W. VA spill exposes new risk to water from coal

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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COAL_WATER_POLLUTION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-18-03-22-20

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chemical spill that contaminated water for hundreds of thousands of West Virginians was just the latest and most high-profile case of coal sullying the nation's waters.

For decades, chemicals and waste from the coal industry have tainted hundreds of waterways and groundwater supplies, spoiling private wells, shutting down fishing and rendering streams virtually lifeless, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal environmental data. But because these contaminants are released gradually and in some cases not tracked or regulated, they attract much less attention than a massive spill like the one in West Virginia.

"I've made a career of body counts of dead fish and wildlife made that way from coal," said Dennis Lemly, a U.S. Forest Service research biologist who has spent decades chronicling the deformities pollution from coal mining has caused in fish. "How many years and how many cases does it take before somebody will step up to the plate and say, `Wait a minute, we need to change this'?"

The spill of a coal-cleaning chemical into a river in Charleston, W.Va., that left 300,000 people without water exposes a potentially new and under-regulated risk to water from the coal industry, at a time when the federal government is still trying to close regulatory gaps that have contributed to coal's long legacy of water pollution.

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