My Home town is Martin County Kentucky. They frequently have to cut school because coal has contaminated the county's reservoir.. the Coal companies get praised for providing bottled water on occasion.
One thing the nation needs to protect above all else is its water supply.
letting mines bypass regulations and commons sense is a surefire way to destroy an ecosystem a simple matter of utilizing underlining's and dry ash instead of wet ash would save one coal county after another that continues to poinson the water at detriment of the residents and the wildlife.
The
Martin County coal slurry spill was an accident that occurred after midnight on October 11, 2000 when the bottom of a
coal slurry impoundment owned by
Massey Energy in
Martin County, Kentucky, USA, broke into an abandoned underground mine below.
[1] The
slurry came out of the mine openings, sending an estimated 306,000,000 US gallons (1.16×109 l; 255,000,000 imp gal) of slurry down two tributaries of the
Tug Fork River. By morning, Wolf Creek was
oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a 10-foot (3.0 m) wide stream became a 100-yard (91 m) expanse of thick slurry.
The spill was over five feet deep in places and covered nearby residents' yards. The spill polluted hundreds of miles (300 – 500 km) of the Big Sandy River and its tributaries and the Ohio River. The water supply for over 27,000 residents was contaminated, and all aquatic life in Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek was killed. The spill was 30 times larger than the
Exxon Valdez oil spill (12 million US gallons (45,000 m3)) and one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the
southeastern United States, according to the
United States Environmental Protection Agency.
[2] The spill was exceeded in volume by the
Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill in 2008.
U.S. Secretary of Labor
Elaine Chao, wife of Sen.
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration at the time. In 2002, a $5,600 fine was levied.[
citation needed]
Massey Energy spent $46 million in cleanup efforts and an additional $3 million in local fines and reported that "some citizens say the creek is cleaner now than before the spill."
[3]
In 2005
Appalshop filmmaker Robert Salyer released a documentary entitled
Sludge, chronicling the continuing story of the Martin County disaster, the resulting federal investigation, and the looming threat of coal slurry ponds throughout the coalfield region. In the wake of the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, Appalshop provided a web stream of
Sludge for a limited time.
[4]
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/pollution-kentucky-79337.html
coal surry pond
another coal slurry pond
Coal slurry pond gone wrong
the stuff they want to dump in the water is very similar.
creek in west Virginia
A pipe that carries coal slurry from the Kanawha Eagle Prep Plant in Kanawha County to an adjacent settling pond burst, causing the spill. It was reported to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) by the company at 7:30 a.m., and later that day began to reach the Kanawha River, some 3.5 miles away from the site of the spill.
Coal slurry or sludge is a waste fluid produced by washing coal with water and chemicals prior to shipping the coal to market. When coal is mined underground or by highwall or auger miners, there are significant amounts of rocks and clays mixed in. These materials must be removed before the coal can be sold to power plants or steel mills.
DEP is investigating the spill and overseeing the cleanup, and Kanawha Eagle is under an Imminent Harm Cessation Order, issued by the WVDEP soon after the spill, for creating conditions not allowable in state waters. The order, which halts all work at the prep plant, except for cleanup activities, will remain in effect until the company has eliminated the potential for further pollution.
Two water quality specialists with
Appalachian Voices visited the site of the coal slurry spill, taking water quality samples and photographs of the scene. Matt Wasson director of programs, who has a Ph.D. in ecology from Cornell University, and Erin Savage, a water quality specialist, who has her M.E.Sc. from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, said the lack of enforcement of the coal industry is to blame for three recent hazardous spills in West Virginia and North Carolina.
“A spill of a chemical used by the coal industry, a coal ash spill and now a coal slurry spill – the common denominator here is the glaring lack of enforcement of the coal industry which has enjoyed political cover for far too long,” said Savage.
In Appalachia and the Illinois Basin, coal companies use a process called "wet washing" to reduce the amount of non-combustible material. There are other methods of separating coal and non-coal used in other places, primarily where mining occurs in arid areas with limited water supplies. In a wet washing plant, or coal preparation plant, the raw coal is crushed and mixed with a large amount of water, magnetite and organic chemicals. The chemicals are primarily patented surfactants, designed to separate clays from the coal, and flocculants, designed to make small particle clump together.
The huge volume of waste water left over is coal slurry. The slurry is composed of particles of rock, clay and coal too small to float or sink as well as all the chemicals used to wash the coal. While the coal industry likes to claim that the particles of "natural rock strata" and chemicals are perfectly safe, testing has shown coal slurry to be highly toxic.
“The coal industry prefers to talk about a supposed ‘war on coal,’ but these spills remind Americans why we have environmental rules and why we need much stronger enforcement to keep our water safe,” said Wasson.
