Save Coal River Mountain!

Overview

Massey Energy's subsidiary, Marfork Coal Company, has two approved surface mining permits (Bee Tree and Eagle 2) and two pending permits (Leather Leaf and Collins Fork) on Coal River Mountain. These permits were approved by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. In total, the permits cover nearly 5400 acres of the mountain.

Map courtesy of Journey Up Coal River

In order to carry out the full mining plan, Marfork will need to obtain valley fill permits in order to dump the earth removed in mountaintop removal into adjacent valleys. These permits are issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but Marfork has not yet applied for valley fill permits for Coal River Mountain.

Update

As of January 2011, Marfork has destroyed about 75 acres of Coal River Mountain on the 1090 acre Bee Tree Permit, on the northwest side of the mountain adjacent to the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment. Marfork has completed the first phase of its Bee Tree Mining Plan and is currently in Phase IIA.

In January 2010 the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved the final of a series of revisions to the Beetree Mining Plan to allow Marfork to mine without a Clean Water Act 404 Permit (valley fill permit).  These revisions permitted Marfork to mine through Phase IIB of their mining plan. The extent of the mining are shown in light gray on the map below (click to download).

These revisions permitted Marfork to mine using highwall mining techniques and to backfill as much of the site as possible. Highwall mining is where a bench is cut into the side of the mountain and large holes are drilled into the coal seam to remove the coal.    This is similar to a better-known mining method, auger mining.

It is not possible for all fill from highwall mining to be put back so the company must find a way to dispose of the excess.  Marfork is using the excess spoil to reclaim the high walls of the old Cedar Grove contour strip around the perimeter of the Brushy Fork Impoundment. 

In preparation for Phase III of mining on the Beetree Permit, Mafork Submitted an Incidental Boundary Revision application to the DEP in November of 2010 to construct a valley fill in the back end of the Brushy Fork Impoundment.  Active high-wall reclamation and the use of this valley fill for excess spoil disposal will likely allow Marfork to mine Phase III of the Beetree permit with-out the acquisition of any additional valley fill permits.

No activity has begun on the Eagle No. 2 surface mine that is permitted to perform mountaintop removal on the summit of Coal River Mountain. No valley fill permit applications have been spotted for the Eagle No. 2 Surface Mine, but the amount of mining that can be done without these permits is at this point unknown. The third major mountaintop removal permit for Coal River Mountain is the Leather Leaf permit encompassing 1,200 acres; this permit was applied for in January 2010 but it has not moved forwarded in the application process after the DEP requested more information from the company. A smaller permit, the Collins Fork permit was applied for in February 2008 and is pending technical corrections. Both permits have yet to go through their public comment periods.

Brushy Fork Impoundment

Since mining operations began in the fall of 2009, Coal River Mountain Watch, residents, and activists have raised concerns about blasting in proximity to the Brushy fork Impoundment.  A slurry impoundment is a huge pond, held back by an earthen dam, containing the toxic residue left over from the process of washing coal before it is burned in a power plant. All of the chemicals (some of which are carcinogenic) used in the washing process, as well as the heavy metals and other minerals removed from the coal are part of the slurry. At the current stage the dam is impounding about 5.5 billion gallons of coal slurry with a capacity of about 7.5 billion gallons. 

Blasting occurs daily on the Bee Tree site within 2000 feet of the Brushy Fork Slurry Impoundment. There are serious concerns that blasting may increase the risk of dam failure or impoundment basin failure by cracking the less than 200 feet of inter-burden between the toxic coal slurry in the impoundment and unstable underground mines below.  A dam failure would be similar to that of the Buffalo Creek disaster in 1977 which killed over 100 people.  A basin failure would be similar in nature to that of the Martin County Kentucky coal slurry disaster in 2001 where slurry leaked into abandoned underground mines and burst out the side of the mountain.  The Brushy Fork impoundment is impounding over 10 times more slurry than both Martin County and Buffalo Creek. According to the Emergency Evacuation Plan prepared by Marfork, a failure of the dam would send a wall of slurry down the Coal River for more than 25 miles. (More information on the Brushy Fork Impoundment and the Emergency Evacuation Plan).

Photo Credit: Jen Osha

Coalfield residents know how powerful surface mine blasting is, as they feel in their homes even when it is miles away.  Portions of the dam and pond are sitting just 150 feet above abandoned underground mines.  Marfork Coal Company, Marfork’s Consultants, the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) assured the public that proper engineering review considerations have been made to address stability issues in the mine complex beneath the impoundment. 

During a series of reports from 1999 to 2004 it was discovered by Marfork consultants that several pillars failed achieve the desired long-term safety criteria.  Marfork consultants and the DEP determined that given the abnormally dry conditions in the coal seam beneath the dam, weathering and deterioration of pillar strengths was not likely to occur.  The last known site visit by the WV DEP to inspect the pillars was in 1999 and Marfork likely preformed underground inspections as late as 2001. Due to conflicting reports it is hard to tell whether conditions in the coal seam under the impoundment currently are dry or wet (wet conditions would be more likely to lead to pillar failure and breakthrough).