Confronting Ecological Crisis in Appalachia and the South: University and Community Partnerships

4. The Martin County Project

75 4 The Martin County Project Students, Faculty, and Citizens Research the Effects of a Technological Disaster Stephanie McSpirit, Sharon Hardesty, Patrick Carter-North, Mark Grayson, and Nina McCoy The Big Branch Coal Waste Impoundment, owned and operated by the Martin County Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey Energy (MCCCMassey ), occupied approximately seventy-two acres in Martin County, Kentucky. It rested at the top of the stream head to two of the county’s primary creeks: Coldwater and Wolf Creeks. Most of Martin County’s eleven thousand inhabitants live between these two creeks, and therefore most of the county’s inhabitants were affected in some way by the events of October 2000. At midnight on Thursday, October 12, an employee of MCCCMassey was working near the west mine portal when he noticed that the belt line had stopped. Based on documented events in one investigative report, the employee then radioed the dispatcher, and other coal company employees were directed to travel to north-end mine operations . There they observed coal slurry flowing out of a mine portal at a mounting velocity. By the night’s end the Big Branch Impoundment had emptied its seventy-two-acre contents of black water, coal slurry, and sludge into underground mine works below the impoundment. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) estimated that 300 million gallons of the slurry and sludge materials escaped into the county’s two principal creeks. One Martin County citizen who had long been involved in the coal mining industry commented on what came down Coldwater and Wolf Creeks that Tuesday, “The coal com- 76 McSpirit, Hardesty, Carter-North, Grayson, and McCoy pany and the EPA like to call it slurry. Slurry is a fast moving substance. What came down Coldwater . . . was very, very slow moving. Its magnetite , very thick, thicker than any mud you’ll ever see. Magnetite is used in the processing of the coal. . . . That magnetite settles to the bottom of the impoundment. There is so much weight to that magnetite that you can take a five-gallon bucket of it and you can hardly carry it. It’s that thick.”1 In the following days coal sludge from the devastated creeks slowly traveled toward the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River and then snaked its way through to the Ohio River. Through it all, town water systems along the affected rivers were forced to close their water intakes while the massive sludge plume moved past. According to official state estimates , nearly twenty-eight thousand people were without public water while emergency water lines were established by contingency teams of state, federal, and coal company personnel.2 Meanwhile, people in Martin County were describing the coal waste disaster as one that paralleled the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The mayor of the City of Inez, Martin County, made such a comparison in an open letter to the governor of Kentucky. Calling for disaster relief, the mayor went on to say, “Not only am I concerned about our water supply, residents and wildlife, I am also concerned with the environmental impact and economic damage that this disaster will cause to Inez and Martin County. This could possibly set Martin County back for many years to come. The economy in Martin County is already bleak but this could be the straw that broke the camel’s back.”3 During the weeks, months, and years to follow, no federal disaster funds or federal emergency relief monies were forthcoming, and many Martin County citizens asked why. In later field interviews, citizens continued to comment on the lack of federal relief for the disaster . Reflecting frustration that nobody seemed to care, one interview respondent commented, “I know there were no lives that were lost, but this was a big, a huge environmental disaster. . . . But it happened in Martin County, maybe ten, eleven thousand people living here. The coal communities, you know, we’re kind of forgotten anyway.” Another local resident said, “The coal company had it in the newspaper, saying this was ‘an act of God’ and that they were doing everything that they could to clean up the mess. But everybody knows it’s not an act of God, it’s a disaster.”4 The Martin County Project 77 A Technological Disaster Less than a week after the disaster, before full chemical testing on the sludge was even complete, state and federal officials attempted to allay public concerns...