Slurry Spills

Recently, there was a huge coal ash slurry spill that occurred in Tennessee, causing extensive environmental damage to the region. The Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill reminded me of the Martin County coal slurry spill that I worked on in Kentucky for my previous employer. While looking for more information regarding the TVA spill, I ran across an article that actually referenced the MC coal slurry spill.

The MC spill, which occurred on October 11, 2000, was remarkable not just for its magnitude, but also for the lack of coverage by the media. Hopefully, there will be more exposure of the TVA spill, as it has has been estimated at over one billion gallons, compared with 300 million gallons for the MC spill (for reference, the Exxon Valdez spill was 10-12 million gallons). I thought that this would be a good time to write about my experience with the Martin County coal slurry spill.

The coal slurry was stored in a 70 acre impoundment at the top of the mountain, above the mine. The bottom of the impoundment collapsed into the mine workings, filling the mine with slurry. The slurry then spilled out of two of the mine adits on opposite sides of the mountain and headed down Wolf Creek and Coldwater Creek. It is a small miracle that no one was inside the mine when the collapse occurred. Thanks to the sludge entering two drainages, the houses next to the creeks were not washed away and no one was killed. Additionally, when driving on the road along Coldwater Creek, the sludge left a "high water" line indicating that the sludge was much higher than the roadway. Fortunately, no one was driving on the road when the spill occurred.

The slurry filled the beds and covered the banks of the creeks, finally making its way to the Big Sandy River. Over 100 miles of waterway were affected. Fish and other aquatic insects and species were killed immediately, and other wildlife got stuck in the sludge or were unable to drink from the creeks. The creeks, which were already affected by the mining in the area, were completely decimated.

Coal slurry consists of solid and liquid waste and is a by-product of coal mining and the coal handling processes. When it dried on the banks of the creeks, it became solid and rubbery, reminiscent of asphalt. In the creek, it remained watery, and if you hit a pocket of it while walking in the creek bed, you would immediately drop to the bottom of the bed. There were a few times that I dropped below the top of my hip waders.

A local construction crew utilized track hoes, bulldozers, and front end loaders to remove as much of the slurry as possible. The company that I worked for was hired to rebuild the stream channels. We installed coconut fiber coir logs, laid erosion control fabric, planted willow cuttings, sprayed mulch, and installed silt fences along stretches of the creeks that were damaged during cleanup and needed stabilized to prevent further erosion.

My main responsibility was to perform construction oversight. A local company was hired to perform the work, and they were a very interesting and entertaining bunch to work alongside. This is one of the poorest areas of the country. In 2000, the median household income in the county was $18,279 (compared with $41,990 for the US). The majority of people who live in the area were employed directly or indirectly by Massey Energy, which owned and operated the mine.

It was during the middle of the summer, and the conditions were suffocatingly hot and humid. Growing up in Colorado, I had never experienced humidity such as that. Still, the workers never complained as they were simply happy to be working "above ground". A job with the coal company typically meant working a night shift or a ten to twelve hour day shift. During the winter it was often dark when they went in the mine and dark when they came out. These guys were just happy for a relatively decent paying job that allowed them to work outside in the sun.

After work, the guys would park their cars at the car wash in Kermit, WV and drink beers or moonshine. Other highlights included ridge riding, eating hillbilly pickle, chasing girls, and throwing bottles at street signs. One of the guys regaled stories of escaping from the cops in car chases, Dukes of Hazard style. He would evade them by driving down windy, bumpy backroads, and a couple of times even drove straight down the middle of the creek.

During my work on the project, I would cover many miles of the creeks by car, four wheeler, or foot. You never knew what to expect when from one day to the next. You had to always be on the lookout for copperhead snakes, timber rattlers, thick spiderwebs with large spiders, and mean dogs. And the property owners were just as scary sometimes. The work crew was chased off of a few properties by gun toting residents who were protecting their marijuana plants or moonshine stills. Also, on one occasion, I heard water pouring into the creek downstream for about 10 seconds. When I went to investigate, I realized that their toilet flushed directly to the creek.

It was saddening to see just how poorly the Wolf and Clearwater Creeks had been treated. The slurry spill obviously destroyed them, but they weren't in the best of condition before the spill. Several old timers told me stories about growing up in the area. The creeks had rock bottoms, and they would regularly go fishing and swimming in the creeks. Now the streambeds were filled with silt deposited from the upstream coal mining operations, changing the water quality completely. The water was muddier, the swimming and fishing holes filled up with silt, and they didn't see nearly as much wildlife in and around the creeks as when they were young.

I had a chance to go up to the headwaters of Wolf Creek and witness how beautiful the creeks could be. The crystal clear water was only a few inches deep and a couple feet wide. It flowed directly over bedrock and was bounded by lush green grass, moss, and other plants. It was completely unrecognizable from the creek a mile or two downstream.

The company that I worked for lost their contract due to political reasons, and I didn't get to see the final results. Fortunately, this area was one of the greenest, lushest, and most fertile areas that I have visited. I am quite certain that nature will recover from the disaster in the long run, although the continuing degradation of the creeks due to human activity will make it unlikely that the creeks will ever return to their pristine condition. For more on the Martin County Coal Slurry Spill read this article.