Mountain Holler
Anti-Sludge Bill Introduced
March 20th, 2009
Last week a bill banning the underground injection of coal slurry was introduced on the West Virginia State Senate floor by Sen. Randy White. In a stirring speech Sen. White raised a toast to the people of Prenter, Rawl and other impacted communities declaring :"I raise this glass to you, here's to me, here's to the people in Prenter, in Rawl and all the West Virginians who deserve clean water. I salute them and I ask you to raise your glass in what they drink that we drink today."And with that he took a big drink of a "coal slurry" concoction. The senate bill is SB 568 and if you live in West Virginia, you should call your state senator and tell them to support SB 568.
Watch this coverage from West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
The bill is currently held up in the Energy, Industry and Mining Committee by Chairperson Mike Green. So no matter where you live, give him a call at 304 357-7831 and politely ask him to bring it up for a discussion in committee.
And to go along with the introduction of SB 568 Sludge Safety Project released a Citizens Report on Underground Slurry Injection. The DEP was supposed to release a report to the legislature on coal slurry in December of 2007, but didn't have it read. So the deadline got pushed back to June 2008. Again they failed to have the report ready, so the deadline was pushed back until December of 2008. You guessed it, the DEP didn't have a report, so SSP took the data compiled by the DEP during their study and combined it with other known data to release their own citizens' report.