Four daring protestors

accomplished something today that no high ranking member in the Obama

administration involved in the recent mountaintop removal mining policy

decisions has ever bothered to do: These four American patriots made an

actual visit to a mountaintop removal site.

They also went beyond the call of duty.

Scaling a towering 20-story dragline (those behemoth stripmining

machines that could rip up a Manhattan block in a New York minute) and

then unfolding a 15 x 150 foot banner at the Twilight mountaintop

removal strip mine in Boone County, West Virginia, they also unveiled a

simple message on how the EPA, the Department of Interior and the

Council on Environmental Quality can best enforce the Clean Water Act

and other environmental laws:

JUST STOP MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL.

The action launches a dramatic weeklong series of protests at

mountaintop removal sites in the West Virginia coalfields that will

culminate on June 23rd with a special action in the Coal River Valley

area with local coalfield residents, NASA climate scientist James

Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, and 94-year-old former US Representative

Ken Hechler, and Rainforest Action Action executive director Michael

Brune, among many others.

"It's way past time for civil disobedience to stop mountaintop

removal and move quickly toward clean, renewable energy sources," said

Judy Bonds, Goldman Environmental Prize winner and co-director of Coal

River Mountain Watch of West Virginia. "For over a century, Appalachian

communities have been crushed, flooded, and poisoned as a result of the

country's dangerous and outdated reliance on coal. How could the

country care so little about our American mountains, our culture and

our lives?"

Aerial photos of the Massey Energy-owned Twilight mountaintop

removal mine can be seen here:

http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/018/

During the day, updates and photos on today's action will be posted at:

http://mountainaction.org/wordpress/

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Equipped with satellite phones and web cameras, the protestors plan

to stay on the enormous dragline until they are arrested. Another group

of protestors on the ground have already been reached by the police.

"I've written letters, attended hearings and called my congressman,

so far they have done nothing to stop the disastrous and unnecessary

practice of mountaintop removal," said Charles Suggs, a 25-year old of

Rock Creek, WV, one of today's participants. "It has come to the point

when we must take direct action to abolish this practice that is

immorally robbing Appalachian communities of their culture, their

health and their future."

Despite last week's best-laid-plans by the Obama administration to

provide stronger reviews of mountaintop removal permits under current

laws--notwithstanding the 42 out of the 48 mining permits cleared by

the EPA last month--the protest today draws attention to the reality

that over 3.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives

are being detonated DAILY in mountaintop removal operations across the

West Virginia mountains alone, while hundreds of mountaintop removal

permits now stand ready to be reviewed and cleared.

In last week's announcement, CEQ chief Nancy Sutley declared that

the Obama administration would do "all it can under existing laws and

regulations to curb the most environmentally destructive impacts of

mountaintop coal mining."

Read that line again: "Curb the most environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop coal mining."

If Sutley joined the protestors at the Twilight site or any mountaintop

removal operation, she would witness firsthand, as well, that even the

LEAST "environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop removal"

REQUIRE massive clear cutting of our nation's most diverse and oldest

deciduous forests on the continent, setting ANFO explosives and

blasting the mountains to bits, showering the neighboring communities

with silica dust and dangerous fly rock, and then dumping the mine

waste and heavy metals into the valleys and streams and watersheds.

Video updates of today's action will also be posted here:

http://mountainaction.org/wordpress/