"There was such a cold stillness," one Logan County resident described in the book Everything in Its Path, by Kai T. Erikson. "There was no words, no dogs, no nothing. It felt like you could reach out and slice the stillness."
Property damage included the complete destruction of 507 houses, 44 mobile homes, 30 businesses, 10 bridges and 1,000 vehicles; and power, water and telephone lines were destroyed.
Disasters in Wait
A coal slurry impoundment is a reservoir filled with thick liquid waste from coal processing, often constructed by damming a valley with rock and earth. Residents of West Virginia - then and now - often view coal slurry impoundments as disasters waiting to happen.
The dam at Buffalo Creek, it turned out, had been seen as a potential hazard for at least four years before the disaster. Warnings, however, were heeded by neither the coal company, nor state or federal officials, said Jack Spadaro, former inspector for the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. Spadaro also was part of the West Virginia commission that investigated the disaster.
In 1972, state mining laws required mining dams to receive state permits and maintain a regulated level of stability. Four days before the Buffalo Creek flood, the dam was declared "satisfactory" by a federal mine inspector.
After the Buffalo Creek disaster, however, a federal Bureau of Mines report stated, "The dams were not designed or engineered on the basis of a thorough knowledge of the engineering properties of coal processing refuse."
It was found that the dam at Buffalo Creek was built on top of an unstable dried-up coal waste impoundment.
"On the morning the failure occurred, the dam had a piping foundation failure and internal erosion where the dam itself starts to dissolve and erode from within, called liquefaction," Spadaro said. "The whole dam dissolved like sugar in water."
As a result of the Buffalo Creek disaster, the West Virginia Legislature passed the state Dam Control Act in 1973, which required coal operators to either repair or drain existing dams to meet new safety requirements.
By 1977, however, not a single dam had been inspected, and several others collapsed, according to the Encyclopedia of Appalachia. In 1977, Congress enacted the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, citing the Buffalo Creek incident as a primary to the legislation.
Rigorous Standards
West Virginia currently has 987 active mines, 111 of which have active coal impoundments. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials lists 245 high hazard potential dams in West Virginia in 2006, 33 of which need to be fixed. None of them are coal dams, said Jessica Greathouse, chief communications officer for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
Currently coal dams are regulated by three federal agencies: the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
At the state level, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the Miner's Health Safety and Training Office also monitor coal impoundments. Currently coal operators must receive state and federal approval of construction plans before they build new dams.
"Now, the same thing [like the Buffalo Creek disaster] would unlikely happen because of engineering requirements on mining companies that build dams in this state," Greathouse said. "Plans are rigorously inspected and reviewed by our own engineers before a dam is constructed."
Coal slurry dams in West Virginia are inspected monthly, and if a dam is found unstable or has any points of weakness, Greathouse said the mining company must fix the problem immediately or its operations will be forcibly closed.
Each company that maintains a coal slurry impoundment has an emergency action plan - including an evacuation route and a call list - to alert downstream residents in the event of a disaster.
Yet most impoundments are located in rural areas, and there are nearly always downstream neighbors, which Greathouse said doesn't preclude the possibility of a coal slurry flood.
In Logan County, emergency procedures consist of an alarm siren at the county firehouse; and an emergency operation plan that includes evacuation routes, police announcements on radio, fire responders who help evacuation, and a countywide emergency phone notification system that will soon be installed.
Deja Vu?
Even with improved emergency plans and more rigorous standards, Logan County residents remain wary of the 25 coal slurry dams in the county.
"Every time it rains hard, we have to go around and reassure our residents that everything is OK," said Roger Bryant, director of the Logan County Office of Emergency Management. "Water will run out of the corner of a dam, but that's what it's designed to do, to breach on the corner."
Residents of West Virginia and other states with heavy mining operations might have something to worry about, since the nation's largest coal slurry spill occurred in 2000 in Inez, Ky. The spill was called the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States by the Environmental Protection Agency, dumping 306 million gallons of toxic sludge down 100 miles of waterways.
Spadaro, who has spent most of his professional life figuring how these spills occur and how to prevent them, found that executives at Martin County Coal and federal regulators were aware of the potential for a catastrophic failure at the slurry dam, but didn't take proper actions to avoid it.
Now Spadaro warns that mining operations in West Virginia and elsewhere are not operating with enough oversight. He believes the potential exists for another Buffalo Creek disaster in West Virginia, where coal slurry impoundments built above abandoned mines could give way and send toxic water shooting out of the mouths of old mines.
"The state of West Virginia isn't doing its job," Spadaro said. "There are 150 coal waste dams in West Virginia, 50 to 60 percent of which are sitting on top of abandoned mine workings. The state hasn't required mine operators to do technical engineering analysis to ensure safety and long-term stability."
Greathouse said the Department of Environmental Protection regulates mine impoundments to the fullest extent under law. Yet federal regulations aren't requiring enough geotechnical engineering analysis, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration does not have enough oversight and regulation, Spadaro said.
"There are 650 coal refuse dams in the country, and 225 are sitting on top of old mine workings," Spadaro said. "That means there are 225 potential breakthroughs."
In August 2007, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and West Virginia Mine Safety Office announced they would collaborate to review how close underground coal mines in the state are to aboveground impoundments, according to the West Virginia Metro News. The announcement came shortly after it was discovered that underground mining in Wyoming County, W.Va., was taking place too close to an impoundment.
