Dean & Nina Cornett honored for lifetimes of work

Long-time KFTC members Dean and Nina Cornett have been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of a long list of environmental achievements.

The Earth Day award was presented by the Kentucky Environmental Quality Commission.

The Cornetts live part of the year in Kentucky and part of the year in Alaska, and work on environmental issues in both locations. In Alaska they concentrate their efforts on preserving forests, bears and salmon. In Kentucky, their efforts include:

• establishing a non-profit corporation (web site www.ecooutpost.org) which supports environmental efforts across eastern Kentucky;
• pursuing ongoing efforts to obtain legislation to make it easier to investigate and prosecute timber theft in Kentucky;
• heading a clean-up committee that cleared more than 200 tons of trash from their small town, trash that when collected and piled for removal comprised a stack 100 feet long, 16 feet deep and as much as 7 feet high;
• converting a one-acre trash dump in the center of their town into a park with a walking trail, landscaping, benches, an amphitheater and a stage;
• planting trees to control coal dust and improve appearance;
• contributing to the successful fight against allowing overweight gravel trucks on roads across Kentucky, encompassing not only almost all eastern Kentucky roads, but also downstate routes such as New Circle Road;
• producing videos on environmental and Appalachian subjects, including one about the bears in an eastern Kentucky park (The Bears of Kingdom Come) and a second about the demise of the American Chestnut (American Chestnut: Appalachian Apocalypse) which has aired on both Kentucky and New England PBS stations.

The Cornetts lives in Blackey, in Letcher County.

For more information about the Cornetts, their environmental efforts and their environmental videos, visit the following web sites: www.cornettmedia.com, www.ecooutpost.org and http://timbertheft.weebly.org.