am in the russian capital thanks for being with us on our t.v.'s your headlines toxic smoke that's blanketed moscow finally lifts but the record heat wave shows no signs of relenting hundreds of wildfires still burning in western and central russia with flames now reaching areas that were contaminated by the sheer noble nuclear disaster officials say not to panic as pollution remains deep in the soil offers of help and condolence have been pouring in from around the world. as russia struggles with fire and drought the country's grain exports been temporarily halted to secure domestic needs there's fears that more crops could be lost to the heat and flames that has prompted global grain prices to skyrocket meanwhile millions in india are going hungry while grain stocks rot in temporary storage. and possibly making a comeback in iraq by attracting former u.s. sympathizers with the promise of high pay and now believed to be targeting a sunni group that had aligned itself with coalition forces during the conflict in two thousand and three militia leaders say out-i days capitalizing on u.s.

troop withdrawal and continuing political instability. coming up we'll look at how mountaintop removal mining has affected local communities and critics say become one of the greatest environmental threats in u.s. history stay with us here on r.t. . leg lifts places. let's leg sled to guard a leg.

or longer. a. goal leg . length leg . most of the carbon that we mine from across the the earth is millions of years old coal particularly interesting because per unit of energy generated coal actually it may be the cheapest fuel but it also

releases the most carbon to be with her as carbon dioxide beginning in earnest with the development of the steam engine in the late seventeen early eighteen hundreds he wins begin to. extract fossil carbon from the earth's crust coal oil natural gas even in the absence of humans over some time period it would be uplifted and subject to erosion and removal might return to the it was fair but those rates are tiny compared to the ability of humans to go out with large machines to deliver a large quantities of this material to the surface of the earth where it is burned and the useful generation of energy we have larger quitman that was introduced on surface man's about twenty five years ago here in west virginia which accounted for the ability to recover coal seams that heretofore been unmanageable. dragline

skylab the mining scene step work an economic. and even physically impossible. without the use of that. many people twenty five years ago when the first company said to them buying a bright land they were laughed at and they said there's no way in the world you can get a piece of equipment like that on the narrow ridges southern that blacks and and they were determined through engineering abilities and persistence to make certain that it worked and and it hands.

the man was pleasant. thing. to see. digital be. pleased. to see. the easy way. to get lisa's. dad. says it's the sleek lose. weight plate that these little children guard little children will be protected this night from dream and bring your own family home grand prix. event to do a number of people going to come and i know you're going to marry the night and i guess be able to benefit from every call and from either parent cause kind of fancy

there are a number of years to forsake the family our children to destroy your reaction lord yes that's right here in atlanta. we're going to take your hard earned money. sleep. the slums. sleep. that's. what i found after the flight down my family's i guess. you need to keep moving her back for ten days community math if dismantling the community. once these lessons are gone there is no more of a life. there is no more west virginia it don't grow back it's not going come back i mean you know we had a politician get up on tavi not long ago he said well the reason that jan saying

it's thing extinct the deer are in. order bought this thousand acre. site it's not the garage sale process mountaintop removal coal mine is an awesome display of coal extraction engineering it is also quite simple once the site is a den of clear cutting begins next explosives are used to blast away the earth material polson. then machinery completing massive shovels called dragon lines remove the overburden which is then deposited in adjacent valleys called bally fills mountaintop removal coal mining can bring down the elevation of a peak hundreds of feet sites are often thousands of acres in size but i really think it's our latest action rather than blacksburg and really. in the spring of two thousand and five a group of activists college students and local citizen conservation groups joined

together to oppose the widespread increase in mountaintop removal mines throughout southern appalachian training the group called their campaign mountain just a summer there was going to be kind of this renewal of coal mining in tennessee and some of those mines were going to be you know mountaintop removal mines. you know we were like hey this is you know now we're dealing with this issue too it's not just an issue in kentucky and west virginia like hey let's put something together and kind of up the level of opposition to this issue and let's help make this issue a national issue that everybody has to dealing with. the same what they're doing one. since some why is there a divide in our community. i've got nothing against free speech but when you come in here demanding people's jobs and closure schools dale. and i and all that you're lucky you don't get hurt her but. if somebody is in california or

north carolina or new york city they're connected to mountaintop removal because they're turning on the lights. their opening strategy was to draw attention to a school situated close to a mountaintop removal site in marsh fork west virginia. the mine is owned by massey energy america's fourth largest coal producer marsh fork elementary is a very very scary situation they have two point eight billion gallons of co slurry which is why it's toxic it's toxic material it has arsenic. chromium and there's a lot of really really bad chemicals in this sludge there is a lake of two point eight billion gallons of coast laurie sitting behind this elementary school four hundred yards up on top of a mile. there's two hundred twenty eight kids in the school and the sophistication of engineering that goes into the construction of that is is i

suspect not duplicated in any other physical structure anywhere in in the world in one thousand nine hundred two buffalo creek there was this disaster where one of these impoundments basically blew out millions of gallons of this nasty sludge and water went barreling down a small holler and killed one hundred twenty five people destroyed like four thousand houses a thousand cars you know hundreds of people were injured. besides the danger of flooding while you know the residents are concerned about the health effects posed to school children from the coal processing facility located directly behind marsh fork elementary it's always sits three hundred feet away three hundred fifty feet away it's been there since directly caused the river and you've got serious problems over you got the magnetite you got to walk you've got the ammonia

they use this is bad. they use diesel fuel in there they mix all this stuff together you've got. all the time. you got. problems with her and more more down her. planner for you a lot of kids. in allow them to keep like look all the time or just drain and all the time the kids will come home with blisters and little tiny blisters the size of opinionated all when they're mild. but not everyone shares their concerns in the small community where many residents work for the coal industry that surrounds them accountable and if i was scared i would not let her go there and she will be in first grade she was in kindergarten last year played on the playground three times a day and more like college clothes and unlike us that she never came home.

or you know any fitness and i have manacle records to prove that she has not had anything other than a common cold up like any other child. we. didn't get. frustrated local school board and government officials human action on improving safety at marsh fork elementary. granddaughter kayla attends march for commentary launches the pennies a promise campaign to raise six million dollars to build a new school and so with us here. in the back. seat at the side there. is a terminal. no money to tell. mother that she wanted to build it in school because i don't like. to start the pennies or promise campaign wiley and his granddaughter kayla presented governor with over four hundred dollars in pennies he couldn't orders never collector.

we'd like to see the governor we have some money to present him. the story of a. step down for kids everywhere or you are doing a good to see if you have a young lady here from marsh fork elementary in. the south in. which. case i don't see. people going to start. at the schools some of them are you going to step in. and. it's. ok to have a little give we're here for you but this is our campaign ok. now we're let me just say you know so far as i know we worked on this some we talked about at the forefront but the school for us or at the school where we at with the local board

of education start all over that smack up a whole lot we're not going get them you took us for north to protect the waveland what's we're going to use it women has to go and tell you to ok you know what we're not going to do what we've been doing you put a price on our children here. in our state you put a price this is not an environmental issue this is a little human vein i have tried for two years to work with you on this and i've been ignored and i don't mean to put you in a soft spot here but enough is enough enough it's enough we need to get this took care of your business what these coal companies it is your business your politics this is not about politics we're asking people for money all of this country today is our official announcement of it so it's just it's just in the stages we're going to raise five to ten million dollars it's going to happen we want you to be a part of this we want you to support our efforts we want to help you do a better job and i appreciate i don't mean to be upset and progressive but if this

was your child would you not be well you know that enough for you know since she's beautiful would say what we should we care about our child. down there in there sure it's probably just a lot of issues and i know you're aware there's intimidation going on there a lot of intimidation teacher spoke out last year now he's been told he better start with you we all want to you going to do it how do you do everything in my heart that i want to do that that means that i do everything in my god gods but that we've got to. turn loose jeff goodell's book big coal the dirty secret behind america's energy future explores the history and use of coal in america and throughout the world like many americans i didn't even realize that we still burn coal you know i thought coal was something that went out with top hats and corsets i thought that electricity was just something that flowed down from a golden bowl in the sky i never gave any thought to where it came from the idea that coal produces fifty percent of electricity in america it never occurred to me so i went out to west virginia and i didn't know what to expect their memory i

first knew i was driving outside of charleston and i saw the boom on one of the big drag lines swinging above the hills and i pulled off the road and i hiked out through the woods to the top of this hill and i got this view down into this strip mine and it was just like hell had opened up before me. the money and the coal mining has always gone to the top and been siphoned out by the owners essentially whether their corporations are called barons like don blankenship it's a commodity business every penny they have to spend for safety for wages for health care or anything like that is money that they see coming directly out of their pocket and you know the history of coal mining is very clear on this there's no it's not a subtle thing you know this is an industry that views workers as disposable and views the landscape as disposable and it's all about getting the coal out of the

ground as quickly. oh the tools there is not in love just go with you bottom yourself. and if you start out into madness you had to have those tools that let you get a loan created company still. for about three presses put it this way lloyd your coke head company stores they are g.e. you lived near kochi if you work for them they don't want a kitchen some miles of store. and one of the others all matters bad they still owed to company store you could pitch it won't pay a mo. he made company money scrip don't close it wasn't good it was company store as i got an updated script it's worth more today than it was. right.

usually until the you know you could make more to dolls day right here sell the kit trick to much admitting to use military building check to. give you a hand call the stamp you number on what you got your car loaded with coal somewhere on this car you would i want to check to see and be a mule driver lead times i'd be go on board. in one state school he would pull you to cohen here drop it off unhook piecemeal from it come to the phone. right now it really easy loud rock him with you cold who show your life you've got a water tank in a slot. of a little water drip in your career bud senior writer. and does a smear of good but it works pretty good.

number on all sides. oh yes you know look at the history of our area especially they with big communities now today with great rings big companies still worth everything the painful i mean the company housed all down that river or stuff and set their. our schools are good because there's no like all the stores were or close and nothing's coming back these are people with this coal company in their tie can take and tie can never put it all go to go early with you and you're broke and go on the big go on the road with. five years. top removal site moved into the head waters of the stream that runs from a home in the past five years i've been flooded seven times there's been about five

acres my property it's washed away into the stream down below where i live. my property has been completely devastated devalued there's no way i could say on relocate my property it's worthless at the mine company had the option of getting in touch with me and letting me know what was coming at me and they did it and they trapped me and my kids have a flooding hollow and basically trashed our lives now when someone does that to you you don't go along with it you have no choice but to go against i go home to it i live in the middle of this walk. because it's ok it's ok that me he'll be away from southern west virginia where is the middle of this hail so am i ask my son. roan.

i don't know nobody nothing and i don't own space million jobs i don't own jobs and if i thank god i do their day and roam across appalachians coal fields mining jobs are vital to local economies my husband us work with my essay for just eight or nine years and they all just we really appreciate message that's where we get our money that you know our way of living but traditional deep mining requires more workers than mountaintop removal since nine hundred fifty the total number of mining jobs has steadily decreased from approximately one hundred twenty thousand to less than twenty thousand today over the same period coal production has steadily increased many coalfield residents are also concerned about another byproduct of coal production slurry pons. the slurry impalements the way that we dispose of the refuse that comes from the cleaning of coal which is

literally nothing but dirt and rock i mean that's what you're separating from the coal so that's what you're disposing of it's not toxic it's not you know as people many people would like you to believe that there's something only it's the indigenous dirt and rock that is caught up in the coal seam and that natural material includes mercury lead arsenic and a whole suite of heavy metals which as long as they're in that rock you can drink the water because they'll be underground they'll be they will not be exposed to oxygen that if you don't disturb them they will not be brought into solution and you can literally some of the best water we have in west virginia comes out of a coal seam but when you disturb that rock and start grinding it up in the fine particles adding a whole bunch of chemical additives to it to get it to separate the coal from the other inorganic materials then you come up with this which is a brew of material that you would want any exposure to it all we know almost

nothing about it i've got a database now has fourteen samples worldwide of coal slurry that are in the public domain six of these are from the post martin county you know the the the biggest environmental disaster in the southeastern united states six a fals representing what that material that entered our rivers and streams really is which i find rather posterous three hundred nine million gallons of taking over fifty miles of a major river system a spill bigger than the exxon valdez we took six samples the occurrence that happened in kentucky. was simply one where you had one built over old. underground ones and they gave way in the bottom and that's what happened with the structure itself. domingo county west virginia within sight of massey energy c.e.o. don blankenship home carmelita brown has been battling for clean want to see.

twenty some years ago. and water turned black and gray and asked are the harness cream going to mass has been got up and asked and asked me what was wrong take a man and he said when he looked at eight said my god he said that's close laurie. we went and looked at fifteen wells. said the samples off to the laboratory got the testing results back and did some analysis on those results and it was pretty compelling that we needed to do more research down there i had never seen water quality is that poor. pretty good compared to what it was this morning these documents from the west virginia department of natural resources researched by mountain just to summer volunteers are permits for coal slurry injections that took place in the early one nine hundred eighty s. at the slurry impoundment located approximately two miles above carmelita brown's

home this permit shows that over two hundred eight million gallons of slurry was injected in one thousand nine hundred eighty four in one thousand nine hundred five dispersement describe slurry injections in one thousand nine hundred four into an abandoned underground mind at the rate of six hundred gallons per minute the basis for. injecting. coal slurry and other things other wastes underground as an e.p.a. one thousand nine hundred eighty sed study called underground injection control all that's the oxymoron of the century underground injection control and what control do we have when we inject something underground i have no idea where it goes. if i if i ask the energy was to pull out tomorrow for some reason went bankrupt or whatever all the story pods you know who is responsible for the county we got the paperwork we know the calories are responsible for the clean up of the story.

nobody wanted to help us nobody want nobody was concerned and it wasn't only made it was oh my neighbors that down this road well the patients i see for all have significant medical problems that other people don't have. a greater number of people with all timers disease old timers disease memory loss i've seen a great number of people who have numbness and tingling of their arms and legs which indicates a heavy metal. humilation seen a fair amount of just ill health mannix the numbers on a kidney dialysis another neighbor a man as is has lost a kidney headache had to have a kidney transplant i have problems with my kidneys the timea water exposes them to many types of metals cadmium and among others because canadian average. now several people are not necessary has lost babies they have carried them six months

and have maybe stillborn.

as moscow breathes freely for the first time in weeks hundreds of wildfires continue to rage of for.