This just in announcing the end of the latest tree-sitting protest against mountaintop removal (see previous posts here, here and here):

Catherine-Ann MacDougal is descending her oak tree on Coal River Mountain that she has lived in for the past month in protest of strip mining, and police have been notified. MacDougal, an activist with the RAMPS Campaign, had been in the oak tree on Alpha Natural Resources’ Bee Tree permit since July 20; until August 2, she had been joined by fellow RAMPS activist Becks Kolins. Their tree-sit, the longest in West Virginia history, effectively halted blasting on the Bee Tree hollow portion of the site, aside from a small blast released on the third day of the tree-sit.

As the Associated Press reported yesterday evening:

A mining protester has ended her treetop sit-in at an Alpha Natural Resources mine on Coal River Mountain and is now charged with trespassing.

Becks Kolins and Catherine-Ann MacDougal climbed into platforms July 20 to protest operations at the Bee Tree surface mine. They’re affiliated with Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival.

Kolins descended Tuesday. McDougal says she’s staying put.

You can read the RAMPS press release here and a longer statement from Kolins here. RAMPS also explained that it has a meeting scheduled with Alpha Natural Resources, which now owns the Bee Tree Mine:

While the tree-sit continues to demand an end to strip mining on Coal River Mountain, the RAMPS Campaign has organized a meeting today between Alpha Natural Resources senior management and residents of coal-impacted communities at Alpha’s regional headquarters in Madison, W.Va. This meeting is a follow-up to a similar meeting in May, in which local residents’ discussed their concerns with the Massey mining operations that Alpha was poised to acquire. Residents discussed the documented connections between mountaintop removal mining and degraded water quality, flooding, and serious public health impacts. A study published just last week by WVU’s Dr. Michael Hendryx found elevated cancer rates in a survey of Coal River Valley residents, further confirming the allegations of area residents and the two tree sitters. At the meeting, residents requested that Alpha make specific changes to reduce the impacts of the Massey operations that it has inherited, including halting blasting near the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment which is located near the Bee Tree permit where the tree-sit is occurring.

The group’s website also includes an account of a recent citizen inspection of the operation.

A group called Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS)  is saying on its website:

Two protesters associated with the RAMPS Campaign halted blasting on a portion of Alpha Natural Resources’ Bee Tree mountaintop removal mine on Coal River Mountain today by ascending two trees. Catherine-Ann MacDougal, 24, and Becks Kolins, 21, are on platforms approximately 80 feet off the ground within 300 feet of active blasting on the mine. The banners hanging from their platforms read “Stop Strip Mining” and “For Judy Bonds” in honor of strip mining activist Julia “Judy” Bonds of Packsville, W.Va. who died of cancer earlier this year. The activists demand that Alpha Natural Resources stop strip mining on Coal River Mountain and that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection prohibit future strip mining in the Coal River Watershed.

The website quoted MacDougal:

I feel, with the keen urgency of extinction, that Alpha Natural Resources cannot be allowed to tear apart Coal River Mountain and allow all those living below it to suffer for their profits. The Coal River watershed cannot tolerate any more damage. There is no way that I can begin to detail the comprehensive destruction that surface mining and mountaintop removal wreak on the forest ecosystem of the southern Appalachian mountains.

This action comes just a little more than a month after word that another group of protesters, affiliated with the group Climate Ground Zero, had settled a lawsuit that the operation’s former owners, Massey Energy, filed over similar peaceful civil disobedience protests.

UPDATED:  The press release from RAMPS added:

Lisa Henderson, Judy Bonds’ daughter and Coal River Valley resident, sees this action as a continuation of her mother’s work.

“I hope that today’s actions serve as a symbol that the struggle to live peacefully and pollution-free in the Coal River Valley did not end when my mother’s life did. My mother and I often compared the fight to survive here on Coal River to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. I am sure that generations from now, our children will look back on this movement also and the actions of the people involved, and ask the question of their elders, ‘Whose side were you on?’”

A federal magistrate judge has ruled today that anti-mountaintop removal protesters do not have to answer Massey Energy’s questions about who assisted or participated in peaceful civil disobedience actions against the company.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge R. Clarke VanDervort is posted here.

Massey is suing the protesters, and the company’s lawyers wanted to question defendants in the case about who else was involved in planning or organizing the actions.  But the judge ruled:

In deposing defendants, plantiffs may not inquire specifically respecting other persons who assisted or participated with Defendants in any way prior to, during or after their January, 2010, occupation of Plaintiff’s Beetree Surface Mine property.

As the judge explained:

The First Amendment  … establishes the right to associate with others and organize in protest of the policies and programs of the Government. It applies in the context of discovery as a qualified privilege against disclosure of information when the party asserting the privilege demonstrates that the disclosure would likely impair the associational activities of the group.

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Part of a group calling themselves Kentucky Rising leave the state capitol building, Monday, Feb. 14, 2011, where they had occupied the governor’s offices since Friday to greet the I Love The Mountains Rally in Frankfort, Ky. From left to right is Doug Doerrfeld, Patty Wallace, Terri Blanton, Wendell Berry, and Micky McCoy. The group and the rally were protesting the coal mining practice called Mountaintop Removal. (AP Photo/The Independent, John Flavell)

John Cheves from the Lexington Herald-Leader reports:

Author Wendell Berry and 13 other environmental activists emerged from the state Capitol on Monday to roars of approval and applause, ending their four-day occupation of Gov. Steve Beshear’s outer office.

The protesters joined several hundred people on the Capitol steps for the “I Love Mountains” rally, an annual event held to promote “stream saver” legislation that effectively would end mountaintop removal coal mining in Eastern Kentucky. Previous bills died for lack of action; similarly, this year’s bills are languishing in committee.

“We came because the land, its forests and its streams are being destroyed by the surface mining of coal; because the people are suffering intolerable harm to their homes, their health and their communities; and because all the people downstream are threatened by the degradation and contamination of the rivers,” Berry, who lives in Henry County, told the crowd.

Jim Bruggers of the Courier-Journal of Louisville explained in his story that Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear had agreed to one of the protesters’ demands: That he visit the homes of coalfield residents to see first-hand how mountaintop removal impacts their lives.

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Governor Steve Beshear, center listens to a statement by Kentucky author Wendell Berry, right, Friday, Feb. 11, 2011 in the Governor’s office at the Capitol building in Frankfort, Ky. Gov. Steve Beshear has met with members of the environmental group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth who are waging a sit-in at his Capitol office. Beshear spoke with more than a dozen demonstrators Friday afternoon in the reception area of his office where some have promised to stay until they’re arrested. (AP Photo/The Lexington Herald-Leader, David Perry)

A group of mountaintop removal opponents — including noted author Wendell Berry — made it through the night and is apparently continuing their sit-in protest at the office of Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports:

Many of the 14 people were able to bring in blankets from their cars. Supporters brought in pillows, and the State Police allowed the delivery of pizzas last night and coffee on Saturday morning.

The protesters — which included high profile authors Wendell Berry and Silas House — met with Beshear on Friday, but said they would stay at the office until they were arrested. But Beshear said they were welcome to occupy his office in the state Capitol through the weekend.

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Sen. Joe Manchin, right, and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, far left, attend a rally for coal Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011 at the Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. More than 1,000 people crowded round the well of the state Capitol’s rotunda Thursday to rally in response to a recent action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner)

Hey folks, I’ve been tied up all day covering the release of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s report on the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, W.Va., but I wanted to pass on the early AP report on the “Rally for Coal” at the Capitol here in Charleston. The Gazette’s Dr. Paul Nyden will have a complete report in tomorrow’s Gazette.

By Lawrence Messina

The Associated Press

From acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to working miners and their relatives, West Virginians spoke out Thursday at a rally against the Obama administration’s handling of the state’s coal industry.

More than 1,000 people filled the well of the state Capitol’s rotunda in response to last week’s regulatory action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The crowd also included scores of opponents of mountaintop removal mining who support the EPA action.

EPA announced last week that it’s revoking a crucial water permit for Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 mine. The 2,300-acre Logan County operation would have been the state’s largest mountaintop removal site.

Tomblin, a Democrat, was the first in a string a speakers at the hourlong event to blast EPA for that decision.

“This is about sending a message to Washington,” Tomblin said. “This rally is about jobs, plain and simple.”

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Anti-mountaintop removal protesters wave as they begin to plant trees at a Kayford Mountain strip mine. Gazette photo by Chip Ellis

The Gazette’s Zac Taylor has the story today about Sunday’s big mountaintop removal protest action, in which activists planted trees on a mine site near Kayford Mountain out in eastern Kanawha County.

Climate Ground Zero reports that there were no arrests, and they explain the reasons for choosing tree-planting as a peaceful protest action:

The standard reclamation practiced by mining companies is inadequate, which involves regrading high walls into gentle, highly-compacted slopes and seeding the rocky soil with grass. Some plant trees but rarely return to tend them–most trees don’t survive long. The extremely diverse mixed mesophytic forests of Central Appalachia, which rely upon folded land that creates lots of micro-climates, cannot regrow on reclaimed surface mines. Native plants like ginseng require the steep north-facing slopes of Appalachia that retain moisture, and will never grow on the gentle slopes of a reclaimed strip mine.

Here’s a release put out yesterday by Climate Ground Zero:

Activists from the groups Mountain Justice, Coal River Mountain Watch and Climate Ground Zero have announced plans for a mass non-violent civil disobedience action on Kayford Mountain on Sunday, Oct. 24, in opposition to mountaintop removal coal mining. The event will begin with a rally at noon on Sunday, followed by a mass civil disobedience action at the strip mine located on Kayford Mountain.

A press conference announcing the action will be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 19, in the courtyard of the West Virginia State Capitol.

Larry Gibson, whose family has owned land on Kayford Mountain for generations, said he thinks what the activists have been doing should “alert people to what is coming their way, so they have a chance to stop the destruction before it happens in their own backyard – in West Virginia or elsewhere.”

The mass action comes on the heels of Appalachia Rising, the largest national gathering of people in opposition to Mountaintop Removal coal mining to date. Appalachia Rising, a similar conference recently held in Washington D.C., ended in over 100 civil disobedient arrests in front of the White House.

Law enforcement stand ready as protesters sit in front of the White House in Washington, Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, during a demonstration calling for the end of mountaintop removal for mining. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Here’s the latest Associated Press report on Appalachian Rising:

By Frederic J. Frommer

WASHINGTON — Around 100 people have been arrested outside the White House while protesting against mountaintop removal mining.

The protesters were arrested Monday after refusing orders from U.S. Park Police to leave the sidewalk outside the White House. They staged a rally at nearby Freedom Plaza earlier in the day.

The crowd of mostly youthful ralliers carried signs like “Blowing Up Mountains for Coal Poisons People” and “Mountain ecosystems won’t grow back.” Some carried small white crosses adorned with messages such as “water pollution” and “corporate greed.”

In mountaintop removal mining, forests are clear-cut, explosives blast apart the rock, and machines scoop out exposed coal. The earth left behind is dumped into valleys, often covering intermittent streams.

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