[Old School]

I knew you would disagree with me on water quality, you work in the coal industry, so you're stance is obvious. The mining industry wants people to think they don't harm water qaulity, when in most cases they do. They're have only been a few studies on water quality in astern ky, the most notable was the 2005 EPA report. They stated that mining was causing a significant in crease in chemicals downstream, and was dramatically decreasing aquatic life. They're was also a study done by some biologist from U of L that stated the same things. They compared an active mine site, with some old reclaimed one, and compared their effects on water quality. Many people like to simply think that controlling run-off will protect water quality, which is completely wrong. The root system of trees, and plants, and the leafs laying on the ground, naturally filter the water, and absorb large amounts of water before they reach the stream, MTR completely destroys this natural process. In many cases the whole headwater streams are buried, which just intensifies the problem and causes major flooding.

I don't know a whole lot about road construction, or the committee's who oversee it, but I do know that they use the same type of explosives, which is a ammonium nitrate based explosive. The process's are very similar also. I like that little state about 1 mile of road disturbing 36 acres, which is a silly argument when you compare that to a 5-600 acre mine site. A 600 acre mine site would be as much land disturbance as 16 miles of of a four lane highway, and since most highways here are 2 lane, that means one 6000 acre mine site would be equivalent to 32 miles of road, which everyone could use, and not destroyed wasted land, which is what MTR leaves behind. People here are going without decent roads to their homes ( alot of which are destroyed by overweight coal trucks), but were destroying enough land to build hundreds of miles of roads, don't make sense to me.

The sediment ponds you so happily talk about are jokes, most are very poorly constructed, just like the one that broke in Inez. They're also dozens of more that could break at any point, and those are just the ones we know about. The one in Marsh Fork WV is probably the most notable. SO If all I have to rely on to protect my water is a **** poor constructed pond holding back millions of gallons of sludge, I don't feel to comfortable.

I find it very amusing that in post # 27 you said "I do not, and will never believe the majority of information given from the government" but, yet you have refered to the EPA study several time in this thread.

Again I guess we agree to disagree. One interesting point you made was that "the root system of trees, and plants, and the leafs laying on the ground, naturally filter the water and absorb large amounts of water before they reach the stream". I remember when I was growing up my parents which grew up in the 1920's telling me how they and most everyone else used to plow and plant their gardens on the hillsides as their parents did before them, now it seems to me that in order for that to have happened there would have been very few trees, plants and leafs to absorb the water before reaching the streams.

You believe that MTR causes major flooding, where I on the other hand believe that after mining has been completed with the designed drainage in place will help decrease the chance of flooding, but regardless if we receive over 2 inches of rain in a short period of time this region will more than likely flood.

I could believe that some ponds which were built prior to 1980 could have been poorly constructed, but since 1980 pond design and construction have improved immensely. Why do you think ponds built today are poorly constructed? During my career in the mining industry, I have either worked on the construction or supervised the construction of over 50 sediment ponds so what I'm about to say comes from experience and not from some book or web site. Each pond is designed for that particular watershed area, and these ponds are constructed to their design. The dam or embankment is built out of top soil or other cohesive material, all undesirable material such as rocks and sandy dirt is placed below the dam or embankment. One foot lifts of dirt are place at the dam to ensure good compaction, pipes, emergency spillways, crest elevation and width along with the upstream and downstream slopes of the embankment are constructed according to the design. These ponds are then certified by a Registered Engineer that they are built to their designed specifications. Next a Mine Inspector will then conduct an on-site inspection of the pond along with the certified as-built drawing.

I think you may be a little confused about a sediment pond and a slurry impoundment, sediment ponds are small, generally around 1/4 acre in size and they catch surface run-off water and not sludge. From the time these ponds are built and certified to when they are either removed or a bond release has been obtained are inspected along with a quarterly certification sent to the State every three months, most ponds are inspected by the company on weekly or monthly basis.

Impoundments which hold coal slurry are constructed with more stringent guidelines, they require weekly inspection by a certified person. Compaction test are also conducted weekly to ensure the proper compaction, impoundments also require quarterly certification to be sent to MSHA. I have seen several pictures of impoundments, and one thing that I've noticed was that preperation plants and mining offices are often located below these impoundments, so why would a company be careless in the construction of the impoundment and risk losing tens of millions of dollars if the impoundment ever broke.

If you are referring to the slurry spill in Inez, your way off base, the Dam or Embankment did not fail, and the spill had nothing to do with the way the Dam or Embankment was constructed. The spill occured because the impoundment was either built over an abandoned underground mine or in close proximity the underground mine, over time the roof of the underground mine collasped, allowing the slurry inside to impoundment to drain into the mine and out the portals.

I threw the 1 mile of 4 lane road = 36 miles scenairo out there for this reson, if you calculate the area in Eastern Kentucky used for 4 lane roads it would be around 26,000 acres by using the same methods that surface mining does now. How many miles of streams have been (as you say) buried by these roads, but I have yet to see one environmentalist make the first complaint about roads buring streams why is that?