The Brushy Fork Slurry Impoundment
Breaks in coal slurry impoundments can threaten the lives and health of area residents, destroy homes and businesses and contaminate water supplies. This dangerous potential looms over coal mining regions in West Virginia and throughout Appalachia.
- Senator Robert C. Byrd
The Brushy Fork Slurry Impoundment is located in western Raleigh County, where the Brushy Fork tributary used to run down off of Coal River Mountain. Water from Brushy Fork flowed into Little Marsh Fork, into Marsh Fork, and then into Coal River just upstream of Whitesville.
The Brushy Fork Impoundment was originally permitted in November of 1995. At a public hearing addressing the expansion of the dam, the following concerns were raised: the quality of the compaction of the dam as of 1999, the adequacy and life expectancy of the drainage system, the adequacy of the monitoring plan and overall concerns about the safety of the impoundment throughout its life expectancy. At this point in time, violations had already been given to Massey regarding the compaction of the dam as well as several "black water" releases (a release of contaminated water that is often black) into the Coal River. Communities were also concerned about nature of the emergency evacuation plans for communities living downstream of the dam.
At a second public hearing held to address additional mining and the expansion of Brushy Fork, Rick Eades, a respected hydrologist, added concerns about the impact of additional blasting on the stability of the dam. He questioned "blasting where underground mines existed in the Eagle coal seam, the possibilities for adversely affecting near surface bedrock in a way that could possibly enhance pathways for slurry to be released via the subsurface and bypass the dam." What Dr. Eades was expressing concern over was the possibility of a slurry breakthrough not through the dam itself, like in Buffalo Creek, but through the bottom of the dam, into an underground mine shaft, and out the side of the mountain. This type of slurry breakthrough is called a blowout, as was the cause of the massive slurry spill in Martin County, KY, in 2000. Read More...
http://auroralights.org/map_project/theme.php?theme=crm&article=2Martin County sludge spill
The Martin County Sludge Spill was an accident that occurred after midnight on October 11, 2000 when the bottom of a coal sludge impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky, USA, broke into an abandoned underground mine below. 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 sludge 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 sludge.
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 gallons) and one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the southeastern United States, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
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. Chao placed a McConnell staffer in charge of the MSHA investigation into the spill. In 2002, a $5,600 fine was levied. That September, Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. Read More...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill
If AT Massey lied about the safety of the Upper Big Branch Mine, that snuffed out the lives of 29 West Virginia coal miners, what are the odds that they are telling the whole truth about the integrity of the massive Brushy Fork Slurry Impoundment that could wipe out the entire Coal River valley and all of it's inhabitants, human and otherwise, for 70 miles downstream? Is Brushy Fork,s millions of gallons of toxic sludge sitting on top of worked out mines like the Martin County impoundment was? Can We Depend on AT Massey's word?
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
