Coal Country Toxic Chemical Spills: Not If, But When

I suggest reading the whole article at the following link:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/14/Coal-Country-Toxic-Chemical-Spills-Not-If-When

Eric Pianin The Fiscal Times
January 14, 2014

Sometimes it can be nearly as dangerous to live near a coal mine as it is to work in one.

Last week’s chemical spill in Charleston, West Virginia’s Elk River virtually shut down the city and left 300,000 residents and thousands of businesses without clean drinking water. It’s is a rueful reminder of a harsh reality in Appalachian coal country.

The foaming agent that escaped from a 40,000-gallon Freedom Industries storage tank directly into the Charleston area’s sole water supply is used to help separate rock particles from ground up coal. The left-over chemicals and sludge are then piped to nearby slurry ponds for storage and reuse.

Those chemical and waste water impoundments – both natural and man-made – are ticking environmental and economic time bombs that for decades have posed threats to resident of mining communities throughout West Virginia, Kentucky and many other major coal mining states.

Much has been made of the nation’s deteriorating highways and bridges, but the infrastructure crisis plaguing the mining and related chemical industry at times has reached nightmarish proportions.

The worst example dates back to February 26, 1972, when three dams containing a witches’ brew of coal slurry and water in Logan County, W.Va., failed in rapid succession. A startling 125 people were killed, 1,121 others were injured, 17 communities were wiped out and over 4,000 were left homeless after 130 million gallons of sludge and toxic water were released into the Buffalo Creek flood plain. Despite evidence of negligence, the Pittston Coal Company -- the owner of the dams -- called the tragedy an “act of God.”

But state investigators concluded the company had shown a “callous indifference” to public safety,” and had ignored years of warnings from area residents.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Jack Spadaro, an engineer and veteran coal mining safety consultant who took part in a state investigation of the disaster that led to some reforms. “It was the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.”

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Today, there are 596 coal slurry impoundments operating in 21 states, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The largest number of those facilities -- 114 -- is located in West Virginia.

A 2011 study by the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement cited the mounting risk for communities downriver of these massive embankments or ponds, according to the Washington Post. Tests of the compaction or density of the walls of these impoundments showed flaws at all seven sites surveyed in West Virginia. Only 16 of 73 field tests conducted in a handful of states met the government structural safety standards, according to the report.

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“The great number of chemical plants, coal processing plants, coal slurry impoundments, underground mines, and mountain top removal mines that now exist in all of the watersheds in the southern part of West Virginia have really limited the available locations of reliable drinking water,” Goodwin said in an interview with the Fiscal Times today.

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