Public deserves a real solution to slurry spills

Huntington Herald Dispatch editorial, June 27, 2003

Every year, West Virginia and Kentucky are plagued by spills from coal slurry impoundments, which hold the waste and water produced during the mining process.

Many are smaller incidents, such as the 27,000 gallons of blackwater that spilled into a Logan County creek in May after a pipe broke at the Bandmill Coal Co. But even that spill covered seven miles in Rum Creek and the Guyandotte River.

Others have been massive.

In 2000, a Martin County, Ky., impoundment failed sending 300 million gallons of sludge and waste into two area creeks and ultimately into the Big Sandy River where it affected drinking water supplies along a 60-mile stretch of the river.

But big or small, the long-term environmental damage to the creeks and rivers is tremendous. The spills also pose a threat to people and property. Many still remember the 1972 impoundment accident on Buffalo Creek in Logan County that killed 125 residents.

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd announced recently that the National Technology Transfer Center at Wheeling Jesuit University will conduct a $3 million study on coal slurry impoundments and what can be done to prevent these spills in the future.

The university is doing the study for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, which itself plays a major role in monitoring the impoundments.

The problem has been studied before, but fingers always seem to point in every direction. Meanwhile, the spills continue.

Clearly, the standards for the impoundments are too lax or the enforcement of those standards is too lax.

For $3 million, we hope the experts can pinpoint the problem, and give our region some real answers.