- INEZ - The enormity of last
week's massive coal-waste spill in Martin County began to sink in yesterday
as cleanup crews struggled to wrap their arms around a disaster as difficult
to grasp as the foamy sludge itself.
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- While Ashland officials watched the Big Sandy River for
the arrival of a 75-mile streak of black water hovering just upstream from
their water plant on the Ohio River others began to quantify the impact
of the spill.
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- Among the observations:
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- State officials said it is worse than May's bourbon spill
in Anderson County, when Wild Turkey flowed into the Kentucky River from
a burning warehouse that had held more than 500,000 gallons. The contamination
killed hundreds of thousands of fish in what was called the worst fish
kill in state history.
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- Last week's spill contained measurable amounts of metals,
including arsenic, mercury, lead, copper and chromium, a federal official
said yesterday, but not enough to pose health problems in treated water.
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- A spokeswoman for the Cincinnati-based Ohio River Valley
Water Sanitation Commission, which monitors pollution in the Ohio River
watershed, said the coal-waste spill could rival the worst recorded inland-waterway
spill. That was in 1988, when a diesel-fuel tank exploded in Pennsylvania,
dumping a million gallons of the fuel into the Monongahela River.
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- Wayne Davis, chief of the Department for Fish and Wildlife
Resources' environmental section, said: ``We have instances of black water
every year, but this is the worst one I've seen or heard of.''
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- A federal Environmental Protection Agency official in
Atlanta said his agency does not rank disasters, but he estimated that
in terms of area affected, the Eastern Kentucky spill probably rates among
the 10 worst such cases in the South.
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- EPA cleanup coordinator Fred Stroud said a coal-company
consultant has estimated it will cost $50 million to $60 million to clean
up the streams.
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- About 250 million gallons of water, mixed with 155,000
cubic yards of coal wastes, poured into streams Oct. 11 after a 72-acre
slurry pond failed at Martin County Coal Corp.'s preparation plant on a
hilltop near Inez.
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- Detecting hazardous metals in the sludge automatically
made the disaster eligible for EPA's Superfund assistance. But Stroud said
the coal company, owned by A.T. Massey Coal Inc., is insured and has been
working hard to limit the damage with its own money.
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- Among other things, the company is paying for temporary
waterlines for Martin County and Louisa in Kentucky, and Kermit and Kenova
in West Virginia. That work is expected to be completed this week.
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- The company has also been dredging the drier sludge from
Coldwater and Wolf creeks, the streams that were hit the hardest. Vacuum
trucks are being used to remove material from the streams and deposit it
in holding pits on company property.
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- ``They seem to want to do the right thing,'' Stroud said.
He said Martin County Coal President Dennis Hatfield ``is taking responsibility
for what happened and that's a good thing. We've had people run off before.''
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- No injuries have been reported, but so far about 100
miles of waterways have been affected, state officials said.
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- In Ashland, public services director Steve Corbitt was
waiting to measure any additional impact after the sludge reaches the Ohio.
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- Corbitt oversees the Ashland water plant, which produces
9 million gallons of water a day. He was uncertain what to expect.
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- ``We haven't seen the big nasty stuff yet,'' he said.
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- Water treatment plants measure the solids in untreated
water in terms of ``turbidity,'' he said.
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- ``Our river water is usually 1 in turbidity,'' Corbitt
said. ``We have treated 750 before during floods. That's dirty.''
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- Yesterday morning, however, Corbitt said he received
reports that turbidity at the peak of the sludge, 10 miles away and flowing
slowly toward him, was 6,000.
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- ``When it gets up into the thousands, I can't even visualize
how heavy that is,'' he said. ``This is a totally different animal than
we've ever seen before.''
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- Corbitt said the Big Sandy River's current traditionally
carries oil spills and other pollution out into the Ohio River, away from
Ashland's water plant, which is 2 miles downstream on the Ohio.
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- Corbitt said he hopes the river of sludge will loop around
his plant, too. If it doesn't, the city intends to send 18 barges, with
half-million gallon capacities, upstream to obtain fresh water for its
plant.
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- Area health officials estimate that the spill has affected
4,500 people in 1,500 residences along the river, said Maleva Chamberlain,
a spokeswoman for the state Division of Water.
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- Gil Lawson of the state Cabinet for Health Services said
27,623 people were without water in two water systems in Louisa and Martin
County. That figure does not include people served by wells and smaller
systems, he said.
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- So far, only a few dead fish have been sighted, Davis
said, mostly when people stirred water and sludge behind logjams.
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- On the Tug Fork at Warfield, ducks swam on the black
surface yesterday while fisheries biologist Dan Michaelson tried to determine
what was happening beneath. He worked from a boat to try to shock fish
to the surface.
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- ``Suckers seem to be the hardest-hit fish,'' Michaelson
said. ``In some that we've looked at, the gills seem to be coated over.
We've found evidence of live fish. Carp seem to be doing fine. But we're
only beginning to see the severity of this fish kill.''
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- Michaelson said ducks and other water birds seem unaffected
by the spill. Frogs and salamanders, he said, were killed along with fish
in Coldwater and Wolf creeks.
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- ``We are not sure how long this black water will last,''
Davis said. ``Fish can stand some conditions like this, but it's already
been a week. Can they last a week? Can they last two weeks?'' _____
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- Herald-Leader staff writer Andy Mead and The Associated
Press contributed to this article. Reach Lee Mueller at (606) 789-4800,
(800) 950-6397 or lmueller1@herald-leader.com.
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