Sierra Presents The Cost of Coal: Nevada

Ayona and Ayashi Hernandez at their Moapa, Nevada, home. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures The 557-megawatt Reid Gardner Generating Station first went into service in 1965. A second unit was added in 1968 and a third in 1976. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Electricity from the Reid Gardner Generating Station in Moapa helps keep the lights on and the air conditioners running in Las Vegas. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Surita Hernandez at home; she and four of her five children have asthma. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Ayona Hernandez, Summer Nickrand, and Zayda and Aaliyah Hernandez cool off in the Muddy River, about a mile from their Moapa home. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Respiratory-relief supplies at the Hernandez home in Moapa, Nevada. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures When the wind blows hard from the wrong direction, coal ash from the Reid Gardner Generating Station blows directly onto the Moapa reservation, home to about 150 tribal members. | Photo courtesy of the Moapa Band of Paiutes Environmental Department Jennifer Samson pays a hospital visit to her cousin Russell Samson, who died less than two weeks later. In a television interview shortly before he was hospitalized, Russell said that the power plant emissions made him sick: "This got inside my chest, my lungs, where I couldn't breathe." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures "The coal business is archaic," said Moapa Paiute tribal member Vernon Lee. "It was good for the past, but it doesn't fit with the future. It's polluting, and it's polluting some more, and it's polluting some more beyond that. And unfortunately, this tribe is in direct line of fire." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Vernon Lee at the Moapa tribal cemetery. "There aren't very many elders left, because people don't grow old anymore," he said. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures The Moapa Band of Paiutes tribal cemetery. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Lane Miller of Moapa, Nevada, demonstrates his nebulizer. "At least once a month he has to use a nebulizer to open up his lungs," his mother Kami said. "If I neglect it, he has to go on steroids or it can turn into pneumonia or bronchitis." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Kami and Lane Miller at home in Moapa, Nevada. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Lane Miller swings in hammock outside his Moapa, Nevada, home. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures