Moving America Beyond Coal, Lecture At Williams College
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Mary Anne Hitt, the deputy director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, will present a lecture entitled "Moving America Beyond Coal" on Tuesday, April 7, at 8 p.m. in Wege Auditorium on the Williams College campus.The event is free and open to the public.
Hitt grew up in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. As an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, she founded the group Students Promoting Environmental Action in Knoxville, the first environmentalist group on campus.
She has been the executive director of three grassroots environmental groups, including the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project in Asheville, N.C., the Ecology Center in Missoula, Mont., and Appalachian Voices in Boone, N.C..
Under her leadership, Appalachian Voices launched the website iLoveMountains.org. The website serves as an online organizing network against mountaintop removal, a form of coal mining that destroys mountains and the surrounding environment. Since the fall of 2008, Hitt has worked on the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, which aims to reduce industrial use of coal and promote sources of clean energy.

