SPILLS, SPILLS, SPILLS - More Routine Than Not

(08/08/2003)

Officials are investigating a 250,000-thousand gallon blackwater spill from a Massey Coal subsidiary in Boone County. DEP spokeswoman Jessica Greathouse says the slurry spilled from an Independence Coal supply yard and into Laurel Creek. The sprill was not reported by Massey, but by a citizen who complained about the creek having dirty water. Laurel Creek is a tributary of the Big Coal River. Greathouse says a required berm around a refuse area on the company's property was breached during heavy rains. The cause of the berm failure hasn't been determined, but DEP inspector Bill Simmons says the company had allowed piles of slate and other gob to build up -- blocking access to drainage systems. The Massey-owned company had two slurry spills in Boone County in 2001. Mewanwhile, more coal slurry ponds in the mountains of eastern Kentucky have been flared again. A Perry County, Kentucky, impoundment sprang a leak last week with a black mixture of water and coal particles flowing from the Stone Coal Branch Impoundment. It was splling at a rate of about 100 gallons a minute before crews stopped it. The latest leak doesn't compare to one three years ago in Martin County, Kentucky. More than 300 million gallons of black goo from a Massey facility covered driveways and lawns, clogged streams, killed fish and fouled drinking water supplies in Kentucky and West Virginia.

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