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 and return to the last year 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 it would be useful generation of energy we have larger quitman was introduced on surface mines about twenty five years ago here in washington which accounted for the the ability to recover coal seams that heretofore been unmanageable the use of dragline skylab mining scenes that were an economical to mine and even physically impossible. without the use of that. many people twenty five years

ago when the first company said to them bring a bright line they were laughed at and they said there's no way in the world you can get a piece of equipment like in on the narrow ridges of southern appalachia and and they were determined through engineering ability and persistence to make certain that it worked and and it hands.

digital be. some. easy names illegal aliens. and. loons. already paid these little children i'm sorry little children will be protected this night from dream and dream your family currently. banded you amp to be but it becomes real not reassuring and. then they might. again be able to cover it from every car every minor apparent cause from the air now planted there are a number of years to forsake their dad and our children to destroy their reaction lower. half of my family's.

going to. sleep. the slum. sleep. it's. never the light down my family's september. simply needs to keep moving her battle tactics techniques community map 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 been extinct the deer are in. order bought this thousand acres. that's nothing. now the process mountaintop removal coal mine is an awesome display

of coal extraction engineering it is also quite simple once the site is a benefit clear cutting begins next explosives are used to blast away the earth material holes and. then machinery completing massive shovels called dragon 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 would say these are like actually rather early in 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. see 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 people's jobs and closer schools dale. and i 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 it has arsenic. chromium there's a lot of really really bad chemicals in this sludge and 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 i suspect not duplicated in any other physical structure anywhere in in the world

in one nine hundred seventy 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 i said story hundred feet away three hundred fifty feet away the neighbor sits directly caused the river and you've got serious problems over you got the magnetite you got the walk you got the ammonia they use this is bad bad still they use diesel fuel in there they mix all this stuff together you've got bad headaches all the time. you've got. problems

occurring more and more down or i mean there's. a free trade a lot of kids. are in a lot of people like look all the time just drain and all the time the kids are coming home with blisters and their mile 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 if i wasn't comfortable enough 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 dirty with colored dirt or you know any thickness and i have manacle records to prove that she has not had anything other than a common cold up like any other child. we. did.

that are. rated at local schools and government officials you know action on improving safety at marsh work elementary wireless whose granddaughter kayla attends march for commentary launches the pennies a promise campaign to raise six million dollars to build a new school here and so with us here. in the back. seat with the side they're going to take your money. no money down. the money she wanted to build it in school because i don't like. to start the pennies or promise campaign wiley and his granddaughter taylor presented governor with over four hundred dollars in pennies he couldn't orders lector.

we'd like to see the governor we have some money to present him. a story of a story. that stuck out for kids everywhere are you are doing a good to see you have a young lady here from marsh fork elementary. ready to stop and fish which. i didn't. even know you. have to school since. you're going to send. it it's. ok one has a little give 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 it this one is all about the school for us or them at the school were we out with the local board of education to start all over sure that smack up a whole lot we're not going get him ball few took us for north to protect away from west 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 here. in our state eat 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 you know happens and she's beautiful and so 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 we all want to going to do everything in my heart that i want to do that that means that i do everything in my god guys with 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 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 it's 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 these are.

all the tools and everything you needed to mount and love disco with you bottom yourself. and if you start out into madness you had to have those tools that let you get a loan created it 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 the and they do want to pitch in 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 him well. he made company money scrip don't price it wasn't good it was company store i got an updated script it's worth more to date it was made. all right. usually until the you know you could make more to dolls day right here sell the kit trick and which are so use middle today killed

that chick to. give you a handful of these stamp you number of what you got your car loaded with cold somewhere on this car you die when you checked it 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 real easy to loud rock him if you cold who show your life you got a water tank in a slavic. know a little more drip in your career bud senior writer. and does a smear of good but it works pretty good. problem almost. oh it's 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 the company housed all down that river or 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 coal company in their tie can take an entire week and never put it all good to go there really west virginia broke in gold in the big go on the road with. five years. mountaintop removal site moved into the head waters of the stream that runs by my 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 in middle of this hail so am i ask my son. roam. i don't know nobody nuttin i don't own species me in jobs i don't own jobs and if i thank god i don't know their day and wrong across appalachians coal fields mining

jobs are vital to local economies my husband has worked with massey for just eight or nine years and they all. we really appreciate last say 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 cofield 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'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 right 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 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 prosperous 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 had the structure itself to. go 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. our not our water turned black and black straight and 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 and 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've 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 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 and nine hundred eighty five disbursement describes three 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 on the ground i have no idea where it goes. if i if i actually aired it was to pull out tomorrow for some reason went bankrupt or whatever all the story pods you know who is responsible for that count we got the paperwork we know the calories are responsible for the clean up of the fully. tell me don't have money 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. accumulation i've seen a fair amount of just built ill health my next door neighbors 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 among others so causes kidney damage. now several people not necessary has lost babies i have carried them six months and have maybe stillborn.

culture is the same of you i can't tell if i should go over to them or so because they were different the world remembers you could instantly fell separate needs a dutch courtney's that peacekeepers to protect civilians during the bosnian conflict field in their. wealthy british style it's time to. go. to. market so why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy cars report on r g.

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breaking news. more than one hundred people have been found trapped inside a pleasure cruise. distraught relatives and friends are desperately information about. traumatic accounts of what happened. witnesses report children trapped inside the sinking ship joins us from the scene of the rescue operation in just a moment. overcrowding outdated equipment recklessness of the crew all theories being investigated. went down to such terrible consequences. watching our table straight to our top story it's reported that rescue divers found

the bodies of more than one hundred people in the pleasure boat that sank on the volga river russia's republic of tatarstan thirty of them children search and rescue teams have worked throughout the night operation continues today. monitoring the rescue efforts the hunt is still ongoing for any possible survivors the. the emergencies ministry has set up behind me next to the ball go on a small beach here small boats keep coming to and from this site and they're part of the largest search effort this is screening the area where the ball guerrier river pleasure cruiser sank to try and find any people either still in the water although that looks looking increasingly unlikely now or scattered on some of the small islands around where the boat sank we heard from one of their spokesman earlier about what they found when they reached the scene of the sunken pleasure cruiser we looked on the boats whole and waited for an answer but unfortunately there was nothing the flashlights into the cargo hold so the restaurants and the

still bodies there. the scene that unfolded yesterday was one of a quiet sunday afternoon river cruise along the volga many many people do this is very popular among tourists in the summer to travel along the volga in pleasure cruises upstream was its final destination and then around two pm the ship got into difficulties and whatever happened this ship actually sank within three minutes it was such a fast sinking that the chaos that ensued on board caused much of the problems that we see now. there were many children on board the ship it seems maybe a third of the passengers. on board the ship were children just hours just before the ship began to sank sink a group of about thirty children had gathered on one of the upper decks in the play room to hold.