Oct. 6--HAZARD -- Environmentalists' campaigns against strip mining and coal-fired power plants have been so successful in swaying public opinion recently that the coal industry has started to take a more aggressive, visible approach to protect its interests, Kentucky activists say.

New industry-sponsored groups in the coal fields are sponsoring charitable efforts, concerts and rallies, and distributing stickers, T-shirts and license plates across the region.

A new multistate public relations campaign called FACES of Coal was officially launched last week in Kentucky; its aim is to educate people outside the mining regions about the benefits organizers say coal brings to the state: low electricity rates that attract other industries, high-paying jobs in poor areas, and flat land for development where there used to be unusable mountainsides.

"We're under attack," said Haven King, the Perry County clerk and director of Coal Mining Our Future, an industry-sponsored non-profit group he formed in response to the so-called stream saver bill that was intended in 2008 to halt valley fills -- low places filled with rock and dirt leftover from strip mining.

King credits his group's letter-writing campaign and rallies with keeping the bill from being passed in the General Assembly. In the year that followed, Coal Mining Our Future spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on senior citizens centers and other charities.

The group was the first responder with food, clothing and supplies to victims of Breathitt County flash flooding in May, King said. A "Friends of Coal" license plate developed this year is the fastest-selling special-interest plate ever in the state, King said. Schoolchildren who receive clothing or food through their school resource centers in some counties are told a coal miner provided it through Coal for Kids, a charitable effort Coal Mining Our Future helped start.

Coal Mining Our Future, sponsored by companies such as TECO, ICG and Pine Branch Coal, chartered 28 buses to take about 15,000 Eastern Kentuckians to a Labor Day rally in Holden, W.Va., sponsored by Massey Energy, King said. A Coal Mining Our Future rally brought about as many to a Knott County surface mine site in August.

Coal companies have always given back to the communities, King said, but without fanfare and often without credit. "The reason they are tooting their horn is because of me," he said.