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Winds of Change Newsletter, March 2009 See sidebar for table of contents
 Coal
Slurry Poisons Water Supplies, State Agencies Do Nothing
A letter to the editor published Jan.
16, 2009, in the Charleston Gazette:
A hearing on a permit for a coal slurry injection
site in Logan County was held Jan. 12 at the state Department of
Environmental Protection. Of approximately 30 people in attendance, none
were there in support of the permit.
Coal company representatives were conspicuously
absent. Those who spoke reported sickness and death due to water
contaminated with coal slurry, most notably in the area of Prenter in
Boone County.
Residents suffer from astronomically high rates of
gall bladder disease, kidney failure, brain tumors and cancer. Recent
reports of efforts to get safe drinking water in Prenter omitted the
cause of the contamination. Folks there have been promised a connection
to clean water in two to three years.
If black water laden with heavy metals poured from
taps on Kanawha Boulevard, would there be such delay?
Driving home after the hearing, I recalled the fears
of terrorist poisoning of city water supplies in the aftermath of 9/11.
If a terrorist, foreign or domestic, poisoned West Virginia waterways,
there would be a rush to arms never before seen in this state - yet most
citizens stand idly by while coal companies do precisely that.
Linda Sodaro
South Charleston
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