This LTE originally provided by The Register-Herald

February 17, 2006

Coal industry affects nearby communities

With the 34th anniversary of the Buffalo Creek disaster upon us, we must all remember how safety in the coal industry affects the nearby communities. Especially in light of the recent tragedies that took the lives of 16 West Virginia miners, we must make sure the call for “never again” includes never again having a disaster that kills hundreds of unsuspecting citizens.

While newer sludge dams may be less hazardous than that at Buffalo Creek, they are certainly far from being safe. They haven’t become foolproof just because they are “engineered”; the space probes that crashed on Mars and planes whose wings fall off are “engineered.” So was the sludge dam that sent 309 million gallons of sludge into the Tug Fork and Big Sandy rivers in 2000, after Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors had determined it to be “engineered” well enough to continue operating after its 112 million-gallon spill in 1994.

The only “act of God” in the 2000 spill was His sparing of human life — a photo of sludge inundating a child’s swing set clearly shows His mercy. This dam was “engineered” for the same company that operates the 2.8 billion-gallon sludge dam above Marsh Fork Elementary and the 8 billion-gallon sludge dam above Whitesville.

Sludge dams are not rare or isolated; the two listed above are only two of more than 150 sludge dams in both southern and northern West Virginia. And because they’re filling up, coal companies have over 300 permits to inject sludge underground, where it seeps into well water making it unusable.

Ask your legislators to support sludge safety legislation. This may keep a new sludge dam from being built above your community or toxic sludge showing up in your well water. And it may prevent the next Buffalo Creek.

Vernon Haltom
Naoma