"People at my age don't like to move to a new place," said Wei Yangxian, 71, as he stood by the village road. "But we have no choice. We have no water. The earth is sinking. The air is poisoned. And there's that big man-made mountain."

The problem is that the village is surrounded. Coal mines on the north and south side have already tunneled under the village; a huge chemical factory, just 650 yards west of the village, has fouled the air; and dust from the man-made mountain on the east side slams into the village daily.

"When I cook," said Liu Runhua, 54, "I even get sand in the food."

All night long, residents here say, trucks carrying coal waste dump it off the side of the mountain. And all day long trucks overloaded with coal rumble past the village, cracking the roads and spraying coal waste on road-side homes.

Indeed, not long ago residents here grew so angry that they blocked the road that passes through town by forming huge dirt mounds as a makeshift barricade against coal-bearing trucks.

The government has done little. Xu Gang, a government spokesman, called moving the village people "impossible" and added that the complaints seemed motivated mostly by an effort to seek compensation. "I think they only do this for money," he said.

Ugh.)