Eco Groups Use Online Maps in Mine Fight

[Omaha Steve]

WE NEED A FORUM FOR NEWS THAT IS OVER 12 HOURS OLD THAT HASN'T BEEN POSTED YET!



http://apnews.excite.com/article/20061105/D8L6LS1O1.html

Eco Groups Use Online Maps in Mine Fight
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Nov 4, 10:43 PM (ET)

By SAMIRA JAFARI

VICCO, Ky. (AP) - Benny Campbell experiences mountaintop mining day and night. His bed is rattled by the blasting. Gray dust blankets his porch and car if a few days go by without rain. His electricity goes out repeatedly when the coal miners accidentally knock down power lines.

But the worst thing of all, he says, is that the mountain peaks that once loomed over his lifelong eastern Kentucky home have been flattened by dynamite and bulldozers.

"When I was young, it was a really pretty place," said Campbell, 53, who lives in a hollow called Bull Creek near Vicco. "Now it's just a rock pile. You can't do nothing with it."


Benny Campbell, foreground, holds up a photo of damages caused by mountaintop mining, while McKinley Sumner, background, explains the problems the process has caused in their community near Vicco, Ky., Oct. 30, 2006. An Internet campaign, dubbed "I Love Mountains," is using Google Earth to illustrate the extent of the mountaintop removal in Appalachian communities. (AP Photo/Samira Jafari)


Now environmentalists have found a way to let the rest of the world see what mountaintop coal mining has done to Appalachia: They have started a Web site that uses the Google Earth database to enable people to see aerial reconnaissance photos of the scarred countryside.

FULL story at link above.