Documentary filmmaker David Novack makes no bones about where he stands on "mountaintop removal mining" in West Virginia: He's with ecologist Ben Stout, who calls it "wholesale environmental devastation for cheap coal." While acknowledging that no one administration, coal company or piece of policymaking is to blame, Novack constructs a coherent argument that inexpensive electricity is far more costly than the average American realizes.
Novack suggests that just as many consumers don't realize that fully half the electricity they consume is produced by burning coal, they also imagine that coal mining is about tunneling. But today's coal industry relies heavily on mountaintop removal mining, which tears the surface off mountain tops to extract the coal underneath. The process is ruthlessly efficient, but literally alters the face of the earth: Clear-cutting to provide access for heavy machinery destroys ancestral forests; tons of excavation rubble fill in entire valleys; and separating coal from worthless contaminants produces slurry, a toxic sludge that poisons streams and groundwater. It's easy to imagine that Appalachian homeowners are exaggerating when they describe "black water" coming from once-pristine wells, but Novack shows the water: It's black with toxic sediment.
Novack interviews lawyers, ecologists, coal-company spokesmen, doctors and politicians, but the film's heart is West Virginians like Maria Gunnoe, whose family arrived in the 18th century. She grew up in a mining family, raised to respect God, hard work and the mountains, and her indignation when a mining-company engineer assures her that the devastating floods that followed mountaintop stripping were "an act of God" is palpable. A lifetime of mountain living tells her that acts of man are destroying nature's checks and balances. Gunnoe's transformation from waitress and mother to environmental activist gives the film a populist heroine worthy of Frank Capra, and Novack doesn't have to look far for villains when he has West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III and industry spokesmen perverting phrases like "good stewards of our environment" and leaving "a very small and gentle footprint on the scenic beauty of West Virginia" or suggesting that criticizing coal is tantamount to supporting foreign terrorists. But the film's most surreal moment must be the TV spot featuring sexy, sweat-glossed miners working to the tune of "Sixteen Tons." Tune, not lyrics: The spin that can defang the classic working stiff's cri de coeur hasn't been invented: "You load 16 tons, what do you get?/Another day older and deeper in debt/Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go/I owe my soul to the company store." leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
