Vicco Mountain Witness Flyover

by Colin Lauderdale

    March 19th in Louisville was the first public screening of Deep Down, a documentary about organizing and Mountaintop Removal in Floyd County.  The next day, Beverly May—Deep Down’s humble protagonist—flew down to Hazard with Jim and Marianne Welch and a host of other environmentally concerned citizens, both Kentuckian and not.

   Aside from Bev, Jim and Marianne, the plane carried Terry Cook, Executive Director of the Nature Conservancy in Kentucky; Mark Wourms, Executive Director of Bernheim Forest; Peter Crane, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry; and his assistant, Eugenie Gentry.  The group flew over current and reclaimed MTR sites on their way to the Hazard airport, with commentary from Beverly May.

   There, we all met to caravan down to Vicco and McKinley Sumner’s backyard to see a leveled mountain from the ground.  We met up with McKinley and Truman Hurt at the base of the mountain, and drove as far as our cars could go for a lunch break.  We sat cross-legged in a circle, eating our turkey sandwiches and listening to McKinley as he educated us on his experience with the coal industry.  Sandwiches finished and story heard, we began the hike up to the mine site.

    Conversation, both in the cars and on the hike, centered around the structures in our state and local governments that allow and encourage MTR and the various efforts to regulate or eliminate it.  Names of senators and initials of organizations were freely thrown into the discussion.  But the trip down the mountain was a lot more subdued than the trip up—everyone affected by the destruction of a mountain on the beautiful first day of spring. 

    With the tour, we spread the word a little further, laying some groundwork for possible allies and supporters in the future.  But if none of that plays out, we did gain a few more memberships.