This news originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

February 15, 2006

Citizens want moratorium on new coal slurry ponds

By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer

Coalfield residents came to the Statehouse on Tuesday to ask West Virginia lawmakers to protect them from the potential dangers of coal waste impoundments.

Residents from Boone, Raleigh and other coalfield counties want a moratorium on new or expanded slurry impoundments.

Maria Gunnoe of Bob White said her neighbors — especially area children — live in fear that an impoundment will break and flood their community.

“Our children sleep fully clothed at night,” Gunnoe said. “This is wrong.”

Gunnoe and other coalfield residents joined state environmental activists at the Capitol Tuesday for the West Virginia Environmental Council’s annual E-Day.

Later this week, they expect legislation to be introduced to block new slurry impoundments and require the state Department of Environmental Protection to conduct a special study of coalfield dams.

Delegate Larry Barker, D-Boone, is the lead sponsor of the bill.

“I’m not trying to cost anybody a job,” Barker said. “We need the coal. We need the lights on. But we can do this and live in harmony.”

Under the bill, the DEP would be blocked from issuing new slurry impoundment permits.

The DEP could not approve any changes in existing impoundments unless those changes were aimed solely at “increasing the safety or stability” of the dam and do not increase the size of the impoundment.

Also, the DEP would be required to conduct a detailed study of the safety of existing impoundments. A report would be due by Jan. 1, 2007.

“They call them ponds — that’s a cute name for them,” Barker said. “But nobody wants to live under one of these. It is a danger. The problems are real, and no one has addressed them.”

Raleigh County residents have complained that Gov. Joe Manchin backed off a promise to closely examine safety complaints about a Massey Energy impoundment just upstream from Marsh Fork Elementary School at Sundial.

Pauline Canterberry of Sylvester noted that the legislation would also ban the injection of slurry into abandoned underground mines.

“They want to fill these holes up with slurry,” Canterberry said. “This is going to be dangerous, I think.”

Canterberry said that there are “modern technologies” for disposal of slurry that do not require impoundments or underground injection.

Carol Warren of the West Virginia Council of Churches said that her group supports the legislation.

“We cannot wait until there is another horrible accident to do something about these impoundments,” Warren said.

Vernon Haltom of the group Coal River Mountain Watch noted that the anniversary of the Buffalo Creek disaster is later this month.

On Feb. 26, 1972, a Pittston Coal Co. waste dam on Buffalo Creek, Logan County, collapsed. The resulting flood killed 125 people and left 4,000 homeless.

“We’re told today the sludge impoundments are engineered and that we have nothing to worry about,” Haltom said.

“Engineers designed the Martin County impoundment that failed in 2000, six years after it failed in 1994,” he said. “[The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration] said it was engineered correctly, but obviously they were wrong.

“MSHA is the same agency that is responsible for investigating deep mines,” he said. “They can obviously make mistakes.”