This article originally provided by The State Journal

October 19, 2006

Murky Mingo Water at Heart of Hearing

Mingo County residents allege that local coal companies tainted their water after injecting coal slurry underground to dispose of it.

Story by Beth Gorczyca-Ryan Email | Bio

CHARLESTON -- In the five years since moving to the Mingo County community of Rawl, Donetta Blankenship's family has been perpetually sick.

Her daughter has stomach and respiratory problems. Her son has boils and rashes all over his body. A step-daughter has nerve problems, and her husband's teeth have fallen out. And Blankenship herself has been hospitalized twice in the past year, suffering from a liver problem that nearly killed her.

And while her family's health problems are all different, Blankenship firmly believes they are related to one thing: The water that comes out of the faucets at her house.

She and other Mingo County residents allege that local coal companies tainted their water after injecting coal slurry underground to dispose of it. On Oct. 16, they joined scientists and mining experts to speak out about the practice and asked lawmakers to pass a moratorium on coal slurry injection during a two-hour public hearing hosted by a joint state Judiciary subcommittee

Representatives of coal companies were not invited to testify during the hearing. Lawmakers said they will have a chance to tell their side next month.

"We are here today to ask you to please support a (moratorium and study) on sludge injection. It's needed," said Debbie Sammons of Lick Creek, who testified her entire family has suffered from myriad health problems. "We have city water coming to our house soon. But our concern is what has this water done to our children?"

During the hearing, Benjamin Stout III, a biology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University, said he tested 15 wells, a municipal water system and a spring in the Delbarton region to see whether the water there contained heavy metals, such as arsenic, beryllium, barium, lead, copper, nickel, magnesium and manganese.

He said he found lead in amounts above recommended levels in five wells and high amounts of iron and manganese in a majority of wells. In addition, 12 of 15 mines and the municipal system had high level of sodium. He also said six of eight wells tested during high-water periods had arsenic in the water.

He said he also tested the water coming from a man's hot water heater. That water, Stout said, was almost one-half of a percent iron.

"It was a very thick sludge at the bottom of the hot water heater," he said. "When I talked to residents, they said their hot water heaters only last a few years ... and they have to have plastic water fixtures because the metal fixtures corrode too fast."

And those metals in water could be hurting people.

Dawn Seeburger, a scientist who owns Environmental Resources & Counseling Inc. in Elkview, said metals in water cause a variety of health problems. High levels of manganese damage tooth enamel, she said, causing teeth to turn black and break off even in teens and young children. Other metals are linked to kidney stones and gallstones, chronic skin rashes, 1- to 2-inch long boils in the groin from bathing and thyroid and neurological problems.

"This water is causing a heath effect," she said.

She added that the promise of getting public water to residents was a good first step but may not be a final solution.

"Most municipal systems are not able to clean up these metals," Seeburger said.

Both Seeburger and Stout encouraged lawmakers to initiate a study of slurry injection to determine exactly which metals may be going into the ground and what the effect of it may be on humans. They also said mining companies need to halt slurry injection until those studies are done.

Davitt McAteer, a vice president of Wheeling Jesuit University and former assistant secretary for the federal Mine, Safety and Health Administration, said coal companies have other methods available to dispose of slurry, including mixing it with a compound to dry it out, then burn or bury it. But he said they abandoned that process because it was more expensive than other methods.

But he told lawmakers those methods deserve another look.

"(Slurry) is a problem that is not going to go away, so we need to take a good hard look at what else we can do," he said.

Representatives from the coal industry and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection were not invited to speak this week. But lawmakers said the industry and DEP will have a chance to tell their side next month during interim meetings.

"There were a few things that we need to hear from the coal industry," said Delegate Marshall Long, D-Mercer, who co-chaired the subcommittee with Sen. Jon Blair Hunter, D-Monongalia.

Why weren't the DEP and coal industry invited to talk this week? Long said you'd have to ask the chairmen of the judicial committee, Sen. Jeffrey Kessler, D-Hancock, and Delegate John Amores, D-Kanawha.

Kessler said he thought his staff had broken up the meetings over two months because interim committee meetings cannot exceed two hours. He said they knew the hearing would take longer than that if all sides participated.

Kessler said the decision to make DEP and coal representatives wait was not politically motivated. Several of the coal companies accused of injecting slurry are owned by Massey Energy. Massey's chairman, Don Blankenship, has pledged millions of his own dollars to a political action group that is trying to defeat several members of the House of Delegates and Senate in the Nov. 7 election.

"This meeting has been on our agenda for months," said Kessler, who explained the subcommittee also is looking into buried tanks and coal bed methane. "We can't take a month off just because it's the month before elections. It's not a political conspiracy."

Kessler also pointed out that not once during the hearing were the names Massey Energy or Don Blankenship uttered by anyone.

Chris Hamilton, senior vice president with the West Virginia Coal Association, said his group would have liked to have had an opportunity to talk this week but will wait until next month.

"Usually most committee hearings try to (be balanced)," he said. "I'd hope to think little if any of their decision to divide it into two separate hearings is related to the election."

But it did concern him that the scientists and experts who were called to testify during this week's hearing were the same people who testified as experts in a trial over the same issue in Mingo County.

"These individuals are all biased and have already picked their side," he said. "They were paid expert witnesses."