As Flooding Speeds Up In WVA Coal Country, Industry Denies Responsibility

[hatrack]

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"Flash floods have taken new form in West Virginia's southern coalfields. Used to be the destruction came only from rain-swollen streams that spilled their banks. Now people also look to the hilltops, where many — justified or not — believe logging and strip mine operators have made runoff problems worse and increased the threat of devastating landslides. Floods aren't new to the coalfields, but the severity in recent years is. Just about everyone who's been flooded since 1991 says the same thing: It's never been this bad. In 10 years. In 20. In a lifetime. The only thing that's changed, they say, is the activity above.

"This is escalating into the biggest problem the state has ever faced," said Julia Bonds, director of the Whitesville-based environmental group, Coal River Mountain Watch. In 2003, West Virginia received more federal disaster aid than any other state, with $60 million from four flood events. There's been one federal declaration this year, stemming from floods during Memorial Day week. But it's only June.

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Industry consistently denies it's to blame, pointing even higher than the mountaintops. "You can't take Mother Nature out of the equation," said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. "That's got to be recognized and dealt with." Floods and landslides are devastating, he said, but they're brought on by other kinds of development as well, including shopping centers, parking lots, and roads. It's "terribly unfair," he said, to single out mining or logging. "I just really think what we're ending up with is more water falling from the sky in a more concentrated fashion, in a shorter period of time and in a smaller area," Raney said. "Now that's not popular because there isn't anyone to blame in that.... I do understand the need to lay blame, but there is no clear bad guy here."

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After devastating floods in July 2001, Gov. Bob Wise ordered a team of engineers, regulators, and civilians to study the problem. "What we concluded was, yes, mining and logging can increase runoff," said Jim Pierce, the DEP's lead mining permit engineer. "In the two watersheds we studied, we found evidence of that. It was visual. We could see debris flows," he said. "It's hard to deny when a woman gets a log through the back of her house that it didn't happen." But the study became a point of contention between Pierce's agency and the Division of Forestry, which refused to revise rules for loggers and prohibit them from such activities as dumping stumps and tree tops in streams."

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http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-29/s_25358.asp

[fudge stripe cookays]

1. Uh oh.

What was the name of the "dam" of coal slag in 72 or thereabouts? Buffalo Creek?

FSC

[hatrack]

2. Exactly - Buffalo Creek

118 dead, hundreds injured, thousands homeless.

http://www.wvculture.org/history/buffcreek/bctitle.html