Editor:

The Montana Environmental Information Center is not alone in challenging new coal fired power plants. For more information, please e-mail, nonewcoalplants@energyjustice.net.

As a coal miner's daughter and granddaughter and coming from eight generations in southern West Virginia, I send readers greetings. I felt compelled to write this letter after reading an article in this paper that praised new coal power plants.

Please understand that using the word clean and coal close together is both a lie and insulting to the people of Appalachia.

Even if they could get cotton candy to come out of the smoke stacks, my people's blood is all over that coal. They can't burn it clean, if they can't mine it clean!

Every time Americans flip that switch, we are blowing up our mountains, our homes and burying our streams. Please visit www.ilovemountains.org for a real shock about the true cost of coal.

We demand that no new coal plants of any type be considered until steep slope strip mining and mountaintop removal is stopped in Appalachia. Coal should be considered a transition fuel only. The only new plants acceptable then will be the ones that use carbon injection as replacement of old plants, and those new plants should have to prove their technology.

We ask all environmental groups to join us to help stop the devastation and destruction of the Appalachians and destruction of our children's future. We need clean renewable energy now. It is wrong for us parents to leave the messes of our convenience for our children to clean up - if it can be cleaned up.

We must go forward and build a new economy with the millions of jobs created by the switch to solar and wind energy. Our children will thank us for their livable Earth. Without clean air and water, no one will survive.

Think about it, there are no jobs on a dead planet. Liberty in a wasteland is meaningless.

JULIA BONDS, Whitesville, W.Va.

Community outreach coordinator,

Coal River Mountain Watch