Radical Action for Mountain Peoples' Survival, or RAMPS, went to Patriot Coal’s Hobet surface mine in Lincoln County for a “Mountain Mobilization” event it said was designed to draw attention to health and safety-endangering mining practices.

According to the Associated Press, the protestors shut down the mine for about three hours. Hobet returned to production later that afternoon.

RAMPS said it started with 50 activists, 10 of which locked themselves to a rock truck, boarded it and hung banners reading “Coal leaves, cancer stays”

“The government has aided and abetted the coal industry in evading environmental and mine safety regulations,” Dustin Steele of RAMPS said Saturday.

“We are here today to demand that the government and coal industry end strip mining, repay their debt to Appalachia, and secure a just transition for this region.”

Patriot’s financial woes stemming from its recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy also served as a focus point for the group.

“For each working miner, Patriot has more than four retired miners who have put their bodies on the line with faith that they would be supported in old age … this is a promise Patriot must keep,” RAMPS officials said.

“Patriot Coal … and its investors are the latest in a long tradition of Appalachian coal bosses to leave illness and environmental devastation in their wake when profits dry up and they go bankrupt.”

Local officials, who told the AP no injuries were reported in the demonstration, said the group could face charges in addition to trespassing, but that decision would sit with the prosecuting attorney.

Patriot Coal did not release public comment on the protest.