Nationally recognized mountaintop removal activist Larry Gibson speaking at Berea College Thursday

Kayford Mountain, West Virginia Photo Courtesy of Vivian Stockman

The Berea College Appalachian Center will be hosting nationally-recognized mountaintop
removal activist Larry Gibson on Thursday, April 9, at 1 p.m. in the Appalachian Center Gallery.

For  more than 200 years, Larry Gibson’s ancestors have lived on Kayford Mountain, located just 35 miles from the capital city of Charleston, West Virginia.  Today, Larry is the only permanent resident on Kayford, as he continues a fight he began 22 years ago to protect his coal-rich land from mountaintop blasting and the consequences he fears it would have for the environment.

Since 1986, the slow-motion destruction of Kayford Mountain has been continuous—24 hours a day, seven days a week. More than two decades after the mountaintop removal project began, Larry Gibson now occupies the highest point of land around: he is enveloped by a 12,000-acre pancake in what was previously a mountain range.

His efforts to save Kayford Mountain and protect the 50 acres that remain of his ancestral home have been chronicled by such media outlets as ABC’s Nightline, CNN’s Heroes, 20/20, U.S. News & World Report, and the New York Times.  Come listen as Gibson shares his first-hand account of the environmental degradation that accompanies mountaintop removal mining and speaks about the need for sustainable energy production and use.