in the little bit. more news today violence is once again flared up the form these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are on the day .

this is r.t. these are our top stories again envelops and smallgoods firefighters battle russia's rampant wildfires have left over three thousand homeless but there is progress emergency services say the area affected by the burning forests has been reduced by two thirds in the past week. the main stories of the past seven days the ceremony to mark the sixty fifth anniversary of america's atomic attack on the jump of the city of nagasaki was attended by over thirty countries the. legacy is still being felt by its victims eighty thousand people were killed in the explosion at the end of world war two. just as campaigners claim women convicted of killing their abusive partners in california having their parole hopes dashed by the political ambitions of state governors liberty activists say the women acted in self defense after suffering domestic violence. now it's one of america's biggest ecological catastrophes but one you may not indeed have heard of and what makes it

even more shocking is that it's manmade and forcing entire communities to abandon their homeland it's next. i am up a leg lewis blayse says good. sled to start a leg. or lol. lol.

lol good leg long leg. length leg . most of the carbon that we mine from the crust of the earth is millions of years old coal particularly interesting because per unit of energy generated coal actually is maybe the cheapest fuel but it also releases the most carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide beginning in earnest with the development of the steam engine in the late seventeen early eighteen

hundreds hemans began to ma and 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 remove what would return to the atmosphere 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 in the useful generation of energy. we have larger quitman that was introduced on surface mines about twenty five years ago here in washington which accounted for the ability to recover coal seams that heretofore been monocle the use of dragline skylab all that mining seems that were an economic. and even

physically impossible. without the use of that. many people twenty five years ago when the first company said that even buying a brag land they were laughed at and they said there's no way in the world you can you get a piece would put like that on the narrow ridgers of southern appalachia and they were determined through engineering abilities and persistence to make certain that it worked and it has. its. command cliff. going.

into soon. it'll be. easy. to leave things feeling. in dad and me seeing the saying moon the. great things and these won't you know from my own garden little children will be protected that night from dreaming or your family home currently. did you plan for people to come. here and. then they might. again be able to come and for me to come and from either parent cause them to. come here or say our church destroyed your reaction lower.

my. going to. sleep. after the flight down my family's september. you need to keep her pretending these communities math is dismantling the community and. once these lessons are gone there is no more appalachian. there is no more west virginia it don't grow back. it's not going to 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 being extinct because the deer are in. order to stiles and.

that's not the. 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 drag lines remove the overburden which is then deposited in adjacent valleys called valley 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. say 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 demand and people's jobs and clothes or schools they own and all that you're lucky you don't get hurt. 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 that has arsenic. chromium 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. the sophistication of engineering that goes into the construction of those 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 cold processing facility located directly behind marsh fork elementary so he sits three hundred feet away three hundred fifty feet away to the major sits directly cough the river and you've got syria's chemical bravo very got the magnetite you've got the walk you've got the ammonia they use the bad. they use diesel fuel in there they mix all this stuff together

you've got. all the time. you've got more problems occur more more down or i mean there's. a lot of kids. in a lot of people like look all the time and just drain and all the time the kids are coming home with blisters and their mild 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 pounds a day and more like college clothes and unlike us that she never came home dirty with or you know any sickness and i've manacle records to prove that she has not had anything other than

a common cold up like any other child. we. didn't get them. frustrated local school and government officials you know action on improving safety and more work elementary as widely as granddaughter kayla attends march for commentary launches the pennies a promise campaign to raise six million dollars to build a new schools here and so with us here. it is that little. bit inside that. is it your money. no money down. and let's see one of elegance. because i don't like. to start the pennies or promise campaign wiley and his granddaughter kayla present the governor with over four hundred dollars in pennies he can order snow collector.

we'd like to see the governor we have some money to present him. the story of a. step down for kids everywhere how you're doing good to see you have a young lady here from marsh fork elementary in. the south and. which. i didn't. even know you. have to school since. you're going to the senate. and. it's. ok to have a little gable here for you but this is our pay and fine ok. now we're let me just say you know of course i know we worked on this some we talked about of the four of them but the school yes sir i'm at the school where we at with the local board of education start all over sure that smack up a whole lot we're not going get them you took

a foreigner to protect the way what's we're going to use it women has to go and tell you to ok now you know what we're not going to do what we've been doing you put a price on our children's heads. of state you put a price this is not an environmental issue this is a little human being 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 the you know and she's beautiful

would share what we should we care about our child. down there and there are serious problems with 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 want to going to do everything in my heart that i want that that means that i do everything in my god god's word that we got a. journalist jeff goodell is 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 never occurred to me so i went down 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 up 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 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.

tolls and everything mounted in love disco which you bought him yourself. and if you start out into madness you had to have those tools and they didn't let you get a moment created that company still. for about three presses put it this way lloyd your coke head company stores they hard you lived near kochi if you work for them they did want to pitch in some i also store. and one of the others all matters badly still owed to a company store you couldn't kid just won't pay him oh. he made company money scrip don't price it wasn't good it was company store as i got an updated script it's worth more today than it was made. all right. usually until the you know you could make more to dolls day right here sell the kit trick the merchant so use

military build a 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 i'd be a mule driver lead times i'd be a young boy back to stay in school he would pull you up to cohen here drop it off unhook piecemeal from it come to the phone. all right now it real easy to loud rock him with your code who show your life you've got a water tank in a slot. of the little water drip in your career bud see it right there. and does a smear of good but it works pretty good. all. right number almost. zero and you know look at the history of our area especially they

with big communities now today with scant rings big companies still worth everything the people i mean this company housed all down that river off stuff and set their. our schools are good because there's no money all the stores are or close and nothing's coming back these are people with this cold company in their tie can take an entire week and never put it all go to go early west virginia are broke and go on the big go on the road with. five years ago. mountaintop 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 is worth less at the mine company had the option of getting in touch with me and let 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 don't fall into it i live in the middle of this why. because it's ok it's ok that me he'll be away from southern west virginia is the middle of this tale so am i ask a play my son. roan. i don't know nobody nuts and i don't own these million jobs i don't own jobs and if i thank god i don't

know their day and roam across appalachians coal fields mining jobs are biting the local economies my husband us work with my essay for just eight or nine years and they all. we really appreciate last day that's where we get our money in 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 coming 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 will 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 right out of a coal seam but when you disturb that rock and start grinding it up in a 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 apples representing what that material that entered our rivers and streams really is which i find rather prosperous three hundred nine million gallons 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 in the structure itself to. go county west virginia within sight of massey energy c.e.o. don blankenship home karma leader brown has been battling for clean want to. twenty some years ago. our water turned black and

gray and i asked are the hollering and screaming has been got up and asked and asked me what was wrong take a man and he said when he looked at it he said my god he said that's close laurie. we went and looked at fifteen wells. sent 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 that poor. are pretty good compared to what it was this morning these documents from the west virginia department of natural resources researched by mountain just to some are 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 and nine hundred eighty five disbursement 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 have lasting energy was to pull out the laurel 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 from are all have significant medical problems other people don't have. a greater number of people of 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. accumulation seen a fair amount of. ill health my next door neighbors on a kidney dialysis another neighbor a man his own is has lost a kidney had it had to have a kidney transplant i have problems with my kidneys the timea water exposes them to many types of metals cadmium among others causes kidney damage. now several people not necessary has lost babies i have carried them six months and have maybe stillborn.

discovery. communicate with one. and become three. see what nature can give.