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This article originally provided by The Columbus Dispatch
September 19, 2007
Creek or pit for slurry?
State EPA weighing mine company's request
By Spencer Hunt
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Environmental advocates are worried that the state is doing little to stop a mining company from turning an eastern Ohio stream into a polluted lagoon.
Casey Run, home to a host of wildlife, drains into the Ohio River.
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The Ohio Valley Coal Co. wants to replace the stream with a 1.85-billion-gallon lagoon for slurry, the water used to wash freshly mined coal. The 2-mile-long stream is west of Alledonia in southern Belmont County.
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials haven't approved the proposal, but records show the agency decided not to upgrade the quality status of Casey Run -- and boost its protections -- last year after the company said the change would jeopardize its slurry plan.
Ohio Valley Coal and a sister company, American Energy Corp., have spilled slurry in the past, said Trent Dougherty, attorney for the Ohio Environmental Council.
"We don't need to devastate … this stream," he said.
Both companies are owned by Bob Murray, co-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah where six miners died after an August cave-in.
The lagoon issue is the latest example of Ohio's troubled system for regulating coal mining. A Dispatch investigation published in December found that the state lacked the money and manpower to oversee mines and to quickly clean up more than 36,000 acres of abandoned mine lands.
Ohio Valley said the change is essential to its operations. State mining officials said the company wants the stream to replace an older lagoon it has used since the 1970s.
In 2005, a broken American Energy Corp. slurry pipeline polluted 2,300 feet of nearby Captina Creek and killed thousands of fish. The company cleaned up and paid a $50,000 fine.
To win approval for the new slurry lagoon, Ohio Valley Coal must show the state how it would repair environmental damage the lagoon would cause to the stream.
The company has proposed creating two streams to redirect water around the lagoon. Dan Osterfeld, an Ohio EPA project reviewer, said the original streambed would be buried under coal waste.
The company also must show mining regulators that other methods to handle slurry -- filtering and recycling the water or injecting it into an abandoned mine -- can't be used.
"They responded that it would be too much of an economic impact on them," said Scott Stiteler, a mining application manager for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
In November, the Ohio EPA decided not to reclassify Casey Run as a higher-quality, "coldwater" habitat for aquatic insect larvae and salamanders.
Ohio Valley and American Energy argued that the higher status would kill the lagoon plan and threaten the jobs of about 1,000 miners and employees.
"The companies need disposal area for their slurry in order to operate," attorney Maureen A. Brennan wrote in a July 10, 2006, letter to the agency.
Advocates are concerned that a lagoon spill at Casey Run would threaten the Eastern hellbender, a state endangered salamander that has been found in Captina Creek. Casey Run drains into Captina Creek on its way to the Ohio River.
The Ohio EPA has until April 30 to decide on the lagoon proposal.
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