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"The contractors, when I was working with them would say
it's pretty much a death trap.
You breath in the stuff here and it's going to ruin your body."
"Usually I talk on the phone and I say there it is blowing across the
window. I can see it. And I just don't go outside and I don't
walk those days."
"It would be like walking in a sand storm, we can't really breath,
it's just there."
"We've got a warning, and there is going to be alot of coal ash flying around, please don't let my son or daughter go out."
"I can taste it. Taste the salts going down my throat. So you can't get out.
Your essentially imprisoned in your own home."
The Reid Gardener power station sits right next to the Moapa River Reservation.
It's just one of the more than 600 coal-fired power plants across America,
but it, like every other coal plant has a dirty little secret.
It's called coal ash and it's making people sick.
Coal ash is the toxic waste generated by every lump of coal we burn.
It's laced with arsenic, mercury
lead and other toxic metals. It's the second-largest waste stream in America
and its subject to less regulation than garbage you take to the curb every week.
At Reid Gardener the coal ash is put into landfills and mixed with water and dumped into ponds.
And then when the wind blows just wrong,
it picks up like a sand storm blows right at the reservation. It's just one of the
hundreds of places across America
where coal ash is threatening communities and making people sick.
"I want to be out. I want to be able to do what the
Constitution of the United States says. That I have the right
for happiness. Well I don't have that now.
I look through my windows, I'm a prisoner. I go back to jail."
The coal ash ponds at Reid Gardner start at the plant and
then stretch across the desert to within a few hundred yards of the homes
on the Moapa River Reservation.
The prevailing winds carry constant pollution straight at the Paiute people
who live there.
And despite the high documented rates of lung,
heart, and thyroid disease. The Reid Gardner plant is currently trying to expand
their coal ash ponds and landfills.
"I live the closest to
the ponds and the blowing dust.
I get all of it, every turn that it blows.
I get sick from the air that is
being blown toward us."
"Fatigue, headaches, nosebleeds, dizziness.
I suffer from all that and that is what they acknowledge.
It's what they don't acknowledge. They document
addresses, the chromiums, the manganese, the lead.
All the other bad stuff. What long-term effect does that have?"
"I've never had asthma until I moved here and now I have to use an inhaler,
and my little girl got her first inhaler last week."
"I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. I've had a
sore throat for six months. I associate it
with that plant, because after reading
the chemicals and the poisons in there.... It has to be."
"You flip on a light switch, that power does not come from that light switch.
That power is generated somewhere else.
And it impacts people."
"My daughter was just born and he had just had his daughter.
And they lived on top of a hill overlooking the powerplant and thats
where he worked.
And he worked so hard that he didn't even know that he was sick,
he was waiting three weeks for a new heart, and he didn't get one so he died.
So I just start thinking about how much
all that coal dust was on my brother."
Many people on the reservation decided they're tired of being polluted on from the
outside.
Now they're looking for solutions to this problem on the inside.
So at the same time the Reid Gardner plant is trying to expand its coal ash storage capability,
the Mouapa Paiutes are trying to show a different way forward.
One that uses the resources that are already there and
moves us past coal.
"I am working for a green energy and we are going to have a solar plant, and
I think we are the first tribe in the United
States to be putting this plant
on a reservation at this large-scale. I guess I am really
proud and I'm kinda their first worker."
"No pollution, no nothing, no sound, or
smell or nothing coming from it. To go ahead and be apart of that connection,
to be connected with the Sun, making it into energy.
To be that connected with nature, mother earth
plants, rocks, animals, that's basically who we are.
It's what we started with, back before this was a reservation.
That's how our people were from back then. Lived from the Earth."
In some ways I feel like the Indian
people are here for
a reason, and maybe it's to try to help
do what we can to preserve the environment."
"We can't not just sit here and just take it, but go head and do something about it.
"We went ahead and had a solar project.
There's alternate ways. We are doing it. We're trying to go ahead a be more
positive, more active, trying to be more
supportive regarding the environment."
For years, Reid Gardner and hundreds of other coal plants have gotten away with
polluting people with toxic coal ash.
Finally, the EPA is deciding how to regulate it.
Strong regulations will help the people of the Moapa River Reservation
and the countless other communities across America who are affected by coal ash.
"There are things that
they could do,but a lot people say
it costs too much money. Well how much money do you put on your life?
What do you think I'm worth? Do you think I'm worth nothing.
"You come visit the reservation on one of those days when
it's really bad and you'll understand.
You would never want to live here, you would never want to raise your kids here.
So anybody that wants to
not make it a hazard waste, needs to experience it."
And if they experience it they will know that it's bad, and for the people that are
trying to make it a hazardous waste
more power to you. You're on a mission to try to help
at least this tribe, and any other people that are near coal ash."