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Keep up to date on all of Headwaters’ new videos!

Headwaters has a brand new Google Earth Tour of Letcher County. If you have even wanted to fly through Letcher County or been curious about how our watershed shapes our county, check this video out! We thank Ajeet Hansra, the Headwaters Summer 2011 Intern for creating this video for us!

What is your water story? Is a video campaign by Headwaters that asks local citizens to tell their story regarding their experiences with water and water quality in the region. This campaign promotes conversation between local citizens, politicians, business owners and beyond so that the waterways of Eastern Kentucky can be improved for generations to come.

The citizens of Letcher County are no strangers to the many water quality issues that have plagued the region for many years. Stories about citizens who refuse to drink their tap water abound in the region due to the poor facilities.

Members of Headwaters Inc. are doing all that we can to combat the issues of poor water quality through stream clean ups, educational outreach and support of community development efforts. We work with local community groups and schools to improve water quality by giving the citizens of Eastern Kentucky the tools to fight this growing injustice. Water pollution is linked to public health risks and has created a culture of distrust between Eastern Kentucky citizens and those who are supposed to keep us safe. We want to help the citizens of Eastern Kentucky to take ownership of their water systems.

Headwaters Inc. is spearheading a new campaign, “What is your Water Story?”, to get people talking about water quality issues that they live with everyday. We believe that talking about these issues is the first step to instigating necessary change by bringing our local citizens into the conversation. We know that the people of Eastern Kentucky deserve better and want better, and we want to be part of the solution.

If you have a story, an idea, or an opinion, we want to hear it. The stories that we collect will be broadcast on our developing website and can be made available on Facebook and YouTube, as well as on DVD.

Headwaters has also been featured in many local news broadcasts and documentary films!

On or around March 7, 2007, an abandoned mine had a blow out and now acid mine drainage is gushing into Little Dry Fork, just west of Whitesburg, KY. The orange water, increased water flow, and the changed chemical makeup of the water has decimated aquatic life in the creek. The acid mine drainage flows into Dry Fork and then into the North Fork of the Kentucky River. The plume of cloudy orange runoff extends at least one mile downstream from the mouth of Dry Fork.

Appalshop created this piece as a collaboration with WMMT’s Community Correspondents Corps (CCC) and Appalshop Films.

The US Environmental Protection Agency announced two grants totalling $400,000 to the Letcher County Conservation District to assess brownfields in Letcher County in 2008.

Both grants are under the agency’s Mine Scarred Lands program. One is specifically intended to study petroleum contamination at mine sites. Each grant will result in plans for redeveloping two to three sites chosen as top priorities during the assessment.

Former OSM/VISTA Evan Smith of the Head of Three Rivers Project wrote the grant applications for the district. Current OSM/VISTA Sam Adams will help the district develop a priority list of sites to study. Smith, Adams and Conservation District Chairman Ron Brunty travelled to Covington, Ky., today (April 7, 2008) to accept the grants.

Details of the work will be finalized over the coming weeks. The project began after July 1, 2008 when the Environmental Protection Agency released the money.

Students from Letcher County Central High School (Whitesburg, Kentucky) Investigative Science Class sampling abandoned mine drainage on Dry Fork (tributary to the North Fork of the Kentucky River).

sample results and more info available from http://kyheadwaters.org

film by NYU Tisch Students Chelsea Connor Ines Garcia Rebecca Robertson & Ariana Schrier (their first film, produced in under 24 hours)

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