Protesters Cited on Coal River Mountain Mining Site

It was a snowy seven-mile trek at 2 a.m. for Mike Roselle and other environmentalists as they made their way to protest mountaintop removal on Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County.

Roselle was one of 13 activists detained and cited for trespassing after they chained them-selves to a bulldozer

Feb. 3 at a Massey Energy Corp. mine site. Protests and citations came in two waves, at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., with five activists involved in the first round and eight in the second. A videographer also was arrested during the first protest.

About 50 people from West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee gathered at the Coal River Mountain Watch headquarters by noon that day, according to Lorelei Scarbro, a Coal River Mountain Watch community organizer on the Coal River Project.

Charles Suggs, with environmental groups Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice Summer, said, "We won't stop until they do. There is a wind farm going on that mountain or some other healthy, safe, clean form of economic activity."