Jeff Barrie | 
The holidays have indeed been “dark” for the residents impacted by a disaster that MSNBC reported was, “the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the US.” Our sympathies go out to the people living in this community as the long investigation, clean up and recovery process begins.
If you have not read about the disaster, here are a few links you may be interested in reading: Scientific American and Huffington Post.
For those that have seen the film Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Reenergize America, this accident may have had an unfortunate air of familiarity to you. In the film, Jeff Barrie reports on a similar incident that occurred in the fall of 2000, when a coal slurry retention pond gave way and dumped an estimated 300 million gallons of slurry in Martin County Kentucky. The size of the spill was 30 times greater than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. You can view a clip from Kilowatt Ours which includes some footage from the accident in 2000 here. Most reports suggest that the Kingston disaster is even worse than the one in 2000.
At a time when there is already a tremendous focus on our nation’s energy issues, this accident reminds us that our dependence on coal has many dire and unwanted consequences, including the potential for disasters such as this.
The solution proposed by Kilowatt Ours is twofold: Reduce our energy consumption through conservation, and purchase green, renewable energy. If you have not seen Kilowatt Ours, check here to see if it is coming to a public television station near you, or click here to order a copy of the DVD.
Our partners and sponsors are all doing important work in this area, and we encourage you visit our sponsors and partners websites. We’d also like to bring particular attention to the Sierra Club’s coal campaign and their Coal is not the Answer website to learn more about the issues.
