Thursday, March 18th, 2010

On February 23rd, Martin County Coal Company reported to the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection that a spill had occurred in Coldwater Creek. An unknown amount of slurry has leached into the creek, and clean up crews are working to contain the spill. Water levels have not risen, but Martin County resident Mickey McCoy said ” we just got a mainline injection of toxic heavy metals into our creek”.

Martin County Kentucky is no stranger to the dangers posed by coal slurry dams. In 2000, a slurry dam broke inundating two forks of the Tug River with over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge. This spill was thirty times the size of the Exxon Valdez Spill, and at the time the EPA called it one of the worst environmental disasters to occur in the Southeast.

Hear Mickey McCoy talk about the latest slurry spill.

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