Larry's Place ........ Almost Heaven

DOROTHY, W.Va. - Tacked to the front porch of a cabin atop Kayford Mountain is a sign. "Larry's Place," it reads. "Almost Heaven."

Then he turns away from the Patriot Coal Corp. project and gazes left toward the unbroken green tentacles of the Coal River Mountain. It is a web of jagged ridges, some rising more than 3,300 feet. At its base are communities like Colcord, a few dozen neatly kept homes along Sycamore Creek. Under its canopy are bears and blackberries, white-tailed deer and wild turkey, ginseng and sassafras.

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Money talks
But the battle is uphill when nearly everyone stands to get rich from the coal.

The companies that own the land make money leasing it to Virginia-based Massey. Shareholders make money when Massey's stock price rises. Chief Executive Don Blankenship makes money when shareholders are happy.

And state government, which gets more than $300 million a year in severance taxes, needs the money.

"So do hookers and so do pimps," grumbles 53-year-old Lorelei Scarbro, whose 10 acres on Rock Creek are threatened by Massey's plan. "That doesn't make it OK. ... It's not OK for us to be sacrificed so the rest of the world can have more energy."

"Coal hasn't hurt us. Coal's helped us," says Joyce Gunnoe, keeper of a general store in Dry Creek.

She sees the wind farm activists as meddling outsiders and says the locals who join them are mainly retired or disabled, no longer dependent on the mines for income.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27363178/