In May 1998, Arch Coal, Inc. announced it would expand its Dal-Tex strip mine just above the small town of Blair. But lifetime residents said too many had already been bought out or chased away by the giant mine, and that Arch Coal's planned expansion was the final threat to their once-tranquil way of life. Forty families -- where there were once 300 -- stayed in Blair.

RAZING APPALACHIA is the story of their remarkable fight -- against the second-largest coal company in America, against the know-nothing state political leaders and, unhappily, against the 400 union miners whose jobs were on the line.

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Reviews
"Without wielding a heavy hand, Sasha Waters's purpose...is conveyed clearly: for viewers to understand what it means to have one's homeplace on the line...and what it means to have a community divided by the threat of removal of either courting sites, cemeteries, and homes, or the best-paying jobs in the region... A point to be appreciated about this film is that it does not pit the landholders against the miners, but instead shows many ways that they constitute the same community being presented with a dilemma through the logic of global capitalist development... Razing Appalachia shows how the contradiction between the preservation of 'place' as a site for the construction of community, memory, and livelihood and the permanent alteration of that place through extractive industries - a theme with much resonance - plays out in Blair, West Virginia... the issues discussed in this film link the workers and residents of Pigeonroost Hollow with those in many other places."