Robert Salyer, of APPALSHOP Films has produced a shocking documentary on the October 11, 2000, coal sludge spill in Martin County, Kentucky. The sludge came from a pond that was part of a coal washing plant run by Martin County Coal that broke through a deep mine and spilled over 300 million gallons of black sludge through the hollows and valleys of Coldwater Fork, Big Andy Branch, Wolf Creek, and the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. The black slurry containing a long list of heavy metals clogged the streams and covered yards, gardens, fields, and woods. It was a major industrial disaster.

Salyer's film is not just an indictment of Martin County Coal, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, but also of state and federal mine inspectors, who were more interested in shielding and protecting the coal company than they were in looking after the health and safety of Martin County citizens who suffered from the spill. Salyer interviews at length Jack Spadaro, long an advocate of stronger regulation of the mining industry and a member of the committee appointed to investigate the disaster. Spadaro refused to sign off on the investigative report that he called a whitewash and resigned from the committee. He was later fired by the Labor Department from his job as director of the Health and Safety Academy and was forced into early retirement. Salyer highlights the work of other people such as courageous reporter Lilly Adkins of The Big Sandy News , Nina and Mick McCoy, and local citizens who rallied in defense of Spadaro and to demand explanations from Martin County Coal and state and federal officials.

Salyer also reports on the 235 other sludge dams in Kentucky and West Virginia that are a threat to local communities, including one just above an elementary school with 273 children.

Yet, instead of leading in the cause of health and safety for residents of the coal fields, the U.S. Labor Department sided with those who perpetuated the harm and against those who were harmed and lowered Martin County Coal's fine from $110,000 to $5,500. Salyer gives due credit to Martin County Coal and Massey Energy for their gargantuan effort to clean up the sludge and allows their officials to explain their lack of responsibility and even the danger of the sludge. However, the film leaves this viewer with the conviction that without stronger regulation, coal companies will not do more to protect the public, and in these latter days of fossil fuels and in our current political climate, without a public uprising, state and federal governments will usually stand with the energy corporations against the safety and welfare of local citizens.