Coal Slurry Spill Still Taints E. Kentucky, Residents Say

by Alan Maimon, the Lexington Kentucky Courier-Journal. Published with permission.

Remnants of sludge from the collapse of a Martin County Coal Co. impoundment are now largely invisible, but residents say the cleanup of the 250 million-gallon spill has left properties unusable and futures uncertain. State officials say long-term restoration may take up to five years.

Health concerns include bad drinking water for at least a dozen families. Doctors are strongly urging them to buy bottled water rather than drink groundwater in an area where sludge seeped into the soil and septic systems were destroyed. Not all of the families will be able to install new septic tanks.

"'If anybody in the area drinks well water, you’d have a concern. It wouldn’t be wise to do that," said Dr. Don Chaffin of Inez.

The new soil used to replace what was contaminated will make proper sewage disposal difficult, a county health official said. The company should "remove the junk that they put in there and put some decent soil in," said John Bailey, a health inspector for Martin County.

Martin County Coal’s parent company, Massey Energy of Richmond, Va., said in a statement last week that it believes it has cleaned up the slurry, but is still occasionally removing small pockets of deposited material from certain areas.

The federal government has yet to release its report on the causes of the spill last Oct. 11 [2000]. And the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says it has made no changes in its safeguards for approving or rejecting impoundments, which are storage reservoirs of coal waste.

Moreover, despite investigative efforts, federal and state regulatory agencies acknowledge future impoundment failures cannot be ruled out.

"We’re putting all the information and expertise we have to see we don’t have another breakthrough, but we can’t guarantee it based on something our experts don’t know,'" said Bill Kovacic, Kentucky field director for the federal Office of Surface Mining.

Kovacic said his agency created new criteria for evaluating impoundments, but a lack of reliable information on the location of underground mines makes the task difficult.

That brings little comfort to resident Carol Tiller, who says life along Coldwater Creek has remained a nightmare even after Martin County Coal’s cleanup efforts. The fertile soil that once allowed Tiller and her husband to reap an early autumn harvest of corn and tomatoes has been replaced by rocky dirt that has left portions of their property bare.

"The dirt doesn’t even turn dark when it rains," Tiller said. "The only darkness you see is where the sludge comes up. They’ve ruined our property."

James Bickford, secretary of the state Cabinet for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, told The Courier-Journal that long-term restoration of the area’s land and creeks may take five years.

Mark York, a spokesman for the [KY] Natural Resources Cabinet, said the first phase of cleanup, covering 15 miles of streams and land along Coldwater and Wolf creeks, was completed in May, but a second 90-mile phase of cleanup will take three to five years.

Disappointed by what they say has been an inadequate first phase of cleanup, residents are alarmed by the disappearance of fish from Coldwater Creek, the struggle of once lush vegetation to survive, and uncertainties about the health impact of the spill.

A report issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that indicates uncertainty about the spill’s long-term effects has residents fearing the worst. They say they are already beginning to see these long- term effects.

Prentice Maynard’s beloved weeping willow tree still bears a ringed stain where five feet of sludge once engulfed his property. The tree’s once thick and outstretched branches are now sickly.

"It’ll never be the same," Maynard said. "We had a nice place. People used to come by and say how beautiful it was. Now they just say ‘yuck.’"

Both Maynard and Tiller are also coping with a smelly consequence of reclamation efforts. The destruction of septic systems and the inability of the new soil to soak up moisture have resulted in human waste rising to the earth.

"That can’t be healthy," Tiller said. "Sometimes you have to go inside because the smell is so bad."

Residents want answers about other potential health hazards of the sludge spill. Most disturbing, said resident Larry Preece, is the EPA’s finding that up to 30 times the normal levels of arsenic and mercury are in the community’s underground water supply.

The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta said that human exposure to these high levels must be studied further. The agency recommended a clinical evaluation in Lexington or Atlanta for any resident experiencing health problems. However, residents must pay their own travel expenses to the two cities, chosen because they are the closest offering the type of medical care needed.

"My biggest concerns are the short and long-term health effects," Preece said. "The people here are like guinea pigs. You can’t tell us to go to Lexington or Atlanta to get things checked out."

Residents still living in the shadow of the collapsed impoundment say they are also dissatisfied with a lack of government action in addressing future problems. After announcing that the investigation into the causes of the Martin County spill would be completed several months ago, Rodney Brown, an MSHA spokesman, now says the agency has no immediate plans to release its report. The MSHA investigation has been marred by controversy since one of the members of the team alleged that the agency was conducting a whitewash.

Jack Spadaro, a mining engineer with 35 years of experience in mine safety issues, said in April that MSHA received several warnings about the Martin County Coal impoundment but never forced the company to make adequate structural changes. Spadaro said MSHA’s unwillingness to address its own conduct undermined the investigation. He asked to leave the investigation team but was turned down. The Inspector General of the Labor Department is reviewing a complaint filed by Spadaro.

Earlier this year, the state determined that documents provided by Martin County Coal to regulators in 1994 misrepresented the width of the barrier between the 72-acre impoundment and an underground mine. Instead of a 70-foot barrier, the distance was less than 10 feet in places, the state concluded in its investigation. The state issued a notice of violation to Martin County Coal and ordered the impoundment closed and the site reclaimed.

Ned Pillersdorf, an attorney for eight families in the hard-hit community of Mullett Branch, says MSHA’s findings are important in getting the company to acknowledge responsibility for the sludge spill.

Martin County Coal is "still in very heavy denial," Pillersdorf said. "They’re refusing to accept responsibility. That’s unsettling to the people over there."