Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

	More of that “minimal impact,” Massey style, at one of their massive mountaintop removal/valley fill mining sites in Raleigh County, WV.

And now for something completely different ...
Massey Launches “Total Environment” Web Assault

In response to all this summer’s truth-telling by Mountain Justice Summer and Friends of the Mountains member groups, Massey Energy stepped up its propaganda campaigns with TV and radio ads and a new website.

“We hope that our new Web site will be a valuable resource…to those interested in finding out more about Massey Energy’s commitment to improving our total environment,” CEO Don Blankenship said in a press release.

The Associated Press reported: In advertisements released in July, Massey lashed out at the claims of protesters who spent the summer speaking out against the company’s surface mining operations.

“The needs of people: That’s what protesters against coal forget,” according to the ads.

“The Web site, www.OurTotalEnvironment.com, also outlines Massey employee benefits.”

Massey apparently forgets the needs of the people living in the shadow of its operations – needs such as clean water, homes safe from the effects of blasting and the right to stay on one’s ancestral land in one’s ancestral community.

Massey’s total environment apparently doesn’t include oxygen-producing, flood-controlling forests.

OVEC staff talked with former employees at Massey’s coal prep plants – including the one near Marsh Fork Elementary – who tell us their “benefits” included working with chemicals without any safety gear. Now they allege they are “benefiting” from debilitating illnesses related to chemical poisoning, feeling so sick that many days they no longer enjoy living.

They “benefit” from massive medical bills after having worker’s compensation denied. They “benefit,” too, from watching their co-workers became extremely ill and die off from cancer. These workers told us they wished they had never worked for Massey.

How dumb does Massey think people are? How many people do they expect believe their ads? Why doesn’t Massey use all that advertising money to help former workers with ruined health pay some of their medical bills?

This page contain a few true tales and pictures of Massey’s total environment.

A Tale of THREE Massey Sludge Messes

1: Court to hear Massey appeal

by Ken Ward Jr., Nov. 4, 2005, Charleston Gazette

The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear Massey Energy Co.’s appeal of an order that would temporarily suspend one of its permits because of citations issued for repeated environmental violations…

	Cleanup continues three months after a huge Massey subsidiary's coal sludge spill in Martin County, Ky. - the largest environmental disaster in the southeastern US.

Massey is appealing a nine-day suspension of the permit for Marfork’s Brushy Fork coal-waste impoundment south of Whitesville. The suspension was the result of a 2001 effort by the Wise administration to crack down on repeated blackwater spills and other violations at Massey mines, preparation plants and slurry impoundments in Boone, Logan and Raleigh counties.

Under state and federal mining law, the DEP can shut down coal operations that repeatedly violate environmental rules. Until the Wise administration crackdown on Massey, the agency had seldom used that authority.

Between July 1999 and February 2001, DEP inspectors cited the operation for seven violations for spills and related water pollution violations.

Matthew Crum, who was DEP mining director, initially suspended the Marfork permit – covering the slurry impoundment and a nearby strip mine – for 14 days. The state Surface Mine Board reduced that suspension to nine days.

Earlier this week, Marfork lawyer Bob McLusky said that suspension was too harsh a penalty and was part of an ongoing pattern of DEP harassment of Massey companies.

Tom Clarke, a DEP lawyer, told justices in court papers that Massey “is in a state of denial” over the company’s “abysmal compliance history.”

In court documents, Massey alleged that the original 14-day suspension would cost Marfork $9 million. In response, the DEP noted that the company told its shareholders that the DEP enforcement action would not have a material impact on corporate finances.

2: Feds repeatedly cite slurry impoundment near Marsh Fork School

by Ken Ward Jr., Oct. 15, 2005, Charleston Gazette

Federal regulators have repeatedly cited a Massey Energy coal slurry impoundment near a Raleigh County elementary school for the same types of safety violations, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has repeatedly cited Massey subsidiary Goals Coal for allowing erosion on the impoundment, the records show.

The MSHA has also repeatedly cited the company for dumping wood, scrap metal and other materials into the impoundment and for not properly compacting coal waste, the records show.

Over the last decade, the MSHA has cited Goals Coal about once every six months for safety violations at its Shumate Impoundment, according to agency records.

Massey has not challenged the citations, and has paid the more than $2,500 in fines assessed by the MSHA.

In August, when questions were raised about the impoundment’s safety record, MSHA officials refused to release copies of citations issued to the facility without a formal Freedom of Information Act request.

What elementary school in West Virginia wouldn't love to have not one, but two coal silos looming over it, in addition to a coal sludge impoundment holding back several billion gallons of toxic black goo? Massey is only too happy to oblige!

…Results of an ongoing inspection, started in July, have not been made public by MSHA officials.

The impoundment - with a 385-foot-high dam that can hold up to 2.8 billion gallons of liquid coal waste - is just up the hollow from Marsh Fork Elementary School near Sundial. Since late June, the Goals Coal site has been under increasing scrutiny from regulators and from coalfield residents who fear it is a danger to students.

Suzy Bohnert, an MSHA spokeswoman, said in August that her agency’s inspectors “did not find a problem” with the impoundment “so there was nothing to correct.”

Gov. Joe Manchin has halted a separate investigation by his office into the issue.

Two weeks ago, Manchin general counsel Carte Goodwin said in a letter to Coal River Mountain Watch that administration officials examined “documents of extensive federal and state oversight” of the impoundment and “determined ... that the impoundment satisfied governing federal and state regulations.”

3: Local mine closed after another slurry spill

Associated Press in the Logan Banner, Sept. 22, 2005

CHARLESTON – State regulators have ordered a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary to cease portions of its operations after an unknown amount of coal slurry spilled into a Logan County creek.

A broken slurry line at Massey’s Bandmill Coal Corp. facility near McConnell on Monday sent blackwater into the Right Fork of Rum Creek, affecting about a mile of the stream.

...Monday’s incident was the third blackwater spill at Bandmill since July.

Similar spills happened on July 21 and on Aug. 4 that turned Rum Creek black and discolored a portion of the Guyandotte River.

…Slurry, a mix of water and impurities generated in coal processing, resembles a thick oil spill when it leaks into the environment and enters waterways or other sensitive areas.