This Honors Capstone Project focuses on lesser-known environmental issues in the United States, mainly on the East Coast. The topics at hand are nuclear waste storage at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, racism in the workplace at the Savannah River Site, mountaintop mining in West Virginia’s Appalachian mountains, and the ramifications of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania and how they apply to the future of the practice in New York.
This project consists of four mini-documentaries totaling 45 minutes in length. To put the first three pieces together, I reviewed interviews and conducted research on the subjects, wrote and voiced scripts, and edited video. For the final piece, in addition to those steps, I set up and conducted interviews and shot all of the video myself.
The purpose of putting together this series was to shed light on issues that the general American public may not be aware of or witness everyday, but directly affect the lives of people living nearby the areas where they occur. I aimed to deliver information about these problems to inform people and enable them to pass their own judgements and form educated opinions, whatever those may be. In doing this, I strove to equip people with the information necessary to create change if they feel motivated to do so.
