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• Call for Volunteers to Help Flooded OVEC Members in Mingo County

 Call for Volunteers to Help Flooded OVEC Members in Mingo County
Late Friday night and early Saturday morning, heavy rains hit southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. OVEC's Mingo County organizer Patricia Feeney is making contact with our members there. She's found that many could use help with clean-up of their homes and yards. For instance, our members living in Rawl Hollow report flooding debris with mud, stumps and rocks coming off the mountaintop removal site above their homes.

If you can assist, please contact Patricia at patricia@sludgesafety.org or 304-475-3873. The goal is to have clean-up crews in over the weekend, but if you have time to donate sooner or later, please contact Patricia, as clean-up efforts will be ongoing. 

News reports says at least 300 buildings in Mingo County alone were destroyed in the flooding. The National Guard has been called in and the Red Cross is on the scene.

The Logan Banner reports that flooding inundated a cemetery:
Greg Dixon and Vickie Bailey walked over the rubble and mud that had covered the Marcum cemetery. He said the water rushed out of the top of the mountain.

"This has to be caused by strip mining," Dixon, who takes care of the cemetery, said as he searched for missing tombstones. “All this came from the top of the mountain.”

The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. reminds readers of his blog "Coal Tattoo" about the studies that have been done: Now, it’s difficult without a lot more site-specific information to say that a particular flood was made worse by mountaintop removal. But in general, there’s little question that such large-scale land disturbance makes flooding more likely and makes floods that do occur worse.  

If you suspect that debris has washed off a mountaintop removal site onto your property, be sure to file a report with the WV Department of Environmental Protection at  800-654-5227.

Click here for YouTube-posted video of the flooding in Gilbert in Mingo County.

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