Elk River Blues

58 min

Filmmaker: Mike Youngren

This story of systematic failure centers on the chemical spill in January 2014 into the Elk River near Charleston, WV. A coal-cleaning chemical fouled the area water system and closed the tap on 300,000 residents. The documentary asks, “Where were the agencies that are supposed to protect us from ourselves?” It discusses “Appalachian Fatalism”- the public tendency to accept hardship and disaster as a way of life. ERB also takes us to the watershed, the glorious headwaters where West Virginia’s abundant water resource emerges clean and pure.

7:50 pm on Friday at the Byrd Center for Legislative Studies – Block 1

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