Uranium Drive-In

Colorado has always been a big resource for companies extracting natural resources: I've seen ghost towns beneath half-mountains, where the other half was mined away before the market fell and the settlement was abandoned. This documentary tells us about a settlement called Nucla, not in fact named after nuclear material but formerly the home to a large (and polluting) nuclear processing facility. Since that closed, the town is now poor and dying - economically, it has no reason to exist any more. "Rich" environmentalists (as least, environmentalists from a fashionable, nearby ski resort) want to stop a new plant from opening; but many of the townsfolk want it, reasoning that they'll run the risk to save their settlement. The company representatives reassure everyone that the new plant will threaten no-one's health, because there are now government regulations. But given the consistency with which the extraction industries fight government attempts to regulate them, it's only natural to doubt the sincerity of their statements. As a documentary, 'Unranium Drive In' is very good at conveying what it feels like to live in a no-horse town in the middle of nowhere, and the dependency that the people have on the company that might save, or kill, them. But there's surely another documentary to be made, a less personal, more political story, about the corporate control of the west.