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At the heart of Americas hope for a clean coal future lies the decimation of West Virginias richest landscapes. More profound still is the heavy toll on human lives playing out just beneath the surface. Armed with the power of their convictions, four individuals emerge as heroes from the scattered voices of their valley, forcing America to look into the eyes of those being sacrificed On Coal River.
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Synopsis
ON COAL RIVER takes viewers on a gripping emotional journey into the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, where longtime local residents begin to uncover the toxic effects of America’s increased demand for cheap coal, a resource that supplies half of America’s electricity.
As a former miner, Ed Wiley knows the importance of West Virginia’s largest industry, but when he senses his granddaughter’s recurrent illness is linked to a coal waste facility near her school, Ed embarks on a quest to have the school relocated to safer ground. To his dismay not everyone in the valley recognizes the impending threat, and he soon finds himself in the midst of a political tug-of-war.
Ed’s neighbors Bo and Judy understand the problem all too well. While Judy crisscrosses the state in search of sympathetic politicians, Bo pours over maps and legal documents that may hold proof of the mining companies’ illegal activity, all in an effort to slow the destruction. Meanwhile, massive explosions from nearby mountaintop removal sites grow closer with each passing day, and before long their worst fears begin to look increasingly like an inevitable reality.
Across the valley, Maria Lambert recognizes a pattern in the unusual health problems plaguing her community. Following intuition, and what she describes as a mission from above, Maria gathers evidence suggesting the state’s largest mining company has contaminated her neighborhood’s water supply.
Shot over a four year period, ON COAL RIVER follows the transformation of these four remarkable individuals as they face the challenge of a lifetime, fighting for the survival of their way of life, and the lives of future generations.
Background
Coal River Valley is a lush green swath of southern West Virginia that sits at the place where our national environmental policy collides with our desire for cheap energy. This steep terrain comprises some of the oldest and most diverse mountains in the world, where typically northern species mingle with their southern cousins, producing a unique biological abundance. It is also an area containing vast amounts of coal - the fossil fuel that currently powers 50% of domestic electricity. Commercial mining began here in the 1850s and has continued through repeated cycles of boom and bust, mine wars and strikes, and the relentless march of mechanization.
Today, new mining and processing methods are taking a heavy toll on the Valley’s environment and its people. Coal companies are practicing a technique called ‘mountaintop removal’ which uses explosives and huge machines to blast apart mountains and extract the thin seams of coal running through the ground. Some estimate that mountaintop removal has already destroyed over 500,000 acres of land and 1500 miles of streams. In the pages of Vanity Fair, Michael Shnayerson described the new landscape of Coal River: “in some places as far as the eye can see, [mountains] are being blasted and obliterated in one of the greatest acts of physical destruction this country has ever wreaked upon itself.” For local residents, mountaintop removal means blasts that shake their homes, hazardous dust, dangerous floods, and the radical transformation of the landscape around them.
The results of mountaintop removal are dramatic and obvious, but coal processing plants are perhaps even more dangerous for mining communities. These plants crush and chemically “wash” the coal to remove impurities that can cause problems such as acid rain. The irony to local residents is that this “clean coal” produces millions of more gallons of hazardous waste. Some communities suspect that this waste is getting into their well water, causing high levels of cancer and other diseases.
Continued mechanization and worsening impacts from mining have caused the valley to lose much of its population—both of its high schools have closed since 1991. Those who remain love their community and want to stay, but they are split in their opinions about how to continue to live here. Many believe without coal mining, there is no economic future for their community, and that the industry known as “King Coal” will never change its ways. Others see that if left unchecked, the mining impacts on the land and water will turn their Valley into an unlivable sacrifice zone for cheap energy.
Help bring this project to life
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April 5, 2009
Dear Sen. Byrd: Restoring mountains could be your greatest legacy
Soon, as you know, as the colorful peepers of red bush and wake robins pull from the clinch of winter, I will take my granddaughter’s hand and roam our Clay Branch hollows in search of ramps. This has been a 150-year tradition in my family in the Coal River mountain range, as I am sure it was for your family along Wolf Creek.
Bo Webb, Charleston Gazette Op-ed
April 4, 2009
W.Va. House resolution supports Coal River wind farm
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More than 40 members of the House of Delegates have signed a resolution supporting the development of a wind farm on Coal River Mountain in Southern West Virginia. By Alison Knezevich, The Charleston Gazette
April 2, 2009
Legislators, Greens, Industry React to Climate Bill
Reactions to the newly unveiled American Clean Energy and Security Act, which promotes clean energy and tries to stop climate change, have been pouring in all day.
NY Times
April 2, 2009
Judge voids easier WV mountaintop mining permits
A federal judge on Tuesday voided a streamlined permitting process for companies to fill valleys with materials left over from mountaintop removal mining.
AP via Forbes
March 24, 2009
EPA Halts Mountaintop Mining Permits
(CBS/AP) The Environmental Protection Agency is putting on hold hundreds of mountaintop coal-mining permits until it can evaluate the projects’ impacts on streams and wetlands.
March 19, 2009
Scientists: Tests show metals in state’s coal slurry
“West Virginians eager to know what’s in the slurry that coal companies pump into worked-out underground mines will have to wait until May for the state’s answers, but preliminary independent tests suggest it contains heavy metals they wouldn’t want to drink.” Vicky Smith, AP
March 19, 2009
Big mountaintop removal hearing on Monday
“We asked yesterday what President Barack Obama is going to do about mountaintop removal coal mining…Well, on Monday we might get a hint about Obama’s plans.”
Ken Ward Jr. via
March 2, 2009
Judy Bonds and Bill McKibben on Democracy Now
Interviewed by Amy GoodmanVideo via Democracy Now!
March 1, 2009
Bo Webb’s Letter to President Obama
“As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia…”
via Alternet
March 1, 2009
Coen Brothers Direct New “Clean Coal” Ad
In this new ad, a pitchman gives us the hard sell on a “Clean Coal Clean”-scented air freshener that works just as well as “clean coal.”
via Huffington Post
February 25, 2009
Appeals Court Reverses Limits on Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2009/2009-02-17-092.asp
February 14, 2009
On Coal River is currently in post production & is seeking finishing funds
Coal wins big in Senate stimulus package
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200901270569
Blowing Away King Coal
http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/01/29/mountaintop_removal/
Coal River Mountain Can’t Wait
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/2/3/9038/46414/
Peabody Energy profits soar
http://www.kentucky.com/101/story/674080.html
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Before we rest on our smug laurels of the pristine environmental policies of the Commonwealth, this bears consideration:
BRAYTON POINT 190,000,000 POUNDS
SOMERSET 60,100,000 POUNDS
SALEM HARBOR 140,800,00 POUNDS
WEST SPRINGFIELD 40,000,000 POUNDS
MOUNT TOM 75,200,000 POUNDS
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Environmental Terrorism made the point:
On a hot summer day in Middleboro, you can stand in an open field and see the haze, air pollution, ozone. Call it what you will, you can't breath. The cloud just sits there because of the topography and well, it just might have something to do with some dirty power plants.
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Even if you never had breathing problems before, welcome to Middleboro's poor air quality.
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There are no state statistics available that I've been able to find that indicate that air quality is being monitored locally, but on the hot, muggy days, you don't need statistics to tell you there's a problem.
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When the proposed Kerzner/Wolman Mega Monster Casino [that has become an impossibility due to two SCOTUS decisions] was under consideration, no air quality information was discovered or presented because apparently Middleboro air quality is not monitored and recorded. The summer haze tells its own story.
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Much the same can be said of the proposed Brockton Power Plant [emphasis mine].
FACT/CHECK:
FACT: The proposed power plant would emit the same amount of greenhouse gas as
two hundred six thousand (206,000) automobiles.
CHECK: Certificate of the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs (Page 3
Paragraph 3) READ NOW & EPA Emissions Facts (Page 2 Recommendations)
READ NOW
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FACT: This power plant is not needed to meet the energy demands of this region.
CHECK: Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board Hearing,
January 29, 2009. PART 1: WATCH VIDEO &
PART 3: WATCH VIDEO
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FACT: The proponents have not demonstrated there would be no local health
impacts.
CHECK: Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board Hearing, January 29, 2009.
PART 2: WATCH VIDEO & Metcalf & Eddy Report (Page 5) READ NOW
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FACT: During normal operations there would be only three (3) to seven (7) workers
at the proposed plant.
CHECK: The Energy Facilities Siting Board Memorandum (Page 41). READ NOW
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FACT: The proposed plant will emit five of the six pollutants considered harmful to
public health and the environment.
CHECK: National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) READ NOW
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FACTS (HIGHLIGHTS):
A foreign based company and a group of local investors have been working discreetly
to gain approval to build a 200 million dollar, massive 350 megawatt fossil fuel power
plant (Natural Gas and Diesel) with a 250 foot smokestack and several cooling
towers off Brockton's Main Street, close to the towns of West and East Bridgewater.
This location is surrounded by Schools (Davis Elementary is only 1700 feet away),
Elderly Housing, Businesses and Thousands of Homes.
If They Build It, It Will Bring:
109 Tons per year Carbon Monoxide
10 Tons per year Hazardous Air Pollutants
85 Tons per year Particulate Matter
7 Tons per year Sulfur Dioxide
31 Tons per year Volatile Organic Compounds
107 Tons per year Oxides of Nitrogen
1,134,000 Tons per year Carbon Dioxide
1,600,000 Gallons of Treated Sewage Water Mist Into Our Air Everyday From
cooling towers.
750,000 Gallons of diesel fuel will be stored at the plant, to replenish would require
37 Round Trips each day for 60 days by 10,000 gallon oil tankers delivering diesel.
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OTHER FACTS:
- Brockton’s power plant will not lower our taxes or our electric bills.
- Brockton is already ranked ninth (9th) on the list of environmentally overburdened New England communities.
- Brockton is already one of the ten towns with the highest asthma hospitalization
rates in Massachusetts.
- The 250 foot smokestack will release toxic pollutants for miles and change
Brockton’s landscape.
- The plant emits nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, airborne particulates and carbon
dioxide, a major pollutant and cause of global warming.
- Brockton Power also proposes using diesel that releases twice the carbon dioxide as
the natural gas. 750,000 gallons of diesel fuel will be stored at the plant.
- Brockton Power will store 25,000 gallons of aqueous ammonia.
- There will
only be 20 long term jobs created by this plant,
and there is no guarantee that those jobs will go to Brockton residents.
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For inexplicable reasons, widespread union support has been enjoyed for the Dirty Brockton Power Plant that will create 20 jobs, just as they have continued to support the false hopes of casino gambling that will create low wage jobs.
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The Middleboro Board of Selectmen showed little interest in the threats posed to air quality, perhaps believing that pollution stopped at the town's borders and protected their rarified air.
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As a footnote to the endeavor, former Brockton Mayor Yunits was presented for consideration as a candidate for Middleboro Town Manager even though he lacked the experience and was a paid lobbyist for the Brockton Power Plant. Brockton Enterprise Media Nation
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