Coalfield residents who have been hoping that studies conducted by the WV DEP will reaffirm their water unsafe for consumption may have to wait a bit longer, as the DEP claims they still don’t have enough information.

DEP Secretary Randy Huffman testified that his agency doesn’t have enough information on what water quality was like before coal mining companies started coal slurry injections to say for certain if coal slurry impacts water quality.

Huffman’s testimony on Phase I of a coal slurry study was given before the Legislative Water Resources Committee, at noon last Tuesday, in the House Judiciary Room of the state Capitol.

In the Prenter area of Boone County, citizens who have been complaining for more than a year about the unsanitary conditions of their water, claim that high levels of toxins and heavy metals from coal slurry have contaminated the quality of their water.

The DEP issued two violations in Feb. 2006 for coal slurry run-off in their neighborhoods and it is the coal slurry injections into underground mines that citizens identify as the culprit in their water woes.

However, the WV DEP failed to test the water in the Prenter area of Boone County in its legislatively-appointed coal slurry study.

In fact, Secretary Huffman reported to the Legislative Water Resources Committee that the study team decided the location of the sites based on geology and location. When asked if there were studies conducted at the sites of litigation, Huffman responded, “There is no litigation at Prenter.”

Yet, today there are still 39 emergency motions for injunctive relief filed by residents of Prenter and Seth areas of Boone County.

As reported in March, their motion states that mining and dumping activities have rendered their water supply unsafe, undrinkable and unfit for human use and names 7 coal companies as responsible for the current water contamination.

The coal companies listed in the motions are Massey Energy, Omar Mining, Independence Coal Co., Black Castle Coal Co., Peabody Energy Corp. and Pine Ridge Coal Co.

“I don’t know why he would say that because he got a copy of it [the injunction for relief],” said Prenter resident Maria Lambert, who witnessed the legislative proceedings at the capitol last Tuesday.

A press release prior to the meeting stated that while the study found no evidence that coal slurry injection, by itself, affects surface water quality, the DEP is issuing a moratorium on the approval of coal slurry injection into mine voids in which it has not previously been approved.

“None of the sites chosen for the hydrologic assessment showed water quality impacts to surface waters caused by coal slurry injection alone,” Huffman said in a prepared statement.

Despite a lack of conclusive data, the DEP has placed an unstipulated moratorium on the issuance of slurry impoundment permits and have come up with another 14 recommendations.

Huffman was posed this question by the Committee, “How many of these polices do you think will need to be mandated by law?” To which Huffman replied, “There’s a very good chance that they’re already mandated by law now.”

“We felt there was enough uncertainly to act,” Huffman explained. However, Huffman also said that he “didn’t feel that the study group came up with enough data for [all the impoundments] to be shut down and filled in.”

So, the question of many Committee members remained, “is coal slurry safe?” Huffman’s response to that question was that for the same reasons that the DEP can not determine if mine slurry has migrated off-site, it also cannot determine if, and to what extend, coal slurry poses a health threat.

Currently, the WV DEP is assigned the task of monitoring, through inspections, the coal slurry impoundments in the state of West Virginia.

Some may find it interesting to note that despite a decade of inspecting these sites, this new DEP study found that “most of the assessment sites lacked detailed information on mine pool conditions and adequate monitoring of the quantity and quality of the mine pool associated with the injection activities.

Huffman testified that the DEP believed a digital archive of all the mine sites and injection sites would be something worthwhile in creating, as it was “something that we don’t currently have and think is important that we have.”

The study also reported that coal company operators did not conclusively demonstrate that, when slurry is injected into abandoned underground mines, it remains contained and the surrounding hydrologic regime is not adversely affected.

In other words, the coal companies in the study could not prove that the slurry they inject into the ground on a daily basis is not seeping into water supplies.

According to Huffman, the DEP is also considering making the slurry permit something that is not separate from the mining permit.

“We intend to send these orders out in the month of July, [and the coal operators] will have 90 days to submit to us a modified permit,” Huffman said.

“We fully expect a different USIC program next year. We acknowledge that the program needs to change and we’re working on doing that. So that, two years from now, we’ll have much better data to determine if and where the problems are,” he said.

There has been no timeframe set for the moratorium on slurry permits, nor a timeframe set on when the 14 recommendations shall begin or by what date they will conclude.

Phase II of the study will not be administered through the Department of Health and Human Resources.

Walt Ivey, of the Department of Public Health will conduct a public health assessment as part of Phase II now that the DEP has released its inconclusive data findings.

“I just don’t think the DHHR is serious about this,” Maria Lambert said. “And I don’t know why they think we’re not in litigation. There is well over a hundred claimants.”