This news story originally provided by The Courier-Journal

October 11, 2005

Few outward signs remain of Eastern Ky. sludge spill

Lawsuits continue five years later

By Roger Alford
Associated Press

INEZ, Ky. -- Five years after one of the South's worst ecological disasters deluged an Eastern Kentucky community with gooey black coal waste, few obvious signs remain.

Lawns are green. Streams are clear. And the memory of Oct. 11, 2000, when residents awoke to more than 300 million gallons of spilled coal sludge, is growing more distant.

"There's a facade of normalcy," said John Kirk, a lawyer who filed suit on behalf of 20 people against Martin County Coal yesterday, the day before the statute of limitations runs out. "The vegetation is back. Grass has been planted along the stream banks."

Kirk said, however, that sludge remains in the soil despite a $46 million cleanup. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

More than 400 people who took part in lawsuits against the coal company already have reached out-of-court settlements. In each case, the plaintiffs agreed not to disclose the terms.

Kirk said he has two lawsuits pending against the company on behalf of 45 people.

The spill affected the main stream of the Big Sandy River, the Tug Fork and some of its tributaries, including Coldwater and Wolf creeks in rural Martin County.

The Kentucky Division of Fish and Wildlife Resources estimated that 1.6 million fish were smothered in the molasses-like substance that broke through the bottom of a mountaintop impoundment, gushing in torrents through an underground coal mine and down a mountainside outside of Inez.

Lawns were buried up to 7 feet deep in sludge. Biologists said every fish in Coldwater and Wolf creeks was killed, and many in the Big Sandy River died.

Martin County Coal, a subsidiary of Massey Energy of Richmond, Va., paid $3.25 million in penalties and damages to the state of Kentucky.

The company also agreed to pay $225,000 to the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to restock streams with tens of thousands of fish.

"We put a lot of effort into the cleanup," Jeffrey M. Gillenwater, spokesman for Massey Energy in Charleston, W. Va., said yesterday. "It's looking good. I think every year we're seeing better and better results."

After the slurry spill, state and federal regulatory agencies reviewed all sludge ponds, trying to determine the risk of similar spills by checking the proximity of underground mines.

Kentucky has 88 sludge ponds, including two that have been approved by state and federal regulators since the Martin County spill.

Mickey McCoy, an Inez resident who lives near one of the streams blackened by the sludge, acknowledged that the area looks better. "The sludge is not there, but it's not gone," he said. "You can go into the creek and dig. Underneath the sand is the black sludge."

McCoy said people are worried that the sludge may affect long-term health.

"That can't be measured right now," he said. "Check back in 20 years and we'll see how many people glow in the dark."

And despite the review of sludge impoundments, McCoy said people in the coalfields don't feel any safer.

"Listen, it's going to happen again," he said. "It's not if, but when it is going to happen."