Environmental activist to visit ETSU today

Environmental activist Larry Gibson will present "Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia" on Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m., at ETSU.The free public event will be held in the Martha Street Culp Auditorium within the D.P. Culp University Center.

Gibson's family has lived on or near Kayford Mountain, located in Boone County, W.Va., since the late 1700s. While they once resided on a low-lying part of the mountain and looked up to the peaks that surrounded them, the family - after 18 years of "mountaintop removal" coal mining - now calls the highest point of the land home.

Gibson has been featured prominently in the national media, and, in 2007, he was named a "CNN Hero."

The event is sponsored by the ETSU student group Initiative for Clean Energy (I.C.E.) and by the ETSU Environmental Studies minor.