"Who is going to want to play golf when they're setting off dynamite and running haul trucks with all that noise and dust?"

Bill Fields looks at the endangered Clearview Golf Course in the wake of course creator Bill Powell's passing.

On a damp winter day, with the American flag still at half-staff two weeks after Powell's passing, his family and friends ought to have been able to mourn in peace. Instead, they were busy trying to rally support against Buckeye Industrial Mining's proposal to mine coal, from sunrise to sunset, within 370 feet of Clearview's 15th hole. "It's a dire threat," says Jeff Brown, who was instrumental in helping the course be listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2001. "What they propose -- mining and blasting over a period of five years -- will kill this course economically. Who is going to want to play golf when they're setting off dynamite and running haul trucks with all that noise and dust?"

Powell's daughter, Renee, the second black woman to compete on the LPGA Tour, is urging Clearview supporters to write letters opposing the strip mine, which is awaiting approval from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. State Senator Kirk Schuring has communicated with Kevin Collins, president of Evergreen Energy, Buckeye Mining's parent company, urging him to halt the project. "There doesn't need to be a strip mine here," says Schuring.

He also filed this video report: