SierraScape June - July 2004
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Dave Cooper

It's called mountaintop removal mining. In West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, coal companies blast as much as 600 feet off the top of the mountains, then dump the rock and debris into the mountain streams. Over 300,000 acres of the most beautiful and productive hardwood forests in America have already been turned into barren grasslands. Mountaintop removal mining increases flooding, contaminates drinking water supplies, cracks home and building foundations, and showers nearby towns with dust and noise from blasting.

Dave Cooper, a volunteer environmental activist and Sierra Club member from Lexington, Kentucky, plus a resident of the Kentucky coalfields who lives near a mountaintop removal mine will present a beautiful and stunning 20-minute slide show about mountaintop removal featuring Appalachian culture and music, and a short video about the devastation and flooding caused by the coal company TECO. Discussion to follow.

Mr. Cooper's Mountaintop Removal Road Show is a national speaking tour to educate communities, environmental groups and the faith community about mountaintop removal in Appalachia. The show has appeared in over 50 cities from Tampa, Florida to Ames, Iowa.

Jill Miller

Jill Miller, Sierra Club's own conservation organizer for the Global Warming and Energy Program here in Missouri, will relate efforts to bring the issue of global warming to a broader public audience and to increase support for energy solutions that reduce carbon dioxide emissions. She will show photographs and recap the "Route 66 Hybrid Evolution Tour," which began in Chicago on Memorial Day, travelled through Missouri in early June, and finished in Los Angeles on the 4th of July.