Judy Hogan

Coal Ash Bourne Judy Hogan

Penny Weaver and her community are faced with a new challenge: Regress Energy, their electric company is bringing 12 tons of coal ash to dump in their village of New Rivers, from coal ash waste at Wilmington and the Charlotte area. Their local activists in their organization ACT-NOW are planning demonstrations and brain-storming on how to get the word out to the whole village, and also how to raise money for their lawyer Jacob Sneed. A woman from out of town named Georgia (or George) has persuaded the local singing group, Shrieking Sisters to try a direct action at the coal ash site of tying themselves up in rocking chairs with chains and old farm equipment to block the coal ash trucks bringing in the ash. Penny is wary of her, and two of her members who worry that their farms will be polluted by the ash coming off the trucks, and they'll lose their businesses, have joined in Georgia's plan, which she says she learned from Greenpeace. Seb, Penny's grandson, manages to join the blockade, and Naomi, his girfriend is very worried, especially when a large pickup truck belonging to a supervisor for Regress Enegy, crashes into some of the stalled trucks, and coal ash is spilled from them. Then their oldest woman, of 92, has a heart attack, and they have to get the jaws of life to get her out and in a Medivac helicopter to the nearest hospital.