Yes it has happened again, this time in McDowell County into Fields Creek in the Kanawha River watershed.
DEP working another coal-industry spill, in McDowell County
By Ken Ward Jr.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As West Virginia environmental regulators plan more steps in response to last month's coal-cleaning chemical leak into the Elk River and a coal-slurry spill last week, state inspectors were on the scene Wednesday of another mining-waste accident.
Department of Environmental Protection inspectors reported a spill of polluted water from a former McDowell County slurry impoundment that had been reopened by a company re-mining the site for leftover bits of coal.
DEP officials said runoff from melting snow overran the site's sediment control ponds, sending "blackwater" running into an adjacent creek.
The incident occurred at the Antaeus Gary impoundment site, formerly owned by U.S. Steel Mining, at Gary. The facility had been abandoned, and the impoundment reclaimed by the DEP, following a major accident in May 2002.
Still, a review of the water-sampling results showed that levels of some pollutants -- conductivity, sulfates and chlorides, for example -- remained elevated downstream from where Fields Creek enters the Kanawha, compared to upstream sampling.
"They are elevated, but they are within the limits," said Harold Ward, acting director of the DEP's Division of Mining and Reclamation.
Other water-sampling results from the day of the spill or the day after had not been made public by the DEP as of Wednesday evening, and Ward acknowledged that six miles of Fields Creek -- the stream where the slurry spill actually occurred -- were seriously damaged by the slurry.
"Obviously, it's heavily impacted, and the cleanup there will be extensive," Ward said.
Its not difficult to see a pattern of disasters like this emerging. The state government in West Virginia has a long history of being subservient to mining interests. That tawdry history is rearing its ugly head with disturbing frequency.