West Virginia Blue
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To any West Virginian who truly loves this state, this Coal River Mountain Wind Project makes the ultimate sense. Instead of flattening a huge area of beautiful mountains Raleigh County, WV, to get to the coal, why not place wind turbines across the area and consider deep mining the coal?
Coal River Mountain Wind Project's Community Organizer Loreli Scarbro points out the 6,600 acres
of Raleigh County, WV, which will be adversely affected under permits already granted by the state of WV.
There has already been a comprehensive study by WINDLOGICS, A nationally recognized firm commissioned by Appalachian Voices indicating that if the mountains are left standing to help harvest the wind, a total of 440 megawatts of renewable and clean energy could be generated.
According to a report in the Charleston Gazette, just last Friday, Governor Manchin announced that he'll be pushing renewable energy projects and making it the centerpiece of his next state of the state speech.
But is he willing to give Coal River Mountain Wind Project anywhere near the $200 million in tax breaks and other incentives that he's granted Consol for their filthy, outdated "coal-to-gas" conversion process? And is Governor Manchin (or his progeny) ready to stand accountable what will happen to West Virginia once Consol runs out of coal and all of our mountains are gone and our water is polluted?
Map details show specific areas in red where large wind turbines are proposed
.
Co-presenter and activist Rory McIlmoil fielded questions and spoke
about the harm that would be done to the entire Coal River watershed area
if the 18 landfills were to go forward as proposed on present day permits.
According to the Coal River Mountain Wind Project brochure, a wind farm such as they've proposed would employ 200 local residents during the 2-year construction phase, and create as many as 40-50 permanent maintenance jobs afterwards. Furthermore, other economic purposes can be pursued if the land is used as a wind farm instead of a mountaintop removal site, such as local forestry, mountain tourism, and even ginseng and other valuable forest plants which can grow right up to the base of each wind tower. It certainly would help out our whole state if you'd head on over to their website and sign their petition.
I certainly was glad to have finally met several of the CRMW crew face-to-face, and plan to attend their rally which I believe is tentatively slated at the State Capitol to help focus public attention to their project.
I'm also happy to report that it was the most informative meeting I've attended in quite awhile.
During the meeting portion local MoveOn organizer Martha Mills discussed the logistics of our next event. She's slated it for Tuesday, August 19, from 4 pm to 5:30 pm, at the corner of Greenbrier and Washington Streets, in Charleston, across from the Capital Building. It's a Rally for Clean Energy, and she'll be posting more on that soon.
As Ms. Mills wound down the meeting portion of the event,
local singer-songwriter/ activist Paul Epstein broke out his trusty ol' guitar
and graciously delivered several thought provoking and appropriately inspirational tunes.
By the way, back in 2006, Paul donated almost $500.00 to MoveOn.org, which he raised in one evening (at Taylor Books in Charleston) using only his guitar, his vocal talent, and his winning personality (although I'm sure it didn't hurt that he was working for a great cause)!
Note to webmaster: sorry about the huge photos but I figured those depicted might want to download and print them.
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