another one survived a hanging.

On this past July Fourth, my fiancée and I visited Kayford Mountain for Gibson’s annual Mountain Keeper’s Festival – a combination family reunion and music festival that brings together his family and anti-mountaintop removal activists from across the country – hoping to have some downtime after a series of intense educational experiences about the dirty cycle of coal and several intense direct actions against the coal industry and coal-burning utilities.

The festivities were interrupted by 20 drunken coal industry supporters who invaded the pavilion. They hurled obscenities and one of them threatened to slit the throats of a father and his small child.

Fortunately, more level-headed coal industry supporters kicked the worst of the bunch off the mountain, but others spent the night driving by our campsite yelling various insults.

As the movement has grown, the coal industry, Massey Energy in particular, has been effective at driving a wedge between those coalfield residents who oppose mountaintop removal and those who rely on coal jobs to support their families by characterizing the movement as environment vs. jobs. But those who oppose mountaintop removal support jobs from clean energy alternatives and a diverse economy for the coalfields – something the coal industry has worked hard to prevent.

There will be two opportunities to hear Gibson talk about how mountaintop removal and the entire dirty cycle of coal affects people’s lives, health, communities and the environment. He will speak at the Initiative for Clean Energy’s Rally for Carbon Neutrality. The Rally and march will begin at Borchuck Plaza in front of the Sherrod Library at 11:45 am on Thursday, Nov. 5. Later in the evening, at 7 p.m., the Initiative for Clean Energy and the Environmental Studies Minor will host a public presentation by Gibson in the Culp University Center Auditorium.

For more information about Gibson, visit Keeper of the Mountains Foundation at www.mountainkeeper.com. For more information about the Rally for Carbon Neutrality or Larry Gibson’s Public Presentation, email ice.etsu@gmail.com.

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