Amanda McBride '09 looks at the remediated area left after a mountain top removal process.


Lisa Biddle '08 looks at a grouting machine used by a coal company to remediate the creek that runs dry through Kim Jones' home.


Michael "Quinn" Biros '10, McBride, Nichole Fernandez '09, Jillian Herschlag '09 and A. Atandi Anyona '10 take a group picture with Dean Wilson, the Atchafalaya Basin Keeper.


Benjamin Martinez '08, Benson Ansell '10, Elizabeth Zido '09 and Fernandez use binoculars to get a closer view of the chemical plants across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge.


Mountain Watershed Association's newest project mitigates the effects of acid mine drainage.


Professor Mike Heiman (left) and students Benjamin Martinez '08 (center) and Susannah Rowe '08 (right) look into the pit created by strip mining in Somerset County, Pa.


Students look out over the gulf of Mexico toward the oil rigs offshore of Port Fuchon, La. At the edge of the rapidly disappearing Louisiana coast, the port handles one-fourth of the entire U.S. domestic oil and natural gas supply, as well as a good portion of imported oil.


Students cast shadows on the levee walls along the Mississippi River.


A new tree grows inside a dead cypress trunk in the Atchafalaya Basin. Here, mulching for landscaping has destroyed most of the remaining cypress trees, a practice that is now being curtailed due to public protests led by Dean Wilson, the local basin keeper.

Philip Rothrock '10 and Kalyn Campbell '10 take the first dance of the night at Red's Juke Joint in Clarksdale Miss., dancing to the blistering blues of Big Jack Johnson and his band.


Vernon Haltom, co-director at Coal River Mountain Watch, explains how mountain-top removal is done and its drastic side effects, ranging from reduced aquifers to destroyed valleys. 


Ryan "Prana" Miller '10 holds a snake he found on the property of Kim Jones, a woman who lives in Greene County whose creek has dried up due to land subsidence from extracting coal under her property. 


On a mountain adjacent to mountain-top removal, Rothrock looks into a fissure of unknown depth caused by the process.


The illegal dumps in East New Orleans have no liners or leachate collection systems, so noxious liquids run into the waterways. The slight discoloration in the water is the chemical soup runoff. 


This sign was in the HCNA/CSED office in the Holy Cross community of the Lower-Ninth Ward, New Orleans. Here, homes were flooded or washed away due to the failure of the Industrial Canal levee walls during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Dickinson students helped to rebuild several homes in the area.