Mountaintop mine foe in Newsweek.com write-up

In a recent interview with Newsweek, Julia "Judy" Bonds, co-director of the watchdog group Coal River Mountain Watch, discussed the difficulty in fighting an industry that provides jobs for so many rural workers. But she insists that ultimately a shift away from a coal economy to renewable energy such as wind is the only way to empower local communities and improve the lives of Appalachians. (Coal River Mountain Watch photo)

"Bonds, who lives in Boone County, W.Va., calls her region the epicenter of coal's effects on human health," Daniel Stone writes in an online-only story for the magazine. "But she says it's also the site of a budding environmental movement." Her own family finds it hard to support her cause "primarily because the coal industry is the only job in town," adds Stone.

Bonds explained that the more people who are affected by polluted air and water and have to live with the daily blasting associated with mountaintop removal, the more activists against coal are created. Or as she put it "the most ardent and passionate activist is the one who's just been blasted or flooded." (Read more)