{"id":16391,"date":"2018-01-18T12:49:19","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T20:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&#038;p=16391"},"modified":"2022-03-03T12:20:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T20:20:51","slug":"what-lies-upstream","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/what-lies-upstream\/","title":{"rendered":"What Lies Upstream"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the unsettling expos\u00e9 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Lies Upstream<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. There he uncovers a shocking failure of regulation from both state and federal agencies and a damaged political system where chemical companies often write the laws that govern them. While he\u2019s deep into his research in West Virginia, a similar water crisis strikes Flint, Michigan, revealing that the entire system that Americans assume is protecting their drinking water is fundamentally broken.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In January 2014, West Virginians noticed that their tap water had a peculiar smell. It was soon discovered that a mysterious chemical, MCHM, has leaked into the Elk River near Charleston from a damaged tank at a nearby <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Freedom Industries<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> chemical plant, poisoning the drinking water supply for nine counties \u2014nearly half of the state\u2019s citizens. Hoback \u2014 whose interest was piqued by family ties to the state and a desire to understand why the contamination happened \u2014 embarks on an investigation that sends him down a rabbit hole of an unimaginable scale.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the unsettling expos\u00e9 What Lies Upstream, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. There he uncovers a shocking failure of regulation from both state and federal agencies and a damaged political system where chemical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1254,1219,1225],"class_list":["post-16391","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-disease-and-mental-health","topic-health-and-environment","topic-politics-and-government"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What Lies Upstream | Film Exposes West Virginia Chemical Spill | Independent Lens | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the expose What Lies Upstream, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans.\" \/>\n<meta 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