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tv   [untitled]    July 12, 2011 6:31pm-7:01pm EDT

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really 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 winds begin to and extract fossil carbon from the earth's crust coal oil gas even in the absence of humans over some time period it would be uplifted and subject to erosion and removal and returned to the most fear 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 better gee we have larger quitman that was introduced on the surface minds about twenty five years ago here in washington
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which accounted for the the ability to recover coal seams that heretofore been unmanageable the use of dragline stuff like mining scenes that were 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 line they were laughed at and they said there's no way in the world you get a piece we put them like in on their ridges of southern appalachia and and they were determined through engineering ability and persistence to make certain that it worked and and it hands.
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the command was clear. clinton. still managed to total be. legal. some. easy. illegal aliens. and. the sleaze plumes. where he played these little children i'm sorry little children will be protected that night from treatment or your family can grant great. benefit to a number of people it becomes real the longer we're going to marry then they might
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. again be able to benefit from a free car and from either parent cars trying to find to their are no longer here to forsake their dad to our children to destroy that your work. and such. a remarkable place. can't explain your hard earned it took on the. league. has come up. sleep. it's. back out now for the flight down my family's september. let me 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
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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 cost the deer are in. order bought this thousand acres. that's nothing solid rock now process mountaintop removal coal mine is an awesome display of coal extraction engineering it is also quite simple once a site is a den of 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 by hundreds of feet sites are often thousands of acres in size but i would be it's our latest action rather than blacksburg and written. in the spring of two
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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 deal 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 demanded people's jobs and clothes or schools they own and i and
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all that you lucky 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 coast 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 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
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a mile. there's two hundred twenty eight kids in the school and 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
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feet away to the neighbor sits directly caused the river and you got serious problems over you got the magnetite you got the walk you got the ammonia they used as the bad bad still they use diesel fuel in there they mix all the stuff together you've got bad headaches all the time. you got. problems with her and more more down her. team are free to play a lot of t.v. ads. in allow them to keep likely all the time it is drawing and all the time the kids will come 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 if i wasn't careful 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
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a day and more like college clothes and unlike us that she never came home dirty with dirt or you know any thickness and i manacle records to prove that she has not had anything other than a common cold up like any other child. we. know that. frustrated local school and government officials human action on improving safety and more work elementary as one of the granddaughter kayla attends marsh for commentary launches the pennies a promise campaign to raise six million dollars to build a new school and so with us here. it is that. it's inside they're going to take your money. no money to build. the mother that she wanted to build in school because i don't like. to start the
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pennies or promise campaign wiley and his granddaughter kayla present the governor with over four hundred dollars in pennies he can orders no collector. we'd like to see the governor we have some money to present him. and see a story of a story. stacked up for kids everywhere or you are doing good to see you have a young lady here from marsh fork elementary in. the south in. which. i don't see. people going to start. school since. you don't do that stuff. and. it's. ok to have a little give here. this is our campaign ok. now we're let me just you know so far
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as i know we worked on this some we talked about of this for a while but the school yes or no to school were we at with the local board of education start all over it 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 it's own tell you today ok 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 now 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
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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 and she's beautiful what's your what we've seen 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 it how do you know everything in my heart that i want to do that that means that i do everything in my god god's will that we got to . learn english 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
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that coal produces fifty percent of electricity in america 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 dragline 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 it's very clear on this there's no it's not
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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 as we please. call it tolls and everything needed to mount in 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 company still. for about three presses put it this way lloyd your coke head company stores they hard g you lived near kochi if you work for them they don't want kitchens some i also store. and one of the others all matters bad they still owed to company store you could pitch it with home pay and while. they made
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company money scrip don't price it wasn't it was company store as i got an updated script it's worth more today than it was made. right. usually until the you know you could make more to dolls day right here sell the kit trick which you so use middle today killed a chick to. give you a hand polies stamp you number on what you got your car loaded with cold somewhere on this car you and i want to check to see and be a meal driver well times i'd be a go on board back to stay in school he would pull a pic or and here drop it all off unhook piecemeal from it come to the phone. right now it real easy to loud rock him if you call who show your life you got a water tank in a slot. of a little water drip in your career bad. and does
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a smear of good but it works pretty good. all. right number oh yes. oh yes you know look at the history of our area faithfully they was big communities down and they were skate rings big company stores everything the people i mean the company housed all down that river our stuff and set their. our schools are good because there is no money all the stores are or close and nothing is coming back these are people with this coal company in their tie can take and tie can never put it all go to go there really west virginia broke in the big go on the road with. five years. topper move will site moved into the head waters of the stream
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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 one relocate my property it's worth 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 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 where is
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the middle of this hail so am i ask my son. roan. 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 run across appalachians coal fields mining jobs are vital to local economies my husband us forthwith must say for just eight or nine years will. we really appreciate massive 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
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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 will be underground they will 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
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other inorganic materials then you come up with this which is brew 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 samples 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.
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don blankenship home carmelita brown has been battling for clean want to. twenty some years ago. and water turned black and gray and asked are the harness 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've never seen water quality 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 some are volunteers are permits for coal slurry injections that
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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 four and nine hundred eighty five disparagement 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 on the ground i have no idea where it goes. if i if i actually aired it was to pull out the moral for some reason went bankrupt or whatever all the story pods you know who's responsible for the county we got the
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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. accumulation seen a fair amount of. 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 causes kidney damage now several
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people not necessary has lost babies they carried them six months and have maybe still more. news today. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations are all.
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in india posies available in the move to join the hotel rooms. the gateway to the grand imperial truly the two western. you can go with the tomb to see don't need to go and. read this in the kennel was
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a photo retreat. the first funerals for victims of sunday's pleasure boat tragedy on the boulder river are held on a day of national mourning across russia many bodies remain inside the sunken ship including children trapped in a play room when the boat went down negligence mechanical failure and bad weather all being investigated as possible causes of the sinking of the ship that was carrying more than two hundred passengers and. france's foreign minister claims libya's leader moammar gadhafi could be ready to go as piracy says seeks a diplomatic solution to a conflict they thought would be a simple knock out despite the french parliament backing the military operation anxiety is growing over the mission that was meant to last weeks and is now driving into months with no end in sight. we queue weeks controversial founder julian assange returns to a london court. appealing his extradition to sweden over alleged sex crime his
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supporters maintain it's an excuse to add him over to the u.s. where he's wanted for publishing thousands of cars apply military and diplomatic documents in february the original hearing up held the swedish application for extradition. coming up financial guru max kaiser names and shames who he thinks is behind the world's financial turmoil and it has something to do with a refrigerator kaiser report coming your way after a short break. max kaiser this is the kaiser report let's get all the details from stacy herbert pax
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europe declares war on ratings agencies a chorus of policymakers from europe and across the world have denounced moody's drastic downgrade of portuguese debt as an act of financial vandalism accusing the anglo-saxon rating agencies of driving states into bankruptcy and destabilizing the global system yeah that's right they call it financial vandalism or upping the rhetoric and we we've been talking about financial terrorism for months and months and months now they're upping their rhetoric they're going to get to the point now where they realize that this is in fact not vandalism which is a quaint way of saying terrorism they didn't accuse a sullivan law of vandalism on nine eleven no member did that it was an act of terrorism mooney's s. and p. is pitching our financial terrorists and they are purposefully targeting these countries for destruction because they want their assets for nothing well portugal's new premier pedro paso.

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