Activists Boat onto Sludge Pond; Confront politician on Dangers of Coal Sludge

21 August 2013 – This morn­ing at 7:30 a.m. two activists pad­dled out onto the 2.8 bil­lion gal­lon Shu­mate slur­ry impound­ment in Raleigh Coun­ty with ban­ners read­ing, “Slur­ry Poi­sons Appalachia” and “Gov. Tomblin, Put Health Over Prof­it.”  Lat­er this morn­ing, one activist locked him­self to a bar­rel of black water in front of Gov. Tomblin’s man­sion in a Tyvek suit read­ing “Locked to Dirty Water”.   Activists are call­ing atten­tion to the fail­ure of the state gov­ern­ment to pro­tect its cit­i­zens from the abus­es of the coal indus­try and the threats posed by coal slur­ry dis­pos­al.

 

“I grew up in Eunice drink­ing water poi­soned by coal slur­ry, went to Marsh Fork Ele­men­tary under that dam, breathed the dust from that prep plant, and I’ve suf­fered the life­long health con­se­quences of that.  These same abus­es are tak­ing place today across our great state, and the blame for that lies square­ly at the feet of Gov. Tomblin,” said Junior Walk of Rock Creek, W.Va. who attend­ed today’s protest at the Governor’s man­sion.

Coal slur­ry, the tox­ic byprod­uct of “wash­ing” impu­ri­ties out of coal before it is sold, has long been a mat­ter of deep con­cern for area res­i­dents.  Its com­mon dis­pos­al meth­ods have cre­at­ed trag­ic dis­as­ters such as poi­son­ing the pub­lic water sup­plies of Prenter and Eunice, W.Va., and slur­ry floods in Mar­tin Coun­ty, Ky., and Buf­fa­lo Creek, W.Va..  Despite this, evi­dence mounts that West Vir­ginia reg­u­la­tors con­tin­ue to fail at ade­quate­ly reg­u­lat­ing impound­ments.

Just this year, two Office of Sur­face Min­ing (OSM) inves­ti­ga­tions found seri­ous prob­lems with the WV Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Protection’s (DEP) over­sight, both in pre­vent­ing impound­ments from break­ing through into under­ground mines and ensur­ing prop­er com­paction, a key mea­sure of impounde­ment safe­ty.  The com­paction report revealed that over 75 per­cent of tests of coal slur­ry impound­ments in West Vir­ginia failed.  In Feb­ru­ary, the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor asked a fed­er­al judge to order the imme­di­ate shut­down of an impound­ment in Bar­bour Coun­ty that had not been cer­ti­fied by an engi­neer for two years, because mine oper­a­tors were “flout­ing fed­er­al law, ignor­ing vio­la­tions and fines, and putting the pub­lic at risk.” WVDEP had the abil­i­ty to shut down this impound­ment, but it didn’t until weeks after the Dept. of Labor took action.

DEP’s finances reveal its pri­or­i­ties.  Dur­ing its 2011 study of the water and health cri­sis in Prenter, W.Va., the DEP spent over 6 times as much mon­ey hir­ing a pri­vate law firm to sue EPA on behalf of the coal indus­try as it spent on that study.  Mean­while, Dr. Yorem Eck­stein of Kent State Uni­ver­si­ty con­firmed long held com­mu­ni­ty sus­pi­cions that the well water in Prenter had been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with coal slur­ry based on years of water qual­i­ty data.  Despite this evi­dence and exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed health prob­lems includ­ing high inci­dence of brain tumors, DEP’s study on Prenter’s water released last year con­clud­ed that water was uncon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.

“Our politi­cians and reg­u­la­tors say that it’s safe to dump slur­ry in our com­mu­ni­ties, but they don’t want it on their doorstep.  Gov. Tomblin could order to coal indus­try to install fil­ter press­es that would elim­i­nate slur­ry while cre­at­ing jobs for less than a dol­lar a ton,” said Chuck Nel­son, retired UWMA coal min­er of Glen Daniel, W.Va.  “That’s the way it also goes.  Our Gov­er­nor puts the inter­ests of the coal indus­try above the health of our com­mu­ni­ties.”

There is mount­ing evi­dence that coal’s impacts on West Vir­ginia go far beyond coal slur­ry.  New stud­ies con­tin­ue to doc­u­ment the dam­age to com­mu­ni­ty health and water qual­i­ty from out of con­trol min­ing, but Gov. Tomblin con­tin­ues to blind­ly defend the indus­try.  Gov. Tomblin has not only ignored the evi­dence of the coal industry’s impacts on the health of West Vir­ginia com­mu­ni­ties, he has also reject­ed calls for alter­na­tive eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in the face of a declin­ing coal indus­try.  Cen­tral Appalachia is in the midst of a steep decline as pre­dict­ed by many indus­try ana­lysts.

“I was scared on the impound­ment, but I am more ter­ri­fied of the coal industry’s con­tin­ued dis­re­gard for human life and land. After tak­ing all of the coal, Alpha will aban­don Appalachia in order to find oth­er resources and com­mu­ni­ties to extract,” said Ric­ki Drap­er, one of the two activists that boat­ed onto the sludge impound­ment.