CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two years ago, federal mining engineers found potentially serious safety concerns at seven slurry impoundments scattered across West Virginia’s southern coalfields.
But the government has yet to finalize a report on the matter, and on Thursday refused to make public detailed findings from a draft prepared in 2011.
U.S. Office of Surface Mining officials refused to release the complete data, even after local citizen groups made public a leaked, one-page summary that described poor construction techniques, lax quality control for safety testing, and inadequate compaction of embankment materials.
“There are a lot of things there that the public isn’t being told,” said former miner Joe Stanley, an activist who has been monitoring impoundment issues. Stanley was among about a dozen citizens who gathered Thursday morning outside OSM’s field office in downtown Charleston to urge agency officials to make public the details.
OSM officials refused the request, saying they are working with the state Department of Environmental Protection on additional testing to try to verify the original results.
DEP officials said their additional testing, conducted in January, February, July and August 2012 and again this month, found no violations or safety concerns. But like OSM, DEP refused to release data from its testing.
The issue, simmering behind the scenes for months, burst into public view Wednesday night, with the release — initially in a Washington Post report — of the one-page summary of the OSM report drafted in 2011, when federal officials had initially planned to make public the entire study.
What the hell, it’s only about protecting poor people, amirite?
(h/t William White.)
