Coal miner's daughter save mountaintops
Goldman Environmental Prize For Grassroots Activism
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 19, 2009
Who: Maria Gunnoe, 40
Where: Bob White, W.Va.
Gunnoe, who comes from a long line of coal miners, has fought the practice of removing the tops of mountains and filling valleys below with tailings since a 1,200-acre coal mine was blasted out of a ridge above her home in rural West Virginia nine years ago.
Mountaintop removal mining has destroyed an estimated 470 mountains and buried or polluted 2,000 miles of rivers and streams in Central Appalachia. Gunnoe's house sits below a 10-story mound of valley fill that she said contains two toxic ponds that have flooded her property seven times and contaminated her drinking water.
Gunnoe, whose Cherokee ancestry can be traced back to the tribe's forced removal from Georgia in the early 1800s, organized a regional campaign to stop the mining, including a plan by Jupiter Holdings at its Boone County mine.
She has been threatened, her children have been harassed and her daughter's dog was fatally shot, all allegedly as a result of her opposition to the mining operation.