A West Virginia woman's journey to push for stricter, safer coal-mining laws was first turned into a book, and now the story of Trish Bragg is being made into a movie, with parts of filming recently taking place in the community of Pie in Mingo County, reports Julia Roberts Goad of the
Gilbert Times, a weekly in the southern part of the state near the Kentucky border.
(Charleston Gazette photo by Brian Ferguson: Bragg at a public hearing on mountaintop removal in 1998)
Bragg's story was first told in Penny Loeb's book
Moving Mountains, which "chronicles
the struggle the Pie community has faced since the wells that supplied
water to homes ran dry as a result of underground mining,"
reports Goad. Now, the book is being turned into a movie about "the struggle to find the
balance of making a living from coal mining and the responsibility
of the coal companies to extract coal while doing as little damage as
possible to the land and the people the industry supports."
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| Author Penny Loeb (Goad photo) |
Bragg told Goad, “I am not against coal mining. I was never against mining, I just think it should be done responsibly.” Bragg's journey into the world of coal mining began in 1976 when she moved to West Virginia from North Carolina. In 1994, when her neighbors began losing the source of their water, Bragg began to educate herself "about the state
Department of Environmental Protection, mining laws, environmental groups and community activism." (
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