The 300-Million-Gallon Warning

Are the nation’s abandoned coal-slurry ponds environmental disasters waiting to happen?

Image: AP Photo/Bob Bird

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The US Environmental Protection Agency called it the worst environmental disaster ever to strike the southeastern United States: On October 11, 2000, a 72-acre coal-slurry pond in Martin County, Kentucky, collapsed into the coal mine below it. More than 300 million gallons of sludge rushed into nearby creeks and the Big Sandy River, smothering 110 miles of waterways in Kentucky and West Virginia. In some places the sludge, a residue from coal processing, was more than seven feet thick. “It was like the thickest chocolate shake,” says Mickey McCoy, who lives in Inez, a nearby town that was saturated with slurry.

The spill, which released about 30 times more liquid than the Exxon Valdez, poisoned water supplies in many communities and killed most aquatic life. “If this had happened in Connecticut, there would have been a hell of an uproar,” says one government ofcial familiar with the disaster.

More than a year later, contamination from the spill persists, and many experts worry that the disaster will not be the last of its kind. There are more than 500 slurry ponds scattered throughout Appalachia and hundreds more around the country, many of them abandoned and unmonitored. An estimated 200 sit atop mines. “In a lot of places, it’s like a honeycomb,” says Kentucky lawyer Tom FitzGerald, who is ghting for tighter government oversight of slurry ponds. “And no one knows where the honeycombs are. In many cases, it’s just trouble waiting to happen.”

In October, a report from the National Academy of Sciences called for tighter federal oversight of slurry ponds but left the specifics to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. But critics say the agency has known about the problem for years, yet has failed to act. “They’re papering it over, wringing their hands, while studiously avoiding the things that need to be done because it will cost the industry money,” says FitzGerald. A spokesman for the mining safety agency says the agency is reviewing its procedures for approving new slurry ponds but “can’t guarantee” that the existing ponds are safe.

But by failing to crack down on the ponds, safety advocates say, officials may be inviting disaster. “Instead of waiting for a failure to occur, we should address the problem,” says Davitt McAteer, who headed the mining safety agency during the Clinton administration. “We have enough evidence of failures that we should be on the alert. We should deal with it.”

Meanwhile, Appalachians continue to wrestle with the legacy of the Martin County spill. The pond’s owner, Massey Energy, says cleanup is complete, even though almost none of the sludge-which according to federal regulators contains dangerous levels of six toxic metals-has been removed from West Virginia rivers. A group of residents has filed suit against the company, complaining that their property was contaminated with arsenic and mercury. “When it rains,” says attorney Ned Pillersdorf, “the creeks still turn dark because of the sludge.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate