Public Lands, Private Profits: Boom or Bust (2012)

The Center for American Progress, in partnership with the Sierra Club, undertook a series of video mini-documentaries that revealed special places held in the public trust that could be threatened by energy development. In this story, a proposal to expand a strip coal mine ten miles from Bryce Canyon National Park ignites an age-old fight over tourism versus extraction in the American West. While some residents in small-town Utah see the mine as a harbinger of jobs and economic development, certain local business owners and the National Park Service fear the impacts that the mine will have on the park's pristine environment. The film explores whether mining and tourism can co-exist, and what we give up when we choose to prioritize extraction over conservation.