Under mined: when a flood of toxic mining sludge wreaked havoc in Appalachia, how did the White House respond? By letting the coal company off the hook and firing the whistleblower

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Clara Bingham

Massey Energy maintains that the slurry is no more toxic "than the dirt outside one's home." But Chapman, who once worked for coal mines, believes otherwise. He cites the presence of such toxins as mercury, arsenic, lead, and iron in the sludge. "We know better than to drink the water, but we have no choice but to bathe in it." The town water, treated at a nearby processing plant is sanctioned as drinkable, even though in 2001, an EPA study detected up to 30 times the normal levels of arsenic and mercury in the Inez community's groundwater supply.

Massey's miasma

In the course of the investigation, which also included reviewing piles of engineering reports, Spadaro was haunted by his memories of an earlier catastrophe, now infamous in coal country, known as the Buffalo Creek Disaster. In 1972, Spadaro, then a research engineer for the West Virginia School of Mines, had been dispatched to investigate a coal slurry spill in Buffalo Creek, W. Va. A break in the coal waste dam there had caused a 20-foot column of black sludge to hurdle down through Buffalo Creek's narrow hollow, twisting and crushing homes, leaving 4,000 people without shelter, and killing 125. The Pittston Mining company, which like Massey claimed its mishap had been caused by an "an act of God," was later found liable for the break in the dam, but escaped major sanctions. After Buffalo Creek, Spadaro had spent six months interviewing company employees and flood survivors, and watching bodies being picked out of the rubble. The experience has stayed with him. "Memories of those conversations are still with me," he said recently. "Buffalo Creek wasn't necessary. The neglect, the disregard ... of the mine operators caused it."

In the Martin County Coal flood, Spadaro began to suspect a similar pattern of neglect. By April 2001, his team of MHSA investigators had drafted most of its report and was debating where to lay blame. The engineers believed it was appropriate to levy eight different citations against Massey Energy, but Thompson disputed all but one of those charges. One particularly fierce debate ensued over a charge related to the thickness of the barrier wall. After a smaller, but still significant leak in the Big Branch Impoundment in 1994, Massey had been required to submit an application for a permit to reopen the impoundment. The company presented MSHA with a map that showed a 70-foot barrier wall between the impoundment and the abandoned underground mine beneath the slurry reservoir.

But after the 2001 flood, the investigation hired an independent contractor to confirm the thickness of the barrier wall. Drilling revealed that in some spots the wall was only 15 feet deep. If this had been known earlier, Massey would never have gained a permit to reopen the impoundment. Massey denies that it misled regulators. However, Spadaro strongly suspects that Massey knew how thin the wall was. His team was just beginning to conduct interviews with miners who had worked in the area where the walls were particularly thin before the investigation was cut short.