WiserEarth Editors

Shortly after midnight on October 11, 2000, a coal sludge impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky, broke through an underground mine below, propelling 306 million gallons of sludge down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. By morning, Wolf Creek was oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a ten-foot wide stream became a 100-yard expanse of thick sludge. The spill polluted hundreds of miles of waterways, contaminated the water supply for over 27,000 residents, and killed all aquatic life in Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek. The spill was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez and one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the southeastern United States, according to the EPA.

For over four years, Appalshop filmmaker Robert Salyer has chronicled the continuing story of the Martin County disaster, the resulting federal investigation, and the looming threat of coal sludge ponds throughout the coalfield region. In the United States today, coal is the largest single source of fuel for energy production. Annually, the country mines over a billion tons of coal. Coal waste is a consequence of this insatiable consumption. The Mine Safety and Health Administration has estimated that there are over 235 sludge ponds throughout the region with the potential to break into an underground mine, as the Martin County pond did in 2000.

Sludge is a story of the residents and communities in the coalfields, but it is also a look behind the curtain: a story of the overseers and regulators responsible for health and safety and the agencies and departments that house them

Sludge reveals the hidden cost of America’s coal production and the penalty exacted upon the people of the Appalachian mountains in exchange for cheap electricity.