On Oct. 11, 2000, 250 million gallons of coal sludge, waste from Kentucky’s largest mountaintop removal site, flowed out of an impoundment and into nearby waterways. The "pond" sits atop abandoned deep mines and holds a total of over two billion gallons of toxic coal sludge. The thick, black glop flowed down Coldwater and Wolf Creeks into the Tug and Big Sandy Rivers and into the Ohio, affecting about 100 miles of waterways. Communities along the rivers, in both Kentucky and West Virginia had to shut down their water intake plants and Kentucky officials announced a "total kill" of aquatic life in the affected streams. (For comparison, the Exxon Valdez tanker’s oil spill was 11 million gallons.)

In court documents, Martin County Coal, a subsidiary of A.T. Massey, called its sludge spill an "act of God." Now, the company is proclaiming that the spill is 85 percent cleaned up. If you get your news from TV, that’s about the end of the story. If you read the newspapers, you’ve got to read deep to realize the clean up is only so "advanced" on Coldwater Creek, where the more affluent folks live. And of course, "cleaned up" is a phrase that can be defined as loosely as Bill Clinton defines "sex." The clean up is more of a botch up, with crews turning the sludge over into the soil and scraping streams banks clean of vegetation.

Activists have been complaining about the paucity of national press coverage. Yet again, Appalachians don’t seem to rate. The press should be crawling over this. In the mid-90's, this same pond leaked 8 million gallons of goo. Still, this impoundment had only a "moderate" potential for failure, according to regulators.

Across Appalachia there are hundreds of coal sludge impoundments, usually situated, brilliantly, at the head of hollows. Many have a "high" risk of failure rating. Where’s the press? One can’t expect ABC reporters to be here, since they are probably on vacation at corporate headquarters, Disneyland. Maybe CNN reporters are too busy typing their lo-n-n-ng by-lines: Jo Blow, CNN, AOL Time Warner. Ultimately employees of General Electric, NBC reporters aren’t authorized to report on bad stuff in water, what with GE's troubles with PCBs in the Hudson River. And CBS reporters have probably been ordered to concentrate on drumming up reasons why we need more, more, more weapons of mass destruction.

But, hey! We could have mass destruction without nuclear weapons. Another coal slurry impoundment could fail at any time.

So we could get some real information on the dangers coal slurry impoundments pose for Appalachian communities, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition contracted for a report with hydrogeologist, Rick Eades. He performed a review of the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment permit. The impoundment sits above Whitesville, WV. The parent company for this impoundment is also A.T. Massey.

Here are some excerpts from Rick’s report:

« Note that the original permit was for only 270 acres, and with IBR-6 had grown to 645 acres. (IBR is Incidental Boundary Review. Rick notes that IBRs are routinely approved, though they are anything but "incidental.")

« MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) officials have apparently told Whitesville resident Freda Williams that the site is the "top" high priority in the area, although current status of the database ranks it as "moderate in risk," just as the Martin County KY site was ranked before it broke through.

« Currently permitted acreage at Brushy Fork Slurry Impoundment is 645 acres, making it the single biggest facility of its type in Southern West Virginia’s coal fields, based on current TAGIS database review.

« Massey officials have confirmed that the pond is permitted to store nearly 5 billion gallons of slurry, 20 times more than the amount released at the Martin County, KY site.

« Should Marfork Coal Company be successful in further expanding the dam, it could eventually hold over 22,700 acre-feet of slurry at normal stage. That is roughly equivalent to slurry aquarium with a base the size of a football field and a height that is higher than Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America.

« Although many in the industry and in the regulatory community contend that the coal waste is nothing more than rock and dirt, that is only partially true. In various stages, coal cleaning also includes the use of flocculants. One of the compounds sometimes used as a flocculant is of serious concern. What is not known at this time is whether this dangerous flocculant has been used in coal cleaning or slurry at the Brushy Fork site or nearby prep plant. Superfloc A-1885 RS Flocculant is described in Material Safety Data Sheet toxicology sections as follows, "contains ... chemical(s) known "to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."

« Serious concerns exist with regard to heavy metals occurrence in coal slurry or sludge. Chemical analyses of the sludge and water, and toxicology reports, are still (!) pending almost 2 months after the Martin County KY disaster. Metals of concern in coal slurry include mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, boron, selenium, nickel, and others.

« Several seams have been mined beneath the Brushy Fork impoundment – the Eagle seam may occur within as little as 100 feet of the base of the impoundment. The Eagle seam has been deep mined extensively in the area by room and pillar method. ..two separate attached plates graphically show the extent of Eagle mine workings directly beneath the pond area of the impoundment. The mine workings extend significantly to the northwest. One of those map plates shows only a partial area of the permitted slurry pond. Over 350,000 square feet of that partial area of the approved pond is estimated to be underlain by Eagle mine workings.

« And the shear volume of material at Brushy Fork combined with the close proximity to the Eagle Coal seam workings indicates this facility warrants the utmost caution.

« A.T. Massey is the parent company for both Martin County Coal Company (KY) and Marfork Coal Company (Brushy Fork). Consultants that served MCCC include Ogden Environmental. Geo/Environmental, which often represents Marfork’s concerns as well, has staff that departed from Ogden, including Scott Ballard. This may be of no concern, but may also suggest increased vigilance with which regulatory oversight at the Brushy Fork facility occurs.

« All parties with any concerns about the integrity of slurry ponds located over deep mines should err on the side of caution at this time. Experience is the best teacher. Let’s all pray we are learn something from the Martin County, KY experience, and that neither automatic pilot levels of denial – nor business as usual mentalities – will govern our actions.

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