Synopsis
ON COAL RIVER takes viewers on a gripping emotional journey into the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, where longtime local residents begin to uncover the toxic effects of America’s increased demand for cheap coal, a resource that supplies half of America’s electricity.
As a former miner, Ed Wiley knows the importance of West Virginia’s largest industry, but when he senses his granddaughter’s recurrent illness is linked to a coal waste facility near her school, Ed embarks on a quest to have the school relocated to safer ground. To his dismay not everyone in the valley recognizes the impending threat, and he soon finds himself in the midst of a political tug-of-war.
Ed’s neighbors Bo and Judy understand the problem all too well. While Judy crisscrosses the state in search of sympathetic politicians, Bo pours over maps and legal documents that may hold proof of the mining companies’ illegal activity, all in an effort to slow the destruction. Meanwhile, massive explosions from nearby mountaintop removal sites grow closer with each passing day, and before long their worst fears begin to look increasingly like an inevitable reality.
Across the valley, Maria Lambert recognizes a pattern in the unusual health problems plaguing her community. Following intuition, and what she describes as a mission from above, Maria gathers evidence suggesting the state’s largest mining company has contaminated her neighborhood’s water supply.
Shot over a four year period, ON COAL RIVER follows the transformation of these four remarkable individuals as they face the challenge of a lifetime, fighting for the survival of their way of life, and the lives of future generations.
Background
Coal River Valley is a lush green swath of southern West Virginia that sits at the place where our national environmental policy collides with our desire for cheap energy. This steep terrain comprises some of the oldest and most diverse mountains in the world, where typically northern species mingle with their southern cousins, producing a unique biological abundance. It is also an area containing vast amounts of coal – the fossil fuel that currently powers 50% of domestic electricity. Commercial mining began here in the 1850s and has continued through repeated cycles of boom and bust, mine wars and strikes, and the relentless march of mechanization.
Today, new mining and processing methods are taking a heavy toll on the Valley’s environment and its people. Coal companies are practicing a technique called ‘mountaintop removal’ which uses explosives and huge machines to blast apart mountains and extract the thin seams of coal running through the ground. Some estimate that mountaintop removal has already destroyed over 500,000 acres of land and 1500 miles of streams. In the pages of Vanity Fair, Michael Shnayerson described the new landscape of Coal River: “in some places as far as the eye can see, [mountains] are being blasted and obliterated in one of the greatest acts of physical destruction this country has ever wreaked upon itself.” For local residents, mountaintop removal means blasts that shake their homes, hazardous dust, dangerous floods, and the radical transformation of the landscape around them.
The results of mountaintop removal are dramatic and obvious, but coal processing plants are perhaps even more dangerous for mining communities. These plants crush and chemically “wash” the coal to remove impurities that can cause problems such as acid rain. The irony to local residents is that this “clean coal” produces millions of more gallons of hazardous waste. Some communities suspect that this waste is getting into their well water, causing high levels of cancer and other diseases.
Continued mechanization and worsening impacts from mining have caused the valley to lose much of its population—both of its high schools have closed since 1991. Those who remain love their community and want to stay, but they are split in their opinions about how to continue to live here. Many believe without coal mining, there is no economic future for their community, and that the industry known as “King Coal” will never change its ways. Others see that if left unchecked, the mining impacts on the land and water will turn their Valley into an unlivable sacrifice zone for cheap energy.