‘We pumped an ocean into the mountains’

Warning: this film will not be kind to Big Coal.

Coal Rush, a documentary running next week at the Atlanta Film Festival, tells the story of a 7-year crusade by US attorney Kevin Thompson, along with other attorneys, advocates and affected residents, to halt the injection of coal slurry into the Appalachian mountains by now-defunct coal miner Massey Energy.

Quoting from the film, the Huffington Post has one coal operator saying the “intentional spill” of 1.4 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry that was dumped into underground mines and leached into drinking water through aquifers and water wells makes the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill look like a garden leak: “We pumped an ocean into the mountains.”

Meanwhile, three environmental groups are suing two Massey Energy subsidiaries in federal court over alleged violations of West Virginia water-quality standards, Platts reported this week:

The Sierra Club, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Ohio Valley Environmental Council filed suit with the US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia against Elk Run Coal and Alex Energy, units formerly owned by Massey Energy. Alpha Natural Resources bought Massey in June 2011.

The groups are charging the two coal units with “discharging pollutants that have biologically impaired headwater streams in West Virginia,” they said in a Tuesday statement.

Read a review of the documentary by Jeff Biggers, journalist and author of Reckoning of Eagle Creek and In the Sierra Madre

Watch the trailer below: