Environmentalists are launching their strongest protest yet against President Obama, calling him a traitor for not putting an end to controversial coal mining practices.

"He has really gone back on his word to regulate [environmental policy] by science," Bo Webb of Coal River Mountain Watch said.

Webb is helping organize a protest at the White House on September 27 to demand that the president put an end to mountaintop mining. The effort originating in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia is expected to draw people from more than 28 states.

The organizers of what is being called Appalachia Rising are also targeting media and the public with a series of workshops preceding the rally. They will focus on how mountaintop mining endangers Appalachian communities.

The process requires using explosives to expose and extract coal buried inside mountains. Environmental groups have sounded concerns that the procedure pollutes local water sources and endangers the health of communities.

The Environmental Protection Agency has continued issuing permits nonetheless, maintaining that government oversight ensures that the process is done safely.

"Mountaintop removal mining is an environmental tragedy of immense proportions, but it is fundamentally a human rights issue," Melissa Leahy of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said at a press conference Monday about the upcoming action.

The group is one of the national partners in the campaign started by grassroots groups based in Appalachian communities. Others include Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth.

Several speakers expressed disappointment with President Obama, noting that they had voted for him with the expectation that he would stop the mining.

They invited him to fly over the communities affected by mountaintop mining and blamed industry lobbyists for standing in the way of stricter regulation.

"This administration has fallen short of following up on promises that they will use the best science available to determine what action will be taken on mountaintop removal mining," Chuck Nelson, a fifth-generation coal miner, said.

While the primary goal of next month's action is to get President Obama's attention, the groups also hope the event will bring together disparate groups and draw national attention to this regional cause.

Some of the participants in Appalachia Rising plan to get arrested in acts of civil disobedience to that end, as they did in smaller state-level actions earlier this year.

Webb said they have to step up their efforts because they are running out of time.

"We have two years left," he said. "We have to do this in the Obama administration. To start all over in a Republican administration that, face it, is more corporate friendly, then we have lost all hope."

-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org

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