Toxic Water, Poisoned People

When Mountains Fall To Pay For Coal

Photographer

Paul Corbit Brown

Concept

Appalachia is the second most bio-diverse ecosystem on the planet and yet it is being systematically destroyed by a cheap coal extraction method called Mountain Top Removal (MTR).  Over the last 20 years, over 500 mountains have been destroyed, the water is now toxic with heavy metals and the rate of destruction is rising at an alarming rate.

Some of these images are from Lindytown, a once beautiful community in the true sense of the word.  Residents had been there for generations.  Most of them rarely locked their doors.  Lindytown is largely a ghost town now.  Only one family remains.

For over ten years, I have been working to raise awareness about and ultimately stop the devastation of MTR coal mining in Appalachia.  As long as the public remains ignorant of the growing crisis in Appalachia, it will remain a "sacrifice zone" for cheap energy.

Biography

I was born and raised in the coal fields of West Virginia. I am the first male in my family to not be a coal miner.

I have photographed humanitarian issues throughout the United States, Mexico, Kenya, Jamaica, Russia, Israel, Laos, Thailand, Rwanda, Indonesia, Haiti and Northern Iraq.

My images convey human trauma, violence, joy and hope, as well as the resiliency of people struggling to overcome the past and forge a new future.

My photos serve as a remembrance, so time doesn't diminish the true depth of the horrific injustices, and as a call to action for positive transformation. 

www.legacyofnow.com

View by Project View by Photographer

Archive Projects



East of a New Eden


Photographer: Alban Kakula and Yann Mingard

Alban Kakulya and Yann Mingard’s East of a New Eden documents the evolution of the European Union...



Finding Paradise at the Edge of Hell
An environmental picture of Colombia's mega-diversity in the new millennium


Photographer: Aldo Brando (Photographer) and Emilio Constantino (Writer)

Colombia is one of the richest countries in biological diversity. This nation provides habitat fo...



Sufis: Messengers Of Peace


Photographer: Amit Mehra

Post 9/11, the general perception to Islam has been quite negative but what needs to be understoo...



Beyond the Cliche
Positive Influences from the Cuban Revolution


Photographer: Anna Mia Davidson

Beyond The Cliche has two main objectives: To document the positive influences left by the revolu...



The Living Wild


Photographer: Art Wolfe

For The Living Wild, Art Wolfe spent three years photographing animals in their natural habitats....



Gypsy Culture from the Balkans to Kasgar


Photographer: Attila Lorant

Attila Lorant’s Gypsy Culture from the Balkans to Kasgar documents the rich traditions of G...



Domestic Landscapes
Eastern Europe


Photographer: Bert Teunissen

This project is about natural daylight. How daylight illuminates the domestic interior, and dicta...



Disappearing Cultures


Photographer: Brian Watt

Bryan Watt’s Disappearing Cultures documents the life and culture of the Akha and Mlabri hi...



Chesapeake Bay Watershed


Photographer: Cameron Davidson

Chesapeake Bay, the largest freshwater estuary in the world, has been adversely affected by uncon...



Siberia is Melting


Photographer: Camille Seaman

Siberia is quickly becoming both the symbol and the litmus test for most of our environmental con...



Too Young to Die


Photographer: Carlos Javier Ortiz

Gun violence is an epidemic that not only plagues lower-income, urban neighborhoods, but also af...



The Shoshone Interpretive Project


Photographer: Corey Hendrickson

Shoshone—part of the Uto-Aztecan language family once spoken by Native Americans from the G...



Amazon: Forest at Risk


Photographer: Daniel Beltrá

The ancient rainforest of the vast Amazon basin represents over half the world’s remaining tropical ...


Black Maps


Photographer: David Maisel

David Maisel has been photographing sites of environmental destruction since 1983, when he visite...



Shifting Into Third
The Graveyard Shift


Photographer: Djordje Zlatanovic

Shifting Into Third is a series of environmental portraits of the people who work the night shift...



Freedom To Roam: Wildlife Corridors
Inspiring, Connecting, Preserving


Photographer: Florian Schulz

Amongst scientists, the need for connectivity between natural areas and preserves has become basi...



LIFE: A Journey Through Time


Photographer: Frans Lanting

In the year 2000, Frans set off on a journey of photographic discovery that parallels new scienti...



Delta Blues Musicians and The Road They Traveled


Photographer: Gail Mooney

The “blues” is a true American music, rooted in the experiences of the African Americ...



Mountain Gorillas… and People
Understanding the Connections and Why They Matter


Photographer: Gene Eckhart

This project is designed primarily to promote mountain gorilla conservation, to educate lay peopl...



Nowhere People
Discarded and Stateless in Africa


Photographer: Greg Constantine

As multi-ethnic societies continue to reshape cultures around the world, the basic rights afforde...



The Innocent
Casualties of the Civil War in Northern Uganda


Photographer: Heather McClintock

After twenty years of civil war in northern Uganda, the government's Uganda People's Defense Forc...



Into Deep Water
American Shrimpers


Photographer: Heather Moran

Every morning they wake long before dawn, moving unseen down to the docks where they board their ...



Africa's Undiscovered Myths
Searching for Man's Original Stories


Photographer: Janis Miglavs

Some 150,000 years ago a small band of humans left Africa to populate the earth, according to DNA...



Grrlstories


Photographer: Joanna Pinneo

More than a decade ago, acclaimed National Geographic photographer Joanna Pinneo began interviewi...



No Agua, No Vida
The Thirsty Colorado River Delta


Photographer: John Trotter

The writer Wallace Stegner once called the arid American west our "Geography of Hope." Its vast s...



Shadow Lives USA


Photographer: Jon Lowenstein

During the past decade, millions of Mexican and Central American migrants have left their homes and ...


The Perilous Path
Cross-Border Migrant Journeys in the New Global Economy


Photographer: Jon Lowenstein

Declining economic conditions in Mexico and stiffer U.S. border policies are increasing the number o...


Warriors For Peace


Photographer: Jon Orlando

Through the use of intimate portraits and in depth audio interviews, this project will look deepl...



The Cañari of Southern Ecuador


Photographer: Judy Blankenship

The Cañari have lived in southern Ecuador for more than 3,000 years. Now, the demands of the 21st...



Incan Plants Today


Photographer: Lorena Guillen Vaschetti and Martin Lopo

Photographer Lorena Guillen Vaschetti and anthropologist Martin Lopo’s Incan Plants Today i...



Angel Island
The Ellis Island of the West


Photographer: Lydia Lum

Angel Island is called the Ellis Island of the West, but it was hardly an immigrant gateway. Betw...



Healing Planet


Photographer: Marie-Rose Phan-Lê

Traditional healing methods are becoming a lost art due to global modernization, cultural assimil...



Women and War


Photographer: Melanie Stephens

The United Nations estimates that 90 percent of war casualties are civilians—mostly women a...



Sinai Wilderness
Endangered Wildlife and Vanishing Cultures


Photographer: Omar Attum

Historically, Sinai's indigenous people, the Bedouins, survived on their frugal land by maintaini...



Toxic Water, Poisoned People
When Mountains Fall To Pay For Coal


Photographer: Paul Corbit Brown

Appalachia is the second most bio-diverse ecosystem on the planet and yet it is being systematica...



Truck Farmers: The Last Harvest


Photographer: Perry Dilbeck

A culmination of more than ten years of work, Perry Dilbeck’s series of black and white pho...



Nutrition 101


Photographer: Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusio

The book project examines nutrition around the world on a very personal level. It looks at 101 un...



Animists: The Spirit of Place


Photographer: Phil Borges

Phil Borges’s project, Animists, documents the few remaining traditional cultures where peo...



The Glass Between Us
Reflections on Urban Creatures


Photographer: Rebecca Norris Webb

In 1998, Rebecca Norris Webb wandered into the Coney Island aquarium, and spotted a white beluga ...



Endangered Spaces


Photographer: Richard Rollins

Loss of open to seemingly unrestrained development is affecting the health and well-being of peop...



World Health Documentary Project


Photographer: Robert Semeniuk

Fourteen million people die each year from treatable diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosi...



Palestinian Portrait


Photographer: Ron Wurzer

Ron Wurzer’s Palestinian Portrait documents the Israeli/Palestinian conflict post-9/11. Wurzer’s ...



Aftermath


Photographer: Sara Terry

The media cover war, but rarely the aftermath—the challenging time when people rebuild comm...



The Khanty of Siberia


Photographer: Scott S. Warren

For thousands of years the Khanty people of northwest Siberia have survived as fishermen, hunters...



Bearing Witness
Beyond the Surface of Breast Cancer


Photographer: Sharon Seligman

Having survived breast cancer herself, Sharon Seligman conceived Bearing Witness as a visual “voi...



The Bride Price
Consequences of Early Marriage Worldwide


Photographer: Stephanie Sinclair

The UN Population Fund, which tracks global reproductive patterns, has noted a significant early ...



Visualizing Earth


Photographer: Stephen Harrison

Stephen Harrison's Visualizing Earth is a touring exhibition project with a mission to invoke i...



Both Sides of the Line


Photographer: Steve Simon

Growing up in Montreal, my family would often venture into the strange new world that was so diff...



The Grandmother Spirit


Photographer: Steve Simon

Idea: To illuminate the determination, strength, resiliency, and inspiration of The African Grand...



Land as Home
An Ongoing Photographic Study of the Arctic and Desert


Photographer: Subhankar Banerjee

Subhankar Banerjee's current project began in 2000 as a study of the ecological and cultural dive...



Koryo People


Photographer: Sung Kwan Ma

Koreans settled in Siberia circa 1830, and many more migrated in the 1900s to escape Japanese col...



Four Thousand Islands…Where the Mekong Dies?


Photographer: Suthep Kritsanavarin

My documentary is focused on the Mekong's unique wildlife and human inhabitants; the endangered ...



Nomads No More


Photographer: Taylor Weidman

As one of the world's few remaining nomadic cultures, Mongolian pastoral herders illustrate in hi...



FEAR: A Project on Rape and Recovery


Photographer: Tim Matsui

FEAR is a documentary project combining both photo and radio journalism in a video production to ...



Nature Versus Man in the Great Northwest


Photographer: Wes Pope

Wes Pope’s Nature Versus Man in the Great Northwest is an ironic and humorous look at the w...

Subscribe

Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter

Subscribe to our RSS feed

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter