Remember Buffalo Creek Day

February 27, 2006
Photos by Vivian Stockman

At the State Capitol

Members of the Sludge Safety Project hosted "Remember Buffalo Creek Day" at the State Capitol. We showed Appalshop's two amazing documentaries about the Feb. 26, 1972 coal waste dam disaster which killed 125 people and left 4000 homeless.

Channel 13 attended the event and aired a story recounting the preventable disaster (coal company negligence caused the dam failure) and noting how coalfield residents still rightly worry about the safety of modern-day coal sludge dams.

Learn more about the Buffalo Creek Flood here and here. Learn more about modern-day sludge dams here and here.

Below are a couple of pictures from our day at the State Capitol.
 

During Sludge Safety Project's Remember Buffalo Creek Day at the State Capitol, Mingo County resident Billy Sammons speaks with Channel 13 about the dangers of today's coal sludge impoundments.

Donetta Blankenship speaks with Channel 13 about the injected coal slurry that is apparently contaminating wells of people in Rawl, Sprigg, Lick Creek and Merrimac.