If your child becomes seriously ill because of pollution, are you partly responsible because of where you chose to live?

That’s one of the questions parents are asking themselves in West Virginia home to arguably the most dramatic mining practice in history: mountaintop removal.

The Sundance Film Festival documentary “The Last Mountain” by Bill Haney is about a community’s fight to stop the practice from leveling Coal River Mountain.

Many of the families featured have lived below the mountain for close to a century. The majority of the men in their families were or are coal miners. Their familiarity with, and sometimes reliance, on the coal industry does nothing to change their opposition to a practice that involves dynamiting the top off mountains to scrape off the coal seams below.

In addition to the dust, noise, and permanent topographical effects, the families believe the mining practice is polluting their air and water to the detriment of their children. “The Last Mountain” portrays their David versus Goliath battle to save their mountain.

The Antagonist

Filmmaker Bill Haney and the activists he followed blame Massey Energy for the troubles. It is the industry’s biggest advocate for the practice and it owns the mining rights surrounding Coal River Mountain.

Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, calls Massey the most damaging mining company to the forests of Appalachia in history.

While the West Virginia Coal Association president Bill Raney repeatedly states the practice ensures the security of thousands of good jobs, the film claims the industry has laid off 40,000 people in the last 30 years partly because of increased efficiency from practices like mountaintop removal.

Massey Energy has ridded its ranks of union members, and according to Coal River Valley resident Maria Gunnoe, the company’s practices have destroyed entire towns in the area.

The Protagonists

Gunnoe and retired small-business owner Bo Webb are profiled as leaders of a small group of West Virginians who protest the expansion of the practice to Coal River Mountain.

Their story attracted the attention of environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. With a career of fighting to protect clean air and water, Massey Energy’s 60,000 environmental violations convinced him Gunnoe’s and Webb’s fight was worth his attention.

“The Last Mountain” follows Kennedy’s efforts to spotlight their concerns, as well as those of Jennifer Hall-Massey who saw six neighbors grow brain tumors from the well water, and Ed Wiley whose granddaughter attended school beneath a coal silo.

Taking a more extreme approach, members of Climate Ground Zero are also shown staging civil disobedience to stop day-to-day mining operations.

At one point, Kennedy said his father once told him he thought mining companies destroyed landscapes on purpose to permanently impoverish the residents and break the wealth of the unions.

The Solution

About half of the electricity plants in this country are fueled with coal. Industry advocate Bill Raney insists that the devastating effects of mountaintop removal are either exaggerated or only temporary. Either way, they are a small price to pay for keeping the lights on and putting West Virginians to work.

Webb, Gunnoe and others would like to see wind turbines installed along the top of Coal River Mountain.

Citizens raised the money themselves for a feasibility study, which discovered high-level winds.

According to the film, the wind power industry employs over 85,000 people the exact same number as the coal industry. And Massey Energy only pays Boone County, where Coal River is located, $36,000 a year in taxes. Those payments are expected to end in 17 years, the film said.

A wind-power company could be expected to pay the county $1.75 million per year indefinitely, it said.

In “The Last Mountain,” the activists are not trying to kill jobs or stop electricity production; they’re trying to introduce their community to a new source for both.

“They’re bound and determined to knock that mountain down, and we’re bound and determined to stop it,” Webb said.

“The Last Mountain” is an advocacy piece and takes the side of the Massey critics. It is also about rural Americans fighting to change their economy and environment to protect their way of life.

“The Last Mountain” screens Jan. 26, 3 p.m. at Temple Theater and Jan. 28, 3 p.m. at Yarrow Hotel Theater.