Students send valentines to Kaine

Students at Virginia Tech, along with students at 11 other Virginia colleges and universities, delivered hundreds of Valentine's Day cards to Gov. Tim Kaine yesterday urging him to stop the Wise County power plant.

The Environmental Coalition at Tech led the drive on campus to collect Valentine's cards and photo petitions over the past two weeks.

Tom Owens, Virginia campus coordinator for Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said that there were over a hundred cards delivered to Kaine from Virginia Tech alone, including video or slide shows of all the different cards. The cards sported messages such as "We love our mountains and so should you this Valentine's Day."

"We hope that Kaine takes a strong stand and becomes a leader on this issue like many already have," Owens said.

According to a press release, the plant is required to use coal mined in Virginia, which "will exacerbate the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining." Twenty-nine mountains in Virginia have already been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining.

"We can see from the past couple of months that this issue of coal and climate change have improved greatly all across the state," Owens said.