UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Lorelei Scarbro, community organizer, alternative energy advocate and opponent of the mining practice known as mountain-top removal (MTR), will give a public lecture at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 15, in the jury space on the first floor of the Stuckeman Family Building on Penn State's University Park campus. She will discuss the current status of MTR in West Virginia, the prospects for alternative and sustainable energy production in the state, and community-building for education and social action.
Scarbro is a native West Virginian and coal miner’s widow from the Coal River Mountain region of the state. She has become a spokesperson for diversifying “power” -- energy and community power in the mono-economic environment of Boone and Raleigh counties. The cost-benefit and private rights defense to implement MTR and strip coal mining is a major source of debate in national economic development and environmental circles. In Pennsylvania, it parallels issues surrounding the Marcellus Shale extraction ventures in the Northern Tier counties.
Scarbro’s lecture is sponsored by the Hamer Center for Community Design in the College of Arts and Architecture and the Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy.