Sludge

Before coal can be burned, it needs to be "cleaned" to remove the rock and other impurities that get mixed in during the mining process.  Very often in Appalachia, Coal companies will wash the coal in a mix of water and other chemicals to achieve a burnable quality coal.  The thick, toxic leftover is what is known as sludge (or euphemistically, coal slurry).

There are two common ways of dealing with the sludge.  One is to take the solid waste from the mining process and dump it in the mouth of a hollow creating a dam and a large basin behind it which is filled with sludge.  The largest dam in North America, at over 900 feet tall, is located in West Virginia and when full will hold over 9 billion gallons of this toxic sludge.  Aside from the obvious and everpresent danger of the dam breaking, as happened at Buffalo Creek, WV in the 70's and more recently Martin County, KY in 2000, the dams usually emit a constant leakage into the nearby waterway.

The other common method of dealing with sludge, called slurry injection, is to pump it into abandoned underground mineshafts.  The coal industry claims that the sludge won't leave the mineshaft, but residents of Rawl in Mingo County, WV began to disagree when the slurry started coming out of their faucets.

CRMW is currently working with OVEC and Concerned Citizens in Mingo County on the Sludge Safety Project.