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A report back from the November 4th Coal Slurry Spill field trip
By Dave Cooper

Twelve people from Lexington, including four students from the University of
Kentucky, and members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), joined Sierra
Club members from Lexington and Hazard, Kentucky for the three hour trip to
Inez.

Hilary Hopper, Sierra's Conservation Chair for the Bluegrass Group, and Suzanne
Webb of UK's Green Thumb, had made friends with some homeowners along Coldwater
creek whose homes had been hard hit by the sludge spill, and who are living in
fear of the twenty foot walls of sludge which lie up the mountain. We planned
to meet with them around 1:00 Sunday afternoon.

As we traveled the narrow, winding road up the hollow, we were awe-struck by the
size and scope of the cleanup, which operates twenty-four hours a day, seven
days a week. There were dumptrucks, bulldozers, backhoes, and cranes all up and
down the road, and our car caravan weaved slowly in and out of the heavy
equipment.

We watched a crane truck with a long boom scooping sludge out of the creek and
pouring it into a dump truck. The road was covered with sludge, and extremely
slippery. As we passed the scooper, we noticed a huge coal truck had slid off
the road and plummeted nose first into the creek. We all craned our heads in
amazement at the sight. We wanted to stop and take pictures, but it was too
dangerous. A flagman grinned and yelled at us as we drove by "That stuff's
slicker 'n snot!!"

We passed many along the road that were hastily-dug to hold some of the waste
sludge. Apparently Martin County Coal's plan is to let the sludge dry in the
sun, then haul it back up to the waste pit on top of the mountain. We noticed
about ten of these pits, some of them 2-3 acres in size. We stopped and
photographed a worker operating a suction hose in the creek, before the
contractor ordered us off their "private property".

About a mile up the road, we passed the spot where the roadblock had been, and
it quickly became apparent why the coal company did not want the public to have
access to the main part of the spill. The scene was almost indescribable. Not
only were the creek and the banks covered in black, oozing muck, but entire
fields and yards were one to two feet deep in sludge.

A few houses up the hollow, we met up with the friendly homeowners, who let us
park in their driveway. The scene got progressively worse as we looked around.
Out the back door of their home, an area the size of two football fields lay
covered in sludge. The air was filled with the roar of machinery, but once we
got our cameras out the contractors quickly shut down their machinery and
huddled together. They were attempting to build some kind of road out into the
sludge, but in doing so they had damaged our hosts' septic system, and the air
was filled with the odor of raw sewage. The sludge, incidentally, has no
perceptible odor. Our hosts said they might have to leave their homes, now that
they had no septic system. This is apparently the last straw for them. They
remain very concerned about toxic effects of the sludge, and apparently no one
has yet definitively stated whether it's safe or not. We were told that Martin
County Coal President Dennis Hatfield has apparently told homeowners that you
could eat the sludge, it's just like mud. To which they responed, "Well, here's
a spoon, Dennis, just dig on in!"

We saw no workers using any kind of respiratory filters or hazardous chemical
clothing, gloves, suits, etc. We have heard that four workers have been injured
in the cleanup, one seriously.

Meanwhile, from the back porch of a trailer which had sludge right up to its
foundation, we watched a surreal scene as a small bulldozer pushed its way
through two foot deep sludge in their backyard, the black gunk flying off the
metal treads. We noticed several graders and backhoes buried up to their axles
in sludge, apparently hopelessly stuck in slippery black sludge.

We walked along a new ATV trail through the woods that some of the homeowners
had built to get to their houses. Apparently their driveways out to the main
road were all buried under the sludge. We made friends with every person we
talked to. They were all very glad to see us, and asked us to do whatever we
could to bring attention to their desperate situation. Evidently Sierra Club
and KFTC are well-respected and appreciated in Martin County right now.

As we came out of the woods, the trail wound past a huge field of sludge where
the material had been piled in heaps, like the lava fields in Hawaii. The
sludge had started to harden in the sun, like clay. In a cornfield bordered by
the sludge, we noticed a number of deer and racoon tracks sunk deep in the mud.
I wondered again how the wildlife was able to survive.

We passed a small white frame house, and walked down a gravel road which gave us
our most incredible view of the day. A square mile of devastation. Sludge as
far as the eye can see. A bridge that was normally ten feet above the creek,
now buried a foot deep in sludge. Homes surrounded by sludge. A basketball
hoop only a few feet above the pooled sludge. Our jaws hung open in amazement
at the sight. Everyone was taking pictures as fast as they could. Patty got
some great video footage, which will be shown at the Sierra Club Annual Meeting
next week (Pine Mountain State Park, Saturday night).

Everywhere you looked there were dump trucks and bulldozers furiously working to
scoop up the sludge or push it around. I read in the paper today that after
nearly a month of round-the-clock, seven day work weeks, with 350 men working,
they had cleaned up TEN PERCENT of the spill.

The only cheerful story we heard all day was from a Coldwater Creek resident who
rescued a large snapping turtle from the sludge. Its shell was covered in black
ooze, but he scooped him up out of the muck and carried him over to a fork of
Mullet Branch that hadn't been affected by the spill, and gently placed him in
the clean water. "First time I ever seen a snapping turtle smile", he told us.

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