This news story originally provided by The Courier-Journal

August 8, 2005

Frequency of spills requires crackdown

Another Kentucky coal miner has died, so it may seem trivial to focus on the black water that regularly leaks out of slurry ponds, ruining water supplies and killing fish in coalfield streams.

Certainly, government's first priority, every day, must be miner safety, so right now attention is appropriately directed to the investigation at Stillhouse Mining's Mine No. 1 Cumberland, and on the dangerous technique called retreat mining.

But while that probe continues, the Fletcher administration must also continue an aggressive effort to stop the seemingly unstoppable spills.

Two coal companies are facing fines as a result of four spills that polluted waterways in Pike County. The Kentucky Division of Water cited Sidney Coal Co. and Long Fork Mining Co., both subsidiaries of Massey Energy in Richmond, Va., the largest producer of Central Appalachian coal. Fish were killed along a three-mile stretch of Big Creek in a July 12 incident.

You remember Massey Energy -- or should.

Another of its operations, Martin County Coal, was responsible for the devastating October 2000 breakout that sent 250 million gallons of slurry into Wolf and Coldwater creeks and polluted 30 miles of the Big Sandy River's Tug Fork.

In the backwash of that environmental disaster, Massey already has paid about $77.9 million in cleanup, claims, fines and other costs.

Did that change the company's culture? You decide.

In the Big Creek case, Massey subsidiaries were charged with failing to report spills, degrading the stream, creating an environmental emergency and violating state-issued pollution-discharge permits.

You may wonder why the state can't take special action seeking harsher penalties when there's a pattern of violation. It can, and in the case of Sidney Coal it already has. But then who is the real serial offender: Sidney or its corporate parent?

Of course, Massey is just one of many miscreants. Only last week, state officials cited Harlan Reclamation Services LLC for "noncompliance with state water quality standards and effluent limits," after a black- water spill polluted Cloverlick Creek near Cumberland.

Also last week, Patrick Processing LLC of Hazard was cited for pumping "substandard water" and failing to meet "effluent limitation standards." That means they fouled a Pike County stream.

The week before, state inspectors found that a sediment overflow at the Chas Coal complex in Clay County polluted seven miles of the Red Bird River. An inspector had spotted the potential problem a week before the spill, but no repairs were made.

And in that same week, the state also cited CAM-KY in Pike County, Harlan-Cumberland Coal in Harlan County and Cheyenne Resources in Perry County, for allowing the release of muddy water from sediment ponds into waterways.

"I'm still trying to find out why we have so many," says Environmental and Public Protection Secretary LaJuana Wilcher. Meanwhile, she adds, "We are aggressively enforcing the law."

When field reports insisted that the source of one spill couldn't be found, she threatened to put on jeans and go find it herself. Before a team could arrive from Frankfort to search out the offender, the company called to report itself.

Susan Bush, Ms. Wilcher's commissioner of Natural Resources, recently sent up a helicopter that successfully tracked a black water spill to its source in West Virginia.

And that 58-page Black Water Task Force report? Is it sitting on a shelf? No. In fact, Ms. Bush and Environmental Protection Commissioner Lloyd Cress are working together to implement its recommendations.

Give the Fletcher environmental team credit for taking the protection of public waterways seriously. Too many coal companies don't.