unli there are over one hundred forty billion gallons of coal slurry contained in more than one hundred pound ments in west virginia alone the total quantity of coal slurry in the rest of southern appalachian. on december twenty second two thousand and eight call ashen pound mint at the tennessee valley authority east kingston fossil plant failed when an earthen dike broke spilling over one point one billion gallons of coal ash sludge over three hundred acres. coal ash sludge has waste created from the burning of coal at the kingston coal plant it is believed to contain toxic compounds including arsenic and mercury. the tennessee valley authority estimates the cost of the clean up i dove or eight hundred twenty five million dollars this spill is ten times larger than the exxon valdez spill in alaska and is believed to be america's largest environmental disaster to date but throwing away the next

generation's most valuable resource and that is water one of the best sources of water anywhere in the world and maybe the best source of fresh water and proximity to one of the world's largest fastest growing populations. you know with all the and all the lawsuits and all the carrying on that goes on in the in the press and you know the vanity fair's and. u.s. news and world reports and all at that where the authors are warning people to believe that that we're absolutely strip in appalachia down to nothing. in order to get the mineral is patently untrue it's patently untrue when you look around at the forested melton's that we have a recent environmental impact statement from the e.p.a. estimates over eight hundred square miles of mountains of already been destroyed this includes the permanent destruction of over four hundred fifty individual

mountain summits across the region the report also indicates the permanent loss of over twelve hundred miles of mountain streams. although federal regulations for mine reclamation require that mountaintop removal sites be returned to their original contour these mines are routinely granted wavers mined areas are typically graded and then hydro seeded with less bodies or grass which clings to the compacted shale and rock that now makes up the topsoil nature builds soil for free but she creates the soil very slowly and so you're talking about thousands of years to go from something like a rock mass that has essentially no soil just a very thin covering up to generate a few centimeters of soil you're talking about hundreds to thousands and tens of thousands of years continuing at its present rate the projected loss from mountaintop removal mining is one point four million acres in the next decade an area equal in size to the state of delaware. by the summer of two thousand and six

ed wiley has formulated a new plan for pennies a promise. our government or a local school board state school board will do it in a way it shows and you know and parents and grandparents it's up to you to get this there are kids you know we're going to money for school one way or another. like we are going to school in our community and. it's it's showing that our government should come to this simply can't get up and done for children. the. we're going to watch the charleston west virginia the worst do you see you all know

this is the rise awareness and raise money for new school and it also opens a lot of doors of the blank to chapman in our communities as far as mountaintop removal what it's doing to those in in in the mining industry to our communities this is a perfectly viable one what it's actually doing to our children the governor made us dykeman our kids our future by our tomorrow he should die almost up and more are just marched for don't have them all. over the. burning of coal and for over a century has been one of the most deadly things that and humans have done it through the air around them even after one hundred years of burning coal and after one hundred years of so-called improvement of air quality according to the american lung association twenty four thousand people a year still die prematurely from air pollution from coal plants in the united states almost forty percent of the carbon dioxide emissions come from coal one of

the things that has to happen. is that the politicians the leaders of the administration as well as congress state legislators and administrations in the states all those leaders have got to finally say ok we want to call in the two thousand election and west virginia was widely credited with giving president bush the margin he needed to take the oval office was the first time the west virginia had gone republican in something like seventy years and guess what's going to happen come november we're going to carry the state of west virginia thank the coal industry was widely credited for giving bush west virginia so it's no secret that he had a large debt to pay to the coal industry and they made sure he paid it through out mine safety throughout the rollback of regulations on dirty power plants through a variety of places he essentially stocked all the regulatory agencies with with

former coal industry lobbyists or executives by two thousand and one the bush administration made of white wording changing the clean water act designating waste as bill this wording change cleared the way for the expansion of mountaintop removal mining throughout southern appalachians. on january twenty second of two thousand and two president bush returned to west virginia it is such a wonderful day for us and for west virginia to host a special me with those with a special bond to our state please and gentlemen the president of the united states i'm. we can do a better job in america one of these days we're going to be driving you know automobiles that are fuel differently and that's going to be exciting times for america and we're just new technologies coming down and we can encourage those technologies so conservation. take

a logical development got to be an integral part of energy. folks we need more supply you know workers welcome back here in the back and he said i'm real repairing a machine that digs for coal we need to use coal we got a lot of it and we need to make sure that we. wait around. for the past twenty years larry gibson and his family have been fighting to preserve their ancestral home place on kafer down outside charleston west virginia and when i met with a cold coming to my property here me and my family members and they tell me that we don't give a damn about people who carry cholera we don't give a damn about the people on top of that mountain all we care about is profit we are making and it was the dollar i would have bought and the. know we were playing there and it is a vice president cultural reduction and using kids from massey coal one thousand

nine hundred three told me that gibson created the stanley heirs foundation refusing to sell his family's fifty plus acres to coal companies before mountaintop removal began his family cemetery was surrounded by mountain ridges today the family cemetery looks out on reclaimed mountaintop removal sites eighteen years ago when i came back and it took me four years of to my family a cemetery and if one thousand nine hundred ninety eight and now on the crater restful and eighteen and all when i started this i couldn't get to people to listen now even my own family. now you know how about turning a corner how crest of the knob one day or that was there was before the snowy there in my own mind. or just. the young of the day were never seen where i've seen the young as of the day were never seen

the mountains the earth. no limits no boundaries for you to roam. gibson uses the land of capered mountain to educate the public about the effects of mountaintop removal one of the biggest questions people asked me if i had a picture of the mountain before was destroyed. here paperno why should you take a picture of a mountain for it's going to be here forever. day by day the seventy five hundred acres of active mountaintop removal mine continue to encircle his property. another family cemetery sits across the ridge on the active mine site although regulations require that family members have access to these cemeteries requests are often not he's lee granted on memorial day of two thousand and six keeps him in a group of supporters make a trip to the cemetery i want a day we're going to go on the mine site at the cemetery over there and we get to

how lord around in different things going on and. it's destroy me a safety. zone and probably account for to your goal to get to cold even under a graveyard. after filling out a den of occasion and release forms the group is permitted to enter the mine site in a one and a half mile hike to the family cemetery. sleet i. didn't mention having to sign a release to go visit my family. i did so with you. the first waterhole i respond then in my life was up then how i. their water was not their normal were guys they have six seven hundred foot high wall there now. my mama give me birth he's not in the light. well. you can get to the cemetery through

their color as your round. they used to be a road over here. five feet. one right here. over here is another one. one i hear. your people are taking part in history this land to cemetery been here for two hundred seventy years never had as many people on it in the last hundred fifty years and ice time knocked out a come through here they wouldn't or gentleness or kind the sense we've got a minister here i will tell you what if they sent someone. and these people claim we need these graves the first time when julian come here four years ago we had kate's going to have dates on him they're no longer here if the men say that we came and got him. and it's not the case and the words are down is going to say alan

johnson want to say is we're just not been heard here for alone a long time in mid august of two thousand and six the west virginia department of environmental protection revoked a permit to massey energy to expand its plant and marsh fork elementary by building a second coal silo the d.p. determined that the second coal silo was placed outside the permitted boundary of three hundred feet from the school after maps of the preparation plant were found to be inaccurate.

oh. nobody would stand up. stand up and be. i stand up to her. and i will and i will fight and i will. get something done for. more. than. hour to look funny. how. how. how. how. how. how.

well you know. as many as i have along the way that a lot of folks. we've raised a little money for the new school when they. come here and hopefully in. sandberg and i feel that we have copied all three of them and i believe this fall for a lot of doors for a lot of people on this issue note is very important for me to walk on march fourteenth two thousand and seven the state board of surface mining overturned a west virginia department of environmental protections ruling that denied massey energy a permit to build a second coal silo behind the school this decision cleared the way for the

expansion of massey energy's coal processing facility two days later a coalition of citizen conservation groups including mountain just a summer activists returned to west virginia governor joe manchin is office. thank. you. for. two and nailed thirty three years for the rights of those children that i see it's raining how sad right now are saying will tire of the flood stay and serve it. does that mean anything to you we pray for you all for three years and seven enemies canary all of the people in these capital to be held accountable for. what

i want to ask you to do you know what i'm going to do back to back corner we need to clear this way because people are going to get back for your. loser him or her real worker. because we will get a new school that for one year will cure anything here i'm telling you we are not budging there is more coming. was. whisper around my ear despite how what they're offering their bill will. be embraced or made in a whisper in the air why is there worry wart results the day we want our kids

didn't say to. share. why does our kids there. for girls day in the cold feel. they're on the wrong side of the mound. we are the cradle that bring their money out that man. farmer where you can be took care of our children. before the state can get involved in issues such as whether school should be the new school should be built a decision post first be made at the local. currency the local school board with the decision on the new school that march forward before i go to the people of raleigh. so they can determine the final outcome from themselves so i'm going to join me. now or could i hope that the. various members.

you. can hear because you. may say. people. are still here who. are putting our. money.

i.

the. mob. may be an. old family.

to her. own. forty two thousand americans die each year from car accidents serious album. seven hundred thousand people. and thirty two thousand will kill themselves cancer in all its forms kills five hundred sixty thousand of us here part disease is even more devastating it kills over eight hundred seventy thousand americans every year.

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today's news and the week's top stories from our team recovery crews start the summer task of lifting the ship and rapidly went down the hall the river last sunday taking nearly one hundred thirty lives. both garrett get some of the way both investigators by the tips but wait to see from says beneath the details from the recovery site in just a moment. rupert murdoch sorry saga the tycoon publicly eat some humble pie to save his stricken empire as loyal allies leave and the police close in on both sides of the atlantic. losing battles but winning the war will be unravels earn foreign recognition and access to could off the assets but their fighters struggle to get to grips on the ground. plus the west's anti wallet as america and the eurozone

race to save their collapsing economies in the face of soaring debt and plummeting credit scores. which ninety live from moscow was memory in a joshie the operation to lift the cruiser which sank last sunday the volga river is about to start it's still unclear why the boat went down quickly dragging half of those on board to their deaths tell bargains following developments on the banks of the volga river nearby. we're in the initial stages of quite a complex operation to try and raise the sunken bug area which will hopefully help to reveal where the remaining bodies that haven't been found yet are and hopefully provide the answer as to why this ship sank and sank so fast at the moment

a dive platform a few kilometers into the river behind me boats keep ferrying effort from the base camp here taking divers and crews out to that platform where two huge cranes have been brought up from volgograd further downstream down the river and those cranes have now been used to attach cables to enormous cables around the bottom of the sunken bowl garia now the complications that there are with lifting the ship are all pretty much due to things that happened in those few disastrous minutes last sunday and the first is that the ship when it when it sank and then fell to the bottom it fell on to its left side which mean it means that they could be bodies trapped underneath the left side of that ship it's also going to need to be righted so it's it's on an even keel before they can lift it so far out of the first stage is above fastening the pulling cords then we stabilize the kewl after that we raise the ship and finally we transported to dog.