These are not rain clouds its coal dust. And of adama and its really scary the wind blows coal ash and dust into the village and even in broad daylight it gets dark you know what its like to go get base work is vital for us we need to paychecks to feed our families for the most of the man who work here have wives and kids that we did not exhibit. Up us told us coggan eightys is 33 years old. Right now hes on his way to work he said demolition expert at a mine thats owned by the government run Energy Production company. Up a stall is his father jani so also works at the mine his father worked here to. Opposite all this and his colleagues are setting up a controlled explosion. He earns 1200. 00 euros a month. Thats not much but hes grateful he has a job. 70 percent of the young people in this region are unemployed. 4 villages were demolished to make room for this mine alone. Make that up but my mother was from the village of ketosis. It used to be right here where we are now. But the residents had to move to make room for the mine my mother and grandfather lived in advantage. Of the history of the better. Johnnys has worked for the Mining Company for 30 years. He used to make good money so hell qualify for a generous pension. But 10 years ago he had to move out of his home village. Elizabeth look at the you know you have only lived on this land for 55 years it was hard for me to leave im 55 years old so it was easier for me than it was for older people who know like my wifes parents are in their eightys a vision loop according to leave their land and now theyre stuck in a high rise apartment building. Block with a job with them i grab. They used to grow crops on this land and now were destroying it a lot of the thought. This is the i used to me trios coal fired power station located near the mine. Papa stories his wife to spina works here. She earns just 620. 00 euros a month and her contract is temporary she hopes that the Power Company will offer her a permanent position. With the company has done a lot of good for people and still does. The entire region depends on the company for jobs that includes businesses that have nothing to do with mining or Energy Production like cafes. If the fit their date because they put the every business and all the local residents depend on the Power Company for income a good deal of the. Thousands of people in this region have worked for generations for the Power Company in one capacity or another. There are 5 coal fired power plants here spread out over an area that covers about 80 kilometers. In 2009 link night supplied half of all of greeces electricity. But now thats fall into less than 30 percent. Most of the power plants are old and inefficient and they create too much c o 2 the e. U. Continues to impose increasingly severe penalties for excessive emissions that makes Coal Production unprofitable. The e. U. Is also demanding that parts of the Power Company be privatized because of crisis economic crisis. This comes at a time when other countries are winding down Coal Production there will almost certainly be job cuts. To this if the coal industry shuts down here a lot of people be unemployed and of them thats scary well have women that i shudder to think what could happen to them it was other that it will go with i wish my other son could find a job here the thought of a big of a little of the world who my daughter had to move overseas she went to dubai because she couldnt find work and greases of the afford to go but other than a little of him she simply wasnt able to find a job here to live in the field of the. Theme of the film. She studied hard and speak several languages. We frame her diploma is a. Stall he says that in the past the Mining Company would have provided work for everyone including his brother but now hes worried about what will happen next. Door metal the video when i think about my childrens future. I think it would be better if they shut down most Coal Production. Because of the pollution and i. Guess as to you have to but i think that they want to keep it instead some of it if you know. Im terrified about what would happen if we didnt have cola anymore. But the mines continue to expand production and dangerously close to the surrounding villages including our creamy lots of people there have been hard hit by the Mining Companies business practices. Yet c. D. s used to work as a subcontractor for the Mining Company providing transport trucks. He was forced to sell his familys orchards to the company in return 440000 euros. But after 10 years his contract was cancelled and he took up farming. But his land is now fenced in and dried up and it belongs to the Mining Company. He had to lease land in order to grow fodder for his cattle weve had to do you know what a few of my familys been here for 3 generations we were here before the Power Company wanted to see what. It was we supposed to do now here to you but ive been out you know. What are your demands i dont want to leave my village but i want clean fresh air. I want those coal fired power plants shut down. Skeff the man im about sometimes i think about just giving up a lot of good but thats hard to do it my god im 54 and i have 3 children and i love it. This situation acri me has been on hold for 8 years but nikos still has to find ways to feed his family. He has 20 cows but needs 80 to 100. And there are serious ground clinician problems. Or down off the up of if you don imus be. The company did not dispose of the coal ash properly they just left it lying around like. 300 dogs on the some of my neighbors cows got into it and they went blind on. Your game and i think ive got my duty my neighbor sued the company for damages and was awarded compensation. The coal ash also contaminated the groundwater with chromium. The villagers took the Power Company to court over the situation. People who still have jobs there dont talk about any of this because they dont want to get into trouble. But the village is divided everyone feels let down and they cant see a way out. Now were on our way to the village of mobs opihi about 20 kilometers away from our queeny theres a coal mine near here to. The village just like a ghost town the result of a botched expo creation and resettlement program. Most of the residents moved out in 2012. Today just a few dogs remain. Taso same on a wheel that used to be the mayor here he stops by occasionally to feed the dogs and to remember the village as a. Used to be. If you go here with 2 families still live here. There are 2 brothers who are shepherds. They still have their land and they want to stay with their animals or by the snows alone join the winter here and if the village is cut off from the outside world they want to look after their flock. Theyll go again almost and theres an older couple they had 7 children open kind of one of the kids was ill for a long time and then died. They just dont want to leave the village. With us in the senate and their house is the only one that still has electricity. Theres no Running Water anywhere. To shepards get that electricity from a generator. And they get their water from the animals drinking troughs what this is a group who didnt give us the opportunity to give the levee. They carry the water home in buckets of. Them because. The older couple didnt want to talk to us neither did the shepherds. Father because the roof this used to be the center of the village. Because i knew who my parents house was over them because it had a cafe to. Have more with what you got little mini mart there was a mini market on the ground floor of my house on the opposite side with with me my ticket. For. Both of them are we going to go up on that if i had some income from the cafe and the market. But when people started leaving the village. Both businesses shut down my view with with a we cant compensation for the property. But not for the income that we lost. When the business is closed or for news from the truth in my book. The Power Company went to court appeal the compensation ruling and won the case. The new ruling said that after 7 years people would have to pay back up to 40 percent of the amount that theyd been awarded. But in the meantime some people had bought apartments in nearby towns theyve been waiting since 2012 to be resettled the people of modern opihi filed a lawsuit and the case is still tied up in the courts. My father in laws house was over that the house was torn down in the hope of living with no one had used any electricity there since 2015 but we still got power bills and. Well off until last month we were getting bills for electricity that we hadnt used. But on top of that the authorities still charges for local taxes and utilities like water Sewage Treatment and Garbage Disposal but of anybody who can even though those services are no longer provided people that if you dont pay are youll get into trouble and the vent of often they form a little known behind my back on early chaos from start to finish theres just no end to it i think it can. Really. Row to the village used to run through here or just by him we noticed that a cracker developed and it was getting bigger of course from a guy long it was about 3 and a half kilometers long if your mother. The villagers demanded to be resettled before work on the new mines started but taso says that the Company Refused to pay for any relocation expenses. In 2010 there was a landslide here and that was the beginning of the end for the village of moderate pm. Voice i mean this is a little left of the courtyard in front of the churches and niccolo which was built on the edge of the village to be sort of. A hold up that there were over 50 heck tens of forest land there will be. Put up with a mother. Says Coal Production is still in full swing here. Greece depends on coal for much of its electricity a new 660. 00 make a watt power plant is being built near the village at a cost of 1400000000. 00 euros the project uses German Technology and german financing a 740000000 euro loan from the state owned development bank. All this for coal fired Power Production thats being phased out in germany. The landslide in moscow p. D. Took place in 2010 in the village of a not guilty about 30 kilometers away there was a landslide in the summer of 2017 also near a coal mine. Or east coast kind of p. T. s house was directly up up the big crack. This is our east coast and his son petrus. They continually check on the condition of their home. The ground is still sinking its too dangerous to go inside. To feel. The theyve used their vote the bill is more than that he didnt need they got the Power Company doesnt want to pay compensation because they say theres no lignite your minutes are up and look at us all a bit up what you know about us that are but the mine is just 300 metres away so they should have known that Something Like this might happen but im its not my job to tell them about any of it was copies email would you think it would pretty good that youre here they should have warned us earlier to leave it was or been a clinic and when it would be but it been a feasible post reads to me they thought it might they kind of everyone saw that the cracks were getting bigger and bigger. We complained about it for a month you know unicode the day before the landslide some Company Representatives came out and said that there was no danger of going to settle this case till they started moving their equipment away from the mind can use in a month but im signed cause damage there to get the key they both thats the thing up with these. One of my cousins and afterward they said that they had expected a landslide but nothing like this. The company insists that the landslide was a Natural Disaster and was not caused by Mining Operations in any case the company is short of cash so the only hope for the villagers as that theyll get some Financial Aid from the government. And i could put up with your point i this really hurts we put a lifetime of work into this house for years and to lose it just like that is up with me then its tough when the Congress Leave me to harness support i put up with. Only the yup were going to show i worked my entire life to buy this house because its the only asset i have if it was. A situation is just awful. For people who live at the good of the speed all the people around here have moved away and then theyve gone to the town of told them why you do you have to if you were to put up on the time being the companys paying the rent but thats all and i have just finished and. Nobody cared about whether they had enough money to survive their effort to get action then as then you know its the gift of this what happens to the older people or large families legal again how will they manage that they have nothing when it begun there you but i reached says that the Power Company believes its making a concession with the temporary rent payments but many people here have lost their source of income. Petros ran a Blueberry Farm on his parents property but he had to shut it down after the ground there sank 2 meters they held some public protests which provoked a Swift Response from the Power Company. Theres a couple. That with the compass and of course good gets up when we held demonstrations for fair compensation and on one occasion we closed down the companys conveyor belts for a while if the enemies of the us with them the company filed a complaint against us claiming that we were trying to damage their business were going to mean is 10 of us were arrested but then sentenced to 10 months in jail that was later reduced to probation of up with a gun industry like many of the honestly. I restate this was sentenced to 3 years probation. Finally the greek government said it would pay 42000000. 00 euros from a state Investment Program to those whose land was expropriated its not clear when the money will be paid the people upon arche rehab long since lost their trust in the authorities. This is the home of demolition expert oppa stoli scuzzy an e. T. S. He still has a job and he and his family live in a newly constructed village the land was a gift from his grandfather who in turn got it from the Power Company when business was better to buy no to hold your people in the old fail its there were lots of people they raised crops or had livestock a year theyre going to get a whole year to qualify for resettlement here in the new village they had to sell their land to the company and thats expropriation to me that its tough to start all over when you have no land the few of us who have jobs with the Power Company like me moved here if some others left the country and went to germany or the us if you feel the need to know maybe he. The new village was finished 10 years after the residents land was taken away 2000 people lived in the old village of cletus but only 400 of them still live here the Old Community no longer exists e. U. Funds were used for new Infrastructure Projects including a primary and secondary school but up a stone he says children have to attend classes in a neighboring village the school was shut down because there arent enough children here. Yes. The regions entire economy revolves around the Power Company. So are the coal fired power plants a blessing or a curse. The company now owns most of the land around here people like nicos for yet c. D. s who have to make their living from farming but no longer have fields have to buy straw or at least the land from others to grow it. Meanwhile the mine is moving closer to his village the moat here is despondent. There must. Be the biggest build up what made them sick the Power Company measured an area on the plane and decided to confiscated a total of 1250. 00 hectors. Up to 90 percent of the villagers make their living on that land that maine and other gobbled up some raise livestock like sheep most of them grow crops like potatoes and corn yada yada. So the company will take away their land whats going to happen to those people well if you thought you. Got people you dont know grandmother some work for the Power Company but does that mean that of the 1200 people in the village 200 have jobs and the rest dont matter. We just sit around here and wait and the Company Keeps playing games with us well let me out with you most of the time i like the not. The local residents have no idea what theyre supposed to do now its not yet clear when they might be resettled and they have to deal with pollution from the mine. Nico says that no one wants to invest in a village thats been condemned to death. When i wonder if youre going to me were not only surrounded by the mine the water is polluted and the pipes are old and full of his best. But nobody does anything. No one cares and we have to drink that water you know much of one or 2. Fortunately for op a stall its in his family they can safely drink the water from the tap. Their home is 25 kilometers from the mine where the parents work but the spinners family lives right behind the power plant. I was born and raised in that village. But we decided to move here for our children sake. The family get away from the pollution. Of their mothers and he would have preferred to stay in the village because thats where our parents live theyd be there for us and they could help with the kids but