Tip of Iceberg of Massey's Titanic Violations: 72-Foot Tidal Wave of Coal Sludge Looms Above Affecte

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/08-0


Tip of Iceberg of Massey's Titanic Violations: 72-Foot Tidal Wave of Coal Sludge Looms Above Affected Mining Communities


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But as heroic rescue teams attempt to reach the missing miners, another potential disaster instigated by reckless Massey Energy regulatory violations and oversight looms above the very heads of these affected coal mining communities--and the pool of journalists and observers:

Blasting within a football field of the nearby class "C" Brushy Fork impoundment, one of the largest and potentially weakest coal slurry impoundments in the nation, Massey Energy is engaging in a violation-ridden act of aggression against besieged coalfield residents.

"Today Americans are witnessing the tragedy of Appalachia," says Bo Webb, a resident in Peachtree, West Virginia. "Coal barons such as Don Blankenship daily place their employees as well as entire communities at great risk in order to satisfy the profit of Fat Cat Wall street Investors."

-snip-

That same sense of betrayal of coalfield communities hovers above their heads at the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment. Despite pleas and protests by local residents, as part of the reckless mountaintop removal plans for Coal River Mountain, Massey Energy is now operating a strip mine near the Bee Tree branch of the mountain, blasting outrageously close to a multi-billion gallon coal slurry impoundment that is held back by a weakened earthen dam.

"Massey's aggressive mining mission doesn't even consider the fact that they have completely surrounded an elementary school and placing young children in harms way," adds Webb, who has campaigned with area residents for a new school for years. Marsh Fork Elementary School sits within a football field of toxic coal silos, as well.

(good grief!)

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Before another disaster strikes the Coal River Valley--and in the coalfields across 24 states in the country--it's time to bring the era of regulated manslaughter and human rights violations to an end.
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exactly!

[theHandpuppet]

1. A history of callous disregard for human life

WHEN will Blankenship and Massey Energy be held accountable? What good is law when there is no justice for the people?

http://wvgazette.com/News/MiningtheMountains/200910080752
October 8, 2009
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As a group of citizens ranging in age from 50 to 83 began a march against mountaintop removal Thursday, two more West Virginia political leaders called on Massey Energy to help fund relocation of a Raleigh County elementary school that has become a symbol in the ongoing coalfield controversy.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nick J. Rahall, both D-W.Va., called on Massey Energy to help fund the relocation of Marsh Fork Elementary School away from a huge Massey slurry impoundment and coal-processing plant.
Rockefeller and Rahall made their comments in support of Sen. Robert C. Byrd's strong criticism of Massey following media reports that the company declined to help fund moving the school, currently located near Sundial....


http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/author/brad/
THE MARTIN COUNTY COAL-SLURRY DISASTER
Martin County Slurry DisasterThree Times the Volume of the Exxon Valdez Spill. Massey Energy is the parent of Martin County Coal, responsible for the “nation’s largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi” until the 2008 Tennesee coal-ash spill In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek,” in Martin County, KY.
Site Denied Superfund Status. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency “determined that the slurry spill was not a release of a hazardous substance” and thus ineligible for Superfund status.
Sen. McConnell and Wife Stopped MSHA Investigation. U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell.

** Blankenship was a major contributor to McConnell's campaigns but no one questioned this appointment?

http://www.wvablue.com/diary/1554/
The NYT notes Massey's judge-buying
Suffering from a bit of insomnia tonight, I decided to get my obligatory round of news-reading out of the way a little early. So I'm working my way through the various sites I've bookmarked, and I come to the New York Times.
In what might be considered electronic "above-the-fold" story placement, this headline caught my eye: "Motion Ties W. Virginia Justice to Coal Executive."
I am not nearly as versed in the politics of West Virginia's coal industry as just about everybody here on this site, but somehow, in my heart, I knew this would be about Don Blankenship and Massey Energy.
It turns out that in the summer of 2006, Massey Energy CEO Blankenship and Elliott Maynard - currently the chief justice of the WV Supreme Court of Appeals - vacationed together in Monte Carlo. And there are pictures to prove it.
What makes it particularly damning is that Massey had an appeal of a $50 million lawsuit pending before the court. Which in 2007 was settled in Massey's favor, by a 3-2 vote. Care to guess which side Maynard came down on?

http://understory.ran.org/2009/09/09/intergenerational-blockade-at-massey-office-in-boone-co-wv/
Massey Energy has paid the largest fines for environmental and worker safety violations of any coal company in the United States. In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency fined Massey $20 million for 4,500 violations of the Clean Water Act. In the same year, the Mine Safety and Health Administration fined Massey $2.5 million for the death of two workers and 1,300 safety violations in two of their underground mines. In the first quarter of 2009, Massey revenue increased 25 percent. Yet, Blankenship announced an average six percent cut in worker’s wages and benefits to investors in the same quarter....

http://www.nwofighters.org/?p=440
Massey has had problems elsewhere, too. In 2006, two miners were killed in a fire at Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine. Massey settled a wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, and its subsidiary Aracoma Coal Co. paid $4.2 million in civil and criminal penalties.
Testimony showed Massey CEO Don Blankenship suggested firing two supervisors for raising concerns about conveyer belt problems just before the belt caught fire.
“Massey has a history of emphasizing production,” said Pittsburgh lawyer Bruce Stanley, who represented the miners’ widows. “I’m concerned that they may not have learned the lessons of Aracoma.”

<snipping>
Massey is contesting 36 percent of all violations at Upper Big Branch since 2007, The Associated Press found. Overall, U.S. mine operators contest 27 percent. Challenging violations can enable a mine owner to stave off the heavier punishment that the government can impose on companies that have been deemed repeat offenders.

<snipping>
Massey has managed to push the United Mine Workers union out of all of its operations except for a single processing plant.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0526/080.html
In October 2000 the floor of a 72-acre wastewater reservoir built above an abandoned mine in Kentucky collapsed, sending black sludge through the mine and out into a tributary of the Big Sandy River. The sludge killed fish and plants for 36 miles downstream. Water supplies were shut down in several towns for a month. In total, 230 million gallons spilled out, 20 times the volume of the crude oil from the Exxon Valdez. Lawns nearby were covered in as much as 7 feet of muck.
Blankenship says the accident "could have happened to anyone" and partly blames faulty maps of the old mine. But the company had had a similar (though much smaller) accident six years earlier and had been told to seal part of the reservoir. Further, the reservoir had shown signs of leaking right before the accident and Massey failed to report that fact to regulators as required, according to the U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration. The cleanup has cost $58 million so far.
In June 2001 a pump at a mine near Madison, W.Va. sprang a leak during the night shift. Instead of shutting it down, workers handed the problem off to a maintenance crew in the morning. Over the next five hours 30,000 gallons of sludge emptied into Robinson Creek below. The company never told the regulators about the accident; Blankenship says workers made an honest mistake in believing the leak would be contained. Regulators were alerted by residents calling in to report their river had turned black. There were three more illegal discharges into the river over the next two months.

<snipping>
Asked in a recent radio interview about charges that he allows trucks to be overloaded with coal, he retorted, "Everyone does it." Arch Coal, its biggest rival, says it has long stopped the practice. And Blankenship has kept up his drumbeat against regulators, recently calling the state Department of Environmental Protection "an arm of the union."

[BrklynLiberal]

2. The coal industry has never displayed anything but a total disregard for the environment and the

people who live and work in it.

http://www.dipity.com/timeline/TVA-Kingston-Ash-Spill/list

http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/coal-slurry-dam-disaster/

Coal Slurry Dam Disaster

http://ascendency.tigblog.org/archive/12_2008

Kingston Coal Ash Sludge Spill Over a Billion Gallons: Time to Take a Hard Look at the Coal Industry

http://www.wvablue.com/diary/1927/

***During 1985-2001, 6,700 valley fills in central Appalachia killed more than 1,200 miles of valley streams by suffocating the aquatic and riparian habitat. The blasting blends together the rock and dirt from the former mountaintop with the blasting chemicals and debris, and this waste is dumped into valleys that are contiguous to the MTR site. The mining companies call this the creation of "valley fills," which is simply filling the valleys with "millions of tons" of the waste rock and dirt that may be hundreds of feet deep depending on whether 500 or 1,000 vertical feet were chopped off the moutaintop. Large mines may be surrounded by several valley fills. A "single fill may be over 1,000 feet wide and over a mile long (pdf file)."

There is so much, much more.............