Since the Salem Film Fest focuses on world cinema and films that convey human experience, there is usually something related to environmental justice. Last year's premiere of "The Waterfront" was an excellent documentary about long-bankrupt Highland Park, Mich., the birthplace of the auto industry. That community organized to prevent state-appointed governance from selling its water utility, and the film addressed the very serious issues that surround the sale of vital public assets.
This year, I am anticipating the screening on Tuesday, March 3, at 8 p.m. of David Novack's "Burning the Future" (www.salemfilmfest.com/burningthefuture.) This documentary, shot in West Virginia, examines the environmental and human impacts of coal extraction.
Despite what may be true about clean coal technology, coal extraction has wreaked environmental havoc in the lower part of the Appalachian Basin from Tennessee reaching north to New York state, as well as in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Gulf Coast and more.
In the United States, about half of our energy is coal-derived with a billion tons consumed annually, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and Bureaus of Land Management's National Coal Assessment.
In Appalachia, where the film takes place, permitted locations range into the thousands since work began at the turn of the 20th century. Coal operations affect local water quality to such an extent that the people living there routinely encounter contaminated water. That's because copious amounts of acid mine drainage, ammonium nitrate explosive and diesel fuel pool in valleys and choke streams.
Mountaintop removal, one type of extraction process, devastates landscape topography. In the vicinity of about 500 mountaintop sites, homes repeatedly flood. The coal-scarred areas look like the moon, which form alarming lines along many lengths of the lush Appalachian Mountains.
Those who work on environmental cleanup in the Appalachian Basin have told me that this coal-mining region is truly America's third world. Coal extraction over a century has resulted in orange creeks, toxic groundwater, tainted lands, struggling economies (few are needed to run a mine, so the industry is not considered a job generator) and very ill people.
Novack's film highlights the environmental impacts and the local activists and their "fight to arouse the nation's help in protecting their mountains, saving their families and preserving their way of life." According to Novack, he began work on the film expecting to explore coal's historic role in building our country and its place today as the source of half of the country's electricity.
Novack will attend Tuesday's screening. I will be there and invite you to attend to discuss the human and environmental aspects of coal reliance and what a sustainable energy future looks like.
¢¢¢
To continue a quest for environmental justice, also consider checking out the following films: "Running Dry," "Fast Food Nation," "A Civil Action," "An Inconvenient Truth," "Trashed," "Arctic Tale" and "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
¢¢¢
Andrea Fox, a Beverly resident, has been writing about environmental sustainability and eco-topics for eight years. She is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and a watershed protection advocate in Salem Sound Watershed.
