The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher Erin Brockovich meets Dark Waters in this propulsive and heart-wrenching legal drama set in Appalachian coal country, as one determined lawyer confronts a coal industry giant in a battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community—from Wall Street Journal reporter Kris Maher. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could it be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so. For seven years, he waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk. A respected preacher and his brother, retired coal miners, and women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. As he dug deeper into the mystery of the water along a stretch of road where the violence from the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud still echoes, he was pulled into the darkest corners of Mingo County, risking his finances, his marriage, his career, and even his safety. Bringing to life a rich cast of characters and the legacy of coal mining in an essential yet often misunderstood part of America, Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks with voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you tuning in have i ever told you that wait every show well no we really do like from the bottom of my heart the depths of my soul from the inner working sanctums of my brain

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check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Anyway, guys, we have a brilliant author on the show. He's written a book that just came out October 12th, 2021, called Desperate, an Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia. His name is Chris Marr, and he's going to be talking to us today about his amazing new book. He's been a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal since 2005, writing about environmental issues, coal mining, labor, regional economics, and other topics. He's reported on the Flint water crisis, PFAS, yes, PFAS, drinking water contamination, and Massey's Energy Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.

More recently, he wrote about the pandemic's effect on families coping with remote learning. He's covered the trials of Jerry Sandusky, Bill Cosby, and Don Blankenship, and has also written several features for the journal's front page, Ahead Common, on topics ranging from extreme pogo athletes to the coldest town in the U.S. He lives in Pittsburgh with his two children. Welcome to the show, Chris. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks, Chris, for having me.

Good, good, good. Yeah, I appreciate your interest in the story and the book, and love your show, so it's great to talk to you. There you go. It's wonderful to have you on. And I guess my, actually my first question should be, are you a Pittsburgh Steelers fan? I am.

I grew up in New Jersey, so I grew up in the generations of New York Giants fans, but I had no choice once I came here to turn to the black and gold. Yeah. Well, as long as you didn't say the Jets. Anyway, I'm just kidding. I love the Jets. Wait, are they still a team? Anyway, guys guys that was really rude of me and we just lost

the jets crowd damn it so chris what motivated you want to write this book oh give us your plugs first actually you just give us both at the same time you can find me on twitter at it's chris underscore mar which is and it's chris with a k it's K R I S underscore M A H E R. And so you can find me, my website is chrismarauthor.com. And then I'm trying to think where else you can find me on Instagram, chrismar underscore official, which is the official handle for that. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks again for having me on. And so this, this story is just to give an overview. It's about these four communities in Southern West Virginia and Mingo County that had this undrinkable well water for years and years.

This, the water was really awful. It was black and gray. It was brown. It smelled like diesel fuel or chemicals. Yeah. Not something you want to have it in your glass in the kitchen or do your dishes or your clothes or take it. They were really struggling for years. They were unable to get the county and the state to help them get a municipal water line. The nearest industrial site was this coal processing facility owned by Massey Energy and its subsidiary, which his name was Raw Sales and Processing. And the company had denied that it affected the wells at all. So finally the people turned to an environmental lawyer. His name is Kevin Thompson. And that was in 2004. And that kind of got the whole story started. He was representing the people for seven years.

Mingo County, West Virginia. Yeah. So Mingo County, it's in the very Southern part of West Virginia, right along the border with Kentucky. And the communities that I write about are West Virginia, right along the border with Kentucky. And the communities that I write about are in this, it's a really beautiful area. It's these green hills, winding roads, it's basically hills everywhere. It's just, there's no flat land. And I wrote about these four old coal mining communities. Two of them are in these hollows along creeks and they were, they sprang up in the early 20th century to house coal miners. And there's still these really small remote communitiesth century to house coal miners. And there's

still these really small remote communities. So yeah, Mingo County, it's about 90 miles, an hour and a half south of Charleston. And I love driving down there. And I always feel like I'm heading to someplace that's just disconnected from civilization in a way. It's an entirely other place down there. It's really sad. My mother is a coal miner's daughter from West Virginia. I went there as a child, I think when I was four or five. Beautiful place. And the Appalachians have just really, the people there have just really taken a hit with their lives, jobs, all that sort of stuff. Now, was Donald Blankenship, was he part of this whole? Yeah. So he is a major figure in the book and in this

story because he was the CEO of Massey Energy. And to get back to your first question, the reason I wanted how I got into this story was I was reporting in 2010 for the Wall Street Journal in Pittsburgh. And in West Virginia, Massey Energy's upper big branch mine exploded in April of 2010. So I went down there immediately, was there for a few days during the vigil to see if miners were going to be surviving. They had these mine rescue teams going underground for days. And that, I had covered Massey a bit in coal mining a bit, but that really drew me into the state and coal mining even more. Because after four days, they determined that 29 miners had been killed. So that was the worst coal mining disaster

in the U.S. in four decades, 40 years. So it shook the entire state of West Virginia, especially the southern half. I don't know if you have family from there, but it really sent shockwaves through the whole state. This was touching. 300 miners worked at that mine. And so the loss of 29 just reverberated through a lot of communities. And I ended up covering the civil investigation, the criminal investigations that followed for months and actually years. Right away, so that happened in April. In May, I went down and I had just heard about this lawsuit. Someone mentioned on one of those calls when you're reporting, at the end of the call, he says, you might want to just give this lawyer a call. It's an interesting thing to check out this lawsuit.

So I went down to Williamson, West Virginia, Williamson in Mingo County, which is again, right on the border with Kentucky. It's this old fading coal town, seeing much better days. And I met the lawyer, Kevin Thompson, who had sued Massey on behalf of these four communities and about 700 people who had this horrible water in their homes. And so Kevin Thompson, he was working out of this old hotel, the Mountaineer, and it's a hotel that was built in 1925. When he started working there in about 2002 to four, it was this, this old relic. There was no carpeting, no heat, a lawyer in town bought it, and he was trying to rehabilitate it and everything.

But so when I went and met Kevin Thompson, he's in this wood panel of the office. It was almost like a startup company, but with a Mingo County flavor. It was like mind maps on the walls and they had a dark side of the moon posters, bluegrass playing and music in the corner. And I just got this sense, this visceral sense that this was this incredible story because you have this lawyer. He's not like out of a white shoe law firm or he's this guy kicking back in his chair with like a moth t-shirt because he's from Point Pleasant, West Virginia. And at one point he pointed out the window of the office to this light on a hill and he said, that's Don Blankenship's house up there. That was like this corporate retreat that Blankenship had built on the top of a hill that kind of looked down, had a panoramic view. So it's almost like this coal baron looking down on everybody. And just that juxtaposition of this lawyer, what he was going through, and this coal CEO who lived in the communities, even though he was running this billion-dollar coal company, he's on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and it's a big deal in the coal industry, the face of the coal industry in some ways.

And then when I found out what the people had gone through too, it was too good of a story to pass up, just too compelling of a story, really. So before the lawyer got involved, how long were these people drinking this water? How long did they end up drinking this water? Are they still drinking this water where it's this nasty stuff? Yeah.

Profile Moore in the book, they're the Browns, Ernie and Carmelita Brown. They noticed their water go bad in the early 1980s. They weren't sure of the exact date by the time I came around and was reporting. So this is in the early 80s. And what happened was Carmelita went to take a bath one night and she turned on the water and her bathtub just filled up with this gray water and this particles in it. She called her husband into the bathroom. They just waited there to see if the water would run clear and it didn't. And the thing was the water would get

better and then it'd get worse. But over time it was really deteriorating. The water was clearly degrading in this area. And so that's really the start. It got worse for people in the 90s. And then again, in the early 2000s, they were really trying to get the state to help them. They wrote to Senator Byrd, who has highways and things named after him throughout the state, but he wasn't able to help. Congressman, even Joe Manchin at the time was Secretary of State. He wasn't able to help. For some reason, even Joe Manchin at the time was secretary of state. He wasn't able to help. For some reason, these people were just on their own until they got the lawyer.

They even called themselves the forgotten communities. They had a sign on the road that says, please help us get water, the forgotten communities. And meanwhile, Joe Manchin is the guy who decides whether we have infrastructure in this country. Yeah. Like, check on the face already. There might be some kind of a through line here. Consistent stupidity. the guy who decides whether we have infrastructure in this country like yeah face already there might be some kind of a through line here assistance stupidity now i know that this guy correct me if i'm wrong but i know this guy was intertwined with a lot of stuff this don blankenship dude

not only was he had his head up donald trump's butt if i recall rightly and then donald trump was trying to help them bring coal back because that's something that should come back. Why don't we just bring back, I don't know, at one point, you want to bring back steam and Navy ships. And then I think he's the one who sued John Oliver, right? Yeah. So I think what I know now, just to go back a little bit, Blanketship exited the scene. And after that accident that I referred to before, 2010, he was ousted later that year from Massey Energy. The company was sold. The board of directors had a lot of motivation to sell the company because they were under potential criminal liability themselves. So the company disappeared after that. It was absorbed by another company. And Don Blankenship was indicted in 2014.

He was convicted and he was sentenced to prison. He served a year in prison for violating mine safety laws, which is a misdemeanor. And that term misdemeanor is really important because since Blankenship got out of prison in 2017, I believe, he has sued. Okay, so just to feel forward a little bit. In 2018, he ran for Senate in the state of West Virginia, but he lost. And he lost in the primary. But during that campaign, he got a lot of media attention, all the stations, CNN, Fox, everywhere. And so he was referred to as a felon sometimes. And I want to make clear that I'm saying he was convicted of misdemeanor

because he ended up suing about 100 media outlets and personalities for $12 billion. $12 billion. And that's ongoing. So from what I understand, he's very involved in pursuing that lawsuit right now. And they're moving forward on the Donald Trump one. I'm a junior. I just saw it on the 7th of this month.

They allowed it to go forward. So that's good. Boy, I hate to see Don Jr. get sued and maybe lose the $5 his dad gave him or something. That's just, wow. I'll send my thoughts and prayers. But this, yeah, I remember John Oliver doing the bit on the Blanketship guy. And he's like, go ahead, sue us. And then he sued them.

And then finally, I guess, when his company filed bankruptcy. So why don't these guys... So you tell the story of how this unravels, but why don't these guys have a normal water system? I don't know. Some countries or some counties do where you have

some sort of filtration suburbia city set up? I don't know. Yeah. So it's a really great question because there's still a lot of well water in this area. And throughout the country, there's lots of people relying on residential wells. But just to lay out the geography a little bit, so there's the city of Williamson, which is where that hotel was and the courthouse.

And there's actually a building called the Coal House, which is made of 65 tons of coal. The entire building, it's a cube-shaped, and it's where the local chamber of commerce has its offices. There's a hotel, coal house, courthouse. So just to lay out the map a little bit, there's Williamsonson and then there's Matewan, which is a very historic town there, which you might've seen, heard about the John Sayles movie, which was about the 1920 organizing effort by the miners there. And the Matewan massacre was a shootout between the sheriff and the Baldwin Feltz detectives that were kicking miners out of their homes, forcing them into tents. But between Williamson and Matewan, there are these others, the communities that I wrote about. And so it's very rural. Matewan and Williamson do have municipal water. But the thing was in the beginning that people couldn't get connected to those water systems. Now, but the other thing

that's remarkable about this whole story is that Don Blankenship himself lived in one of these four communities and he had a water line. He had a pipe going from Matewan to his own house. Wow. Sometime in the 1990s, he got it. And that was something that outraged the people that meanwhile, essentially they're his neighbors with this contaminated water. And he had water coming from Matewan himself. And I did ask him about that. And he said that it was a casual thing. He didn't remember. He's got incredible recall for every detail. But he portrayed it that the way he told the story, he had just told workers at the company, Hey, if we ever have an opportunity to get some city water, let's get it just because generally it's better than the well water.

But that's like the 1% right there. It's, yeah. Bernie Sanders. Wow, man. That's just extraordinary. So why wasn't his company providing better water to these people? I know some people have well water and they're like, especially when I grew up, we got well water.

We don't need shit. Was this stuff showing up in their well water and they're like especially when i grew up we got well water we don't need and shit was this stuff showing up in their well water was it showing up in the city whatever water he was providing or how was this uh it was this uh how was this getting into there they had to really figure that out because that was kevin thompson the environmental lawyer's main job really was to figure out what happened to the water there's this mystery the water's underground what happened underground the company. There's this mystery. The water's underground. What happened underground? The company, give a little more background. So the subsidiary coal company, Raw Sales and Processing, what they did there was process the coal, which means they cleaned it. And there's this one green building, which was incredibly complex inside, but the coal goes

through there and it's got to be broken up into the right size. It's got to be run through this water. And so in the end, what you're left with is this, let's call it slurry. It's this black sludge and you've got to store it somewhere. A lot of companies build these impoundments, these giant lakes where they just store it for years and years. But what Massey, it turns out what this company was doing was injecting the slurry into the abandoned mines. So in this area, coal has been mined for over a hundred years. And so all the, by the eighties, most of the mining was done, although there were some active mines still,

and they would just run a pipe through the Hills, stick it into a drill bore hole down, put the pipe in there. And then they just run it down there until it's shot out the, the black water shot out which is a violation that's an environment violation by the way but um and where was the epa during this whole time yeah so the it's that's a really great question because the it turns out that in the 1980s the state regulators were really upset with the company doing this because they

initially did it without a permit. Then the state said, and the company said, it's going to cost jobs. If we can't do this, we're going to have to shut down. And they copied the governor on the letter they wrote back. And it was a whole back and forth. There were a lot of violations of how this story was handled at the time. But at one point, the state said, OK, fine, you can go for six months. We'll give you a limited permit, six months.

And you've got to build this impoundment to store it more safely. But in the end, the company just blew past that deadline and they just kept doing it every month. And they had these detailed reports. They inject 20 million gallons a month down to the hundredth of a decimal place. They record it. And, but that was all lost by the, in the early 2000s, when the people, again, were trying to get the water and figure out what happened. All that injection was forgotten about. And it took Kevin Thompson digging through files. And actually there's a point where a guy that Kevin hires, his name's Jack Spadaro. He used to work for the federal agencies that regulate coal mining. And someone tipped him

off and said, Hey, there's some documents here you guys want to know about. They're going to throw them, so come and get them. So they went and got this series of files, and it showed. I don't want to give too much of the story, but literally a billion gallons was injected into this area. Yeah, so it was, but it took all this digging by Kevin, the lawyer, to honor all that. This is extraordinary. A lot of your reviews and a lot of people that have written about it, they're like, this reads like a novel because it's the truth of strange

fiction, but it's insane that it's for real. You know, when you really study like the red states, and I hate to sound like a liberal, but I am, I'm not trying to be political, but you read about some of the things that goes on, and these people really vote against their own best interests a lot of times between jobs. And you see the corruption that goes on in red states, and you're just like, why do you guys keep, you guys have like your Russian roulette point in your head, and you wonder why, but this is why they love low education in these states and everything else.

This is in the area too where the Hatfield-ccoy feud still is is that true yeah so that was like another reason i wanted to tell this story is because i really was interested in how the history and what people had to deal with coal companies over 100 years like how that resonates today people and the hatfield-McCoy feud did happen in this area. It's often portrayed as like these just outlaw hillbillies, this blood feud, they're illiterate. They're just going to, they're not going to go to the courts. They're going to just, you know, shoot each other. But I talked to some scholars and there's also people locally who've dug through lots of court filings and all the courthouse records. And so I think it's even more interesting that it's more almost of an economic

story because what was really happening in the second part of that Hatfield-McCoy feud, it's between the Devil Ants, Hatfield, all Randall-McCoy. But what was really happening was the railroad was coming through in 1892. They were going to connect, you know, Ohio, Cincinnati to like Norfolk, Virginia. And they chose this right along the river. I was describing the river and the road between Williamson and Matewan. But before that railroad was completed in 1892, this, the really, the smart businessmen in the area, the merchants and all these guys from like Pikeville, Kentucky, even Logan, West Virginia, they were aware that land values were just going to skyrocket. And they wanted to get in on that, this land grab and the mineral rights, which is a whole other thing about how that's been taken away from people locally by these huge corporations. So the fight, a lot of the fight had to do with these investors in Pikeville trying to

get Devilance's 5,000 acres. And so I get into that in the book. And I think interesting that it's not, it's more of, I don't know, these people were more sophisticated than they're given credit for in the popular story. There was that fighting, which is over land and capital. And when the railroad came through, it just transformed this region, just industrialized it quickly. Mines sprang up. Williamson, Matewan were like boom towns. Then you have miners for the next 20 years working in really tough conditions. These coal mines, coal companies had these mine guards that

were basically their company police that would police the people and people got paid in script which is company money it's a currency you can only use at the company store you got to buy your own equipment your carbide for your lamp or whatever you need your blasting caps and so in 1920 there was that mate one massacre i was talking about 11 people killed and then after there was there were people living in tents all along the river. And some of those people at the time were the grandparents of the people in the Kevin Thompson lawsuit of fighting over water. So they had been fighting the coal company for a hundred years,

basically from 1985, 90 years. And so they had that in there. You talk about people and their interests politically and everything. It's such a complicated picture. When you look at how do people feel about coal companies because they relied on them for jobs, but they also had been screwed over time and time again. We want you. I remember seeing you when Trump first got elected. We're bringing coal back and people are like, I want my coal job back.

And you're like, black lung? And it was insane. If you understand how the market works and how natural gas prices just become so much more cheaper but yeah i remember hearing i don't know years ago i was watching something about the mental rights being taken away from the people in west virginia and how subversive it was but like i said my mother i just sent her a text to see which city she grew up in west virgin Virginia. I think it was Charleston. My great-grandfather or my grandfather was a Teamster recruiter or boss or something local in the area.

I know he hopped around. They moved around to a few different places. But they were for coal miners. And then somebody we had on the show in the last year or so told me that one of the things they used to do when a coal miner died in the mine, a lot of times they couldn't recover his body or, you know, it wouldn't come up out of the thing. But then they would throw you out of the things they used to do when a coal miner died in the mine. A lot of times they couldn't recover his body or, you know, it wouldn't come up out of the thing. And, but then they would throw you out of the housing. They'd throw the wife and the kids out of the housing. They'd be like, Hey, husband died, so he can't pay the bills anymore. So you got to get out of the housing.

And it was like crazy. I didn't know about the script thing with this. Yeah. A couple of things. One thing about that directly is one of the guys, one of the people on the lawsuit is a pastor from one of the communities called Rawl, R-A-W-L. And he, there's an old like white church at the top of this hollow and that's his church and his trailer's right there. His grandfather had worked for the mines in the 1920s and he was injured twice. And just like you said, like the second time, he almost was killed both times, but they just, after the second time he was injured, the company let him go, and he had nothing, no benefits. And the wife, his grandmother at the time, had to just survive, find a way to survive. But one other thing I wanted to just really quickly say, you mentioned Trump.

And I do think, I don't get into politics in the book, but I've noticed in my reporting recently that the attitudes are changing about coal. And I think people, more people are recognizing that coal is not the future of the state. And I think actually part of that comes from just the fact that Trump was in office and he made those promises and he actually had some policies that were intended to help coal. But the thing, the fact is that everything he did not help, it did not slow the, you know, loss of production or loss of jobs.

So I think that kind of gives people more of a sense. Okay. It's not a political thing. It's like you were saying, natural gas, it's economic. I was just reading today that there was a bunch of people that are taking up that $10,000 bounty to move to West Virginia that are like tech out and they're not working in the office.

But that doesn't help these people. These people need some real help because they correct me if I'm wrong. If you lose your coal job, there's not like a lot of other jobs in the area. Yeah, there are a lot of groups that are trying to diversify the economy. And I think that is the answer because that was the big problem for the state. And this southern half of it is that there was this mono economy. You only had coal and everything relied on that. So now they're trying to do some farm tourism.

And I've been really encouraged when I go to Matewan recently where you can still – you go there and it's still really historic. It hasn't changed that much. You can still see where the bullet holes are in the buildings and everything. Oh, wow. But, yeah, you can – yeah, it's pretty wild. But they've been doing a lot of four-wheeler trail riding and things. And there's a couple of restaurants that have opened up. Yeah.

Some stores. And they're doing really well. I was just there last weekend, actually. Yeah, it's a really beautiful country. When I went there as a child, I was just amazed at how much green there was. I was like, holy crap, look at all these trees. And I remember the bees, what do they call them, the lightning bugs? Yeah, yeah.

The lightning bugs? Yeah, those were amazing. We'd capture them in the jars and the squirrels that would soar through the trees, the flying squirrels or whatever. Just beautiful country. Yeah, you would think they could make, I don't know, some hunting retreats there or some sort of something. But, yeah, it's really sad.

I won't ask you how the book ends since it reads like a novel and we'll keep people in suspense for that. Anything else you want to touch on or tease on the book before we go? So, yeah, just thinking right now that just to give people a sense of what the people in the communities went through, it was seven years of litigation. They'd already been living with this water for years. Then the lawsuit comes and they have a lot of hope, especially in Kevin Thompson. And, um, but they, they had to fight for another seven years and they really went through a lot of things because there were these trial dates were set and then there'd be a delay and over and over again. And so at one point the judge on the case, he's the only county judge in Mingo County.

He ordered Kevin Thompson to bring all 700 of his clients to the courthouse on three days notice. Some of them lived on the West Coast. Some lived in Kentucky. And they don't have Florida, I think, was a person too. They don't really have the means to just get on a jet and fly there. And the judge said, you brought this case in Mingo County. We're going to try it in Mingo County. If they're not here, they're going to be kicked out of the case. So there's a bunch of dramatic moments like that.

So Kevin Thompson and his staff were working for three days straight, no sleep, to try to get all these people. It's not even that easy. The people who are local to get them on the phone or you're going to drive up in the holidays and stuff. And so they had this marathon day. Um, and the courthouse wasn't big enough for all the clients. So they had to get this field house, this big gymnasium about a mile away and shuttle people back and forth. And this went on all day. The courtroom was hot. One person passed out, had a diabetic seizure. There were people on oxygen tanks because they have health issues.

And so by the end of it, Thompson was just collapsed, exhausted. They did settle some of the cases. But I'd also say that there comes a point where Kevin thinks he worries about the judge. There's an appearance of impropriety. And the judge, again, he's the only county judge. Every day he has lunch in the sports bar in Williamson with his friends and his appointees and the county government in a table in the back of the room and they run the county. And so Kevin decides he's going to recuse the judge, get him kicked off the case. And that's a whole thing where living in Williamson is tough enough for an

environmental lawyer. And he, at one point, Kevin has to actually flee the city because the sheriff tells him, I can't protect you anymore. Holy moly. Yeah. There's some dramatic moments.

That's called the Exodus in the book. Holy crap. The corruption. This has got all the making. This is going to be a great movie. This is going to be better than that Brockovich movie. That was a great movie too. I think it's wonderful.

But this has got, wow. I was reading the bio on it. I'm like, wait, is this a novel or is this a non-fiction? It's really sad. These people live here. Their children probably, I don't know, got poisoning from a lot of this. They were getting kidney stones to cancer, it says here.

There's a real human trauma, a human loss here that's damaging. And you would think that in 2021 or at least the 1990s, we would advance a little bit. It's not getting better. We were talking in the pre-show in the green room about how there's another outbreak in some other town in Michigan about bad watering. Yeah. So I think you mentioned the infrastructure bill earlier. You know, so there's in that bill, there's about $50 billion to address water infrastructure across the country. But yeah, you mentioned that town in Michigan, Benton Harbor.

There's an estimated 6 million to 10 million lead pipes in the country. And I don't think people really ever, they don't really know where they're buried because I remember covering Flint. At one point in Flint, they were trying to figure out where are all the lead pipes in the city. They had these paper note cards that they had to flip through these decades old cards with like pencil writing to figure out where the lead was. Yeah. I think there's a recognition. This infrastructure bill shows that it's not only lead too. It's, there's about 10 billion for this PFAS. That's the chemical used like Teflon and everything, which they're finding in thousands of water systems around the country.

Yeah, I don't know where I picked it up, but I was listening to something about how long PFAS stays in people's bodies or something like that. And it's really scary. And I can't remember where I was hearing. I must be going insane, but I collect a lot of data. And I think I was watching a video and it's really scary. And I can't remember where I was hearing. I must be going insane. But I collect a lot of data. And I think I was watching a video and it's playing something else. And they were talking about how long it stays in people's body, how damaging it is, and how at one point the PFSAS Teflon stuff, they were told not to use it, but they kept using it or something.

It was like the Foster Grant sort of stuff that you heard about. Just the same way this kind of gets away with. And isn't the irony that the guy who's the linchpin for the Build Back Better program is Joe Manchin from West Virginia? Yeah. He does

seem to be threaded through this whole story. Infrastructure and yeah. Meanwhile, I saw him the other day on his expensive boat. I guess some people were protesting, and he had some, I don't know, half-million-dollar boat or something he's on, just like telling him to have off. Yeah, it's called Almost Heaven. That's the name of the boat. Wow, West Virginia.

He's probably the one who killed John Denver. Wait, can I say that on air? Anyway, I'm just kidding. That's a bad John Denver joke. Is it too soon? My grandmother and my mom are going to hate me for that joke. They love that song. But no, my apologies to John Denver fans everywhere. On the other hand, my apologies are not to Jets fans. You're one in four this year, so you still not are a football team. My apologies to, who's the guy, Joe Namath? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, Joe. Anyway, enough apologies for that.

Chris, it's been wonderful to talk to you today. Give us your plugs on the book so people can order it up and find out more about you. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. It's what's called Desperate and Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia. It's on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, indie books, local bookstores. So, yeah.

Pretty much everywhere. And to correct me, is it Appalachia or Appalachia? So I've been pronouncing it wrong this whole time. I think I was from the area. I'm just kidding. Now I've lost that crowd too. All right. Thank you very much.

We appreciate it, Chris. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. There you go. And to those of you who are still left listening, please go to YouTube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, and you can see all the stuff we're reading and reviewing over there, including my new book.

Also go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places those crazy kids are playing. Pick up the book, October 12th, 2021, Desperate, an Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia. All right, I need to work on that. That's what I'll be doing after the show. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation.

It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in Leadership and Character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can preorder the book right now wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a preorder deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in

ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made, numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold.