May 11: 1:00 p.m.,  Appalshop's documentary film "Sludge" airs on Kentucky Educational Television's (KET) Kentucky Channel. 

Shortly after midnight on October 11, 2000, a coal sludge pond in Martin County, Kentucky, broke through an underground mine, propelling 306 million gallons of sludge down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River into the Big Sandy. The Martin County sludge spill killed all aquatic life along 30 miles of river, damaged municipal water systems, and caused millions of dollars in property damage.

Appalshop filmmaker Robert Salyer follows the government agencies and community members through their clean up efforts and their attempts to understand the causes of a disaster thirty times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Filmed over four years, the documentary chronicles the aftermath of the disaster, the Mine Safety and Health Administration "whistleblower" case of Jack Spadaro, and the looming threat of coal sludge ponds throughout the Appalachian mountains.

Noted Kentucky historian Loyal Jones described Sludge as "A shocking documentary.. [T]he film leaves this viewer with the conviction that without a public uprising, state and federal governments will stand with the energy corporations against the safety and welfare of citizens."

Sludge is available on DVD from Appalshop (800-545-7467 or www.appalshop.org/store.htm). Appalshop is a non-profit multi-disciplinary arts and education center in the heart of Appalachia producing original films, video, theater, music and spoken-word recordings, radio, photography, multimedia, and books. Since 1969, Appalshop has remained dedicated to the proposition that the world is immeasurably enriched when local cultures garner the resources, including new technologies, to tell their own stories and to listen to the unique stories of others.