Whistleblower Accuses Bush Admin. Of Protecting Coal-Slurry Spill Company

[hatrack]

NEW YORK — "A whistle-blower has accused the Bush administration of trying to protect the company responsible for a 2000 coal slurry spill for political reasons, according to CBS Television's 60 Minutes.

On the show to be aired on Sunday, Jack Spadaro, former head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy, said the Department of Labor whitewashed a report that held mining company Massey Energy Co., a contributor to the Republican Party, responsible for the spill. The Oct. 11, 2000, spill from the mining company's containment pond poured 300 million gallons of coal sludge into water supplies in Kentucky and West Virginia.

"The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened," said Spadaro, who helped investigate the spill for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. He called it "interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the eastern United States."

CBS said the Richmond, Virginia, company was a "generous" contributor to the Republican Party."

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-02/s_22430.asp

[LittleApple81]

1. God... the absolute slimeness of Bush*...we could call him the sewer from

Texas...like the problem they are having there now but affecting the entire nation.

[pmbryant]

2. Glad to see this story is going to be on 60 Minutes

I first heard about it in a 10-minute report buried at the end of NPR's "Living on Earth" show back in February. It seemed so outrageous I have been wondering why it wasn't getting more publicity.

--Peter