The Real McCoys

Meet Nina and Mickey McCoy, schoolteachers from Inez, Kentucky, as they take their fight against King Coal to Washington. This short video documents some of the disastrous impacts of coal mining on Central Appalachia. Twenty five percent of the McCoys' county has now been strip-mined. In addition to the destruction of these historic landscapes, the process of mountaintop removal wreaks havoc on the ecosystem. The leftover material is dumped into 'valley fills,' which have thus far killed over 1,000 miles of streams. The cleaning of the coal brings still more problems: the sludge left over from the process is stored in enormous ponds, one of which broke in Inez, sending 350 million gallons of toxic waste into the McCoys' community. Since the sludge spill in 2000, residents of Inez have not been able to drink the town's water, and water remains the best-selling item in the supermarket. 'How can anybody claim that if we don't have coal, we'll be worse off?' asks Nina. 'I don't think we could be any worse off.'