Members of the Sludge Safety Project (SSP) who lobbied legislators and won a DEP study of underground coal slurry injection believe the DEP is failing in its mandate to carry out the study.

	Mary Miller and Pauline Canterberry lobby the WV Legislature with a jar of sludge water.

On April 1, representatives of SSP met with officials from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR), and the Office of Surface Mining to express the group’s extreme dissatisfaction with the lack of progress.

"I am here because something is in my well," Maria Lambert of Boone County told agency officials. "If you all aren’t going to test it, then please tell me what I need to do to get some attention to this."

During the 2006 legislative interims and the 2007 legislative session, SSP led the effort to pass SCR-15, a state resolution mandating that the DEP and the DHHR research the impacts of the coal industry practice of injecting liquid coal waste, or slurry, underground.

In December 2006, DEP Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer told a legislative committee her agency did not need additional time or funding for the study. The DEP was supposed to complete the study and present its findings to the legislature by December 31, 2007.

"Here we are, 16 months after the DEP supposedly began the study, and the state agency that claims to protect our environment has tested three slurry underground injection sites in the state," SSP coordinator Patricia Feeney said. "We pushed for this study because we need to know the extent of the problem and if injecting sludge underground is making people sick. Three sites in the whole state are not enough."

"Meanwhile, people are being poisoned," said Lambert. "We need DEP to take this seriously and respond to people in a timely manner."

Randy Huffman, director of DEP’s Division of Mining and Reclamation (Ed. Note: Huffman now heads the agency since Timmermeyer left in May) made a personal commitment to see the study through and to get the water tested in Lambert’s area.

"We didn’t expect it (the study) to be this big," Huffman told SSP members. "We need more time and we are going to continue to look into this….As long as there are still questions to be answered and, I think there will be, there’s nothing final about what we’re doing here."

But the SSP representatives reiterated concerns that the testing the DEP is conducting does not fulfill the requirements of SCR-15, and that DEP:

N Is unjustifiably limiting the scope of the study to current injections, while ignoring slurry pumped underground before the agency had a slurry injection permitting process;

N Is not fulfilling its responsibility to DHHR so that agency can determine the impacts of slurry on human health;

N Apparently does not intend to fulfill its responsibility for determining the impact of slurry on aquatic ecosystems;

N Has neglected to set a timeline and request the necessary funding for the study, and has no plans, nor a date, for presenting its findings to the legislature.

"We have repeatedly alerted DEP to citizens’ concerns in regard to water contamination, but the agency is not prioritizing those concerns," said Feeney. "We believe they are dragging their feet and diluting the study by marginalizing citizens’ concerns. They have not requested more funding, but maintain that funding is an obstacle to fulfilling the study."

"The study is providing a lot of information and it’s causing us to ask more questions than it’s getting answered," Huffman added.  "And we’ve actually got some plans, already got some recommendations to do some follow up outside of the study."

SSP is a citizens’ project led by OVEC, Coal River Mountain Watch and Concerned Citizens of Mingo County. It offers support to communities that are concerned about black water and sludge impoundments. SSP also works to improve community safety through better state policy.