[corp-focus] Buffalo Creek, Take Two?

[robert weissman]

BUFFALO CREEK, TAKE TWO?
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

On February 26, 1972, a Pittston Co. coal mine dam broke, releasing 132
million gallons of coal wastes into Buffalo Creek hollow in Logan
County, West Virginia.

More than 4,000 residents were left homeless, 1,100 were injured, and
125 died.

Is history about to repeat itself?

West Virginia Public Broadcasting last week reported on a Massey
Energy's Goals Coal Company dam in Raleigh County, not far from site of
the Buffalo Creek disaster.

The Shumate dam is a pile of coal refuse 385 feet high.

And it sits right above Marsh Fork Elementary School.

Massey Energy and federal mine regulators say the dam is safe.

But the Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) has fined the company a
number of times for deficiencies.

Last year, West Virginia Public Broadcasting reporter Dan Heyman sought
access to the MSHA reports.

Heyman found out that in the late 90's, MSHA inspector Jim Elkins issued
citations to Goals Coal Co. for not properly compacting the dam's fill
material.

In one, in November 1998, MSHA fined the company for putting refuse down
in layers as much as 10-feet thick.

These layers cannot be more than one foot.

The thinner the layer, the easier it is to compact.

It took three months for MSHA to release that citation after West
Virginia Public Broadcasting filed a request under the Freedom of
Information Act.

But while MSHA released some of the information, it left some out.

Here's something they left out:

According to the report, after inspector Elkins noted that a thousand
people live downstream, he wrote "if the dam failed, fatalities would be
expected to occur. It's reasonably likely an accident would occur if the
condition continued to exist."

They also left out a concern that Elkins had about the dam a few months
later.

Again, Elkins expressed a concern that people would die if Massey didn't
correct another compaction problem.

Heyman reported that a few weeks after being cited for the 1998
violation, Goals Coal Co. corrected this problem.

But four months later, inspector Elkins wrote an even stronger citation.

Elkins noted that "much of one side of the dam consisted of soft, wet
layers of coal refuse five to ten feet thick."

He wrote that the condition probably existed for several weeks.

The inspector added that people downstream would be "exposed possibly
fatally if the dam blew out on this side and caused failure of the dam.
It is reasonably likely an accident would occur if the dam filled up
with water. This area would be the most likely to fail."

Heyman said that "this is the second statement that MSHA withheld from
Public Broadcasting."

"We only know about the language that Elkins used because his statements
were included in documents that MSHA released to an environmental group
four years ago," Heyman said. "Back then, the dam had received little,
if any, media attention. By the time we filed our request for records in
August, MSHA had decided the inspector's concerns are not public
information."

Heyman reported that Massey fixed the compaction problems cited by MSHA.

But others abound.

Heyman reported that MSHA has cited the impoundment 17 other times for
violations in the last 10 years.

According to the report, these include three citations from 2001 to
2003, where MSHA cited the company for letting erosion gullies up to 10
feet deep and 12 feet wide form on the impoundment side of the dam.

MSHA also cited the company five times, from 2001 to 2003, for letting
timber and brush piles build up around the dam or for using wood waste
and scrap metal to build up the dam.

"Like the earlier citations, MSHA also withheld additional information
concerning these violations," Heyman said. "But we can't confirm what
MSHA withheld. We don't have copies of previously released documents to
compare them to."

Heyman said that the Shumate dam is deserving of attention for two
reasons -- one, its proximity to a school, and two, it was a Massey
impoundment that failed and released about 300 million gallons of coal
slurry in Martin County, Kentucky, five years ago.

No lives were lost in that environmental disaster.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>. Mokhiber and Weissman are
co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of
Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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