Rick Handshoe is documenting coal's pollution

Mining surrounding Rick Handshoe's home.

As the story describes, Rick monitors the quality of streams in his Floyd County community on a regular basis, and his results indicate the cumulative and long-term consequences of water pollution – consequences that state officials generally ignore and coal operators deny. However, the U.S. EPA has proposed new standards that would use conductivity levels to protect communities upstream and down. The coal industry, with the help of Gov. Beshear, is fighting to let the pollution continue.

Read Dori Hjalmarson's story in the Herald-Leader here.