Sierra Presents The Cost of Coal: West Virginia

Not far from his Bandytown home, Leo Cook visits the Webb Cemetery, where several of his relatives are buried. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Mining firms must maintain a 100-foot protective zone around such burial grounds. The nearby Jarrell Cemetery, where Cook's great-grandfather is buried, is surrounded on all sides by a mining operation—a tree-studded atoll rising from a moonscape sea. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Unsullied mountains in southern West Virginia. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Just down the road from Lindytown, Leo Cook of Bandytown looks out a window in the now-vandalized building that once served as the meeting hall for members of Local 8377 of the United Mine Workers of America. During the years the building was in use, Cook sometimes polished its wooden floors. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures An abandoned home in Bandytown, West Virginia. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Hershel Aleshire of Blair, West Virginia: "Back when I was a kid, we made our own fun. We fished and we played ball and rode horses. We run after girls. Some of it I ain't gonna tell ya. Turn the camera off, I still ain't gonna tell ya." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Artifact of a happier time: a basketball backboard on what was once a residential lot in Lindytown, West Virginia. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Trainloads of coal in Williamson, West Virginia.| Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Tori Wong of Virginia traveled with friends to the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston to participate in the Memorial Day protest against mountaintop-removal mining. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Donna Branham of Lenore, West Virginia, before and after the Memorial Day protest against mountaintop-removal mining. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Donna and Charlie Branham at their Lenore, West Virginia home. "It's a hard decision to take your hair off," Donna said. "But it's not as hard as watching them destroy my land, watching them destroy my children's future." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Donna and Charlie Branham at their Lenore, West Virginia home. "It's a hard decision to take your hair off," Donna said. ''But it's not as hard as watching them destroy my land, watching them destroy my children's future." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures