3 Minute Warning - West Virginia

In Sundial West Virginia where just over 200 students attend Marsh Fork Elementary School. According to local residents, the school has been a proud community landmark since the 1940s. In the 1970s, just thirty-five years after it was established, that all changed when a major energy company built a coal storage silo nearby. Less than 300 feet away from where children learn and play, sits a leaking, 385-feet tall, coal refuse dam with nearly 3-billion gallons of toxic sludge.

Coal dust has been found in the school and the drinking-water has been contaminated. The rate of sick days due to respiratory problems is extremely high. While these issues are alarming, they aren’t what concerns families, community members and organizations the most. They are more worried about what would happen if the earthen dam of the impoundment breached. It is well known that there would be less than three minutes to evacuate the Marsh Fork Elementary School before the water reached 6 feet.

Listen to Eion Bailey,Creator and Host of Imagine This! TV; Rafael Monserrate, Director/Producer of Imagine This! TV; Vernon Haltom, Co-Director at Coal River Mountain Watch; Deb and Ed Wiley, Leaders in the Campaign to get a new school for Marsh Fork Elementary; and Bo Webb, A citizen activist on the coal mining issue discuss this issue for an Season 1 Episode on Imagine This TV called 3 Minute Warning.

To Learn More about this Episode Visit: 3 Minute Warning

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