I just watched the new Ashley Judd short video that is set to be broadcast nationwide about what's been happening in Appalachia.

I actually started Reel Community Action after connecting to Julia Bonds, one of the heroes working to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia. My goal in connecting with Julia was to make a film about her incredible work. Julia Bonds was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, a coal miner's daughter and the director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Over the past thirteen years, Bonds has emerged as a formidable community leader against a highly destructive mining practice called mountaintop removal that is steadily ravaging the Appalachian mountain range and forcing neighboring communities, some of whom have lived in the region for generations, to abandon their homes.

I was ready to go film Julia but she said, "You know it would be better to get existing films about mountaintop removal out there...what we need is to get this information to the people now". Julia had been on a tour with Energy Action Coalition http://www.energyactioncoalition.org/ - using just a power point presentation and her passion to save Appalachia's mountains, their tour convinced several colleges and universities to switch to 100% renewable energy vs. coal. Currently the US is using 52% coal - so it's our dirty little secret as far as energy use is concerned.

And so my brief encounter with Julia Bonds, actually gave birth to Reel Community Action, my non-profit which has been working to make and get great environmental films out there to inspire people to action.

Here's some more about Julia Bonds from the Goldman Prize website where you can watch a 5 minutes short about her work http://www.goldmanprize.org/node/84

In 2001, Bonds and her family became the last residents to evacuate from her own hometown of Marfork Hollow where six generations of her family had lived. Marfork had been virtually destroyed by mountaintop removal mining, which involves completely blasting off the tops of mountains so that huge machines can mine thin seams of coal. Mountaintop removal mining completely annihilates streams and forests, and causes extensive flooding and blasting damage to homes. The pollution from mining and the toxic chemicals used in the preparation of coal for market have been linked to rising asthma rates and other serious respiratory ailments, particularly among children, including Bonds' grandson. Residents who live near the mining blast zones also suffer from traumatic stress. Slurry dams thick with heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead routinely overflow into watersheds, contaminate drinking water and drive toxic sludge into residents' backyards. As a result, thousands of local residents have been driven out of their homes.

Mountaintop removal mining has also been catastrophic for Appalachia's waterways. Coal companies routinely dump the tons of mountaintop debris into nearby valleys and streams. Today, more than 1,000 miles of Appalachian headwater streams have been completely buried and 300,000 acres of the world's most diverse temperate hardwood forests have been obliterated by so-called "valley fill."

Please watch Ashley Judd's short film - it's so important to know what's going on in the heartland of our country and to one of our most precious resources, our beloved mountains.