A report from Martin County

by Dave Cooper (all pictures by Patty Draus)

Patty Draus and I spent Sunday afternoon (10/22) on Wolf Creek and Coldwater Creek in Martin County taking pictures of the sludge spill and talking to people involved in the cleanup. Also we talked to a homeowner on Wolf Creek who had her backyard coated in sludge. We got some good pictures. I was totally unprepared for the extent of the damage. This is a major environmental catastrophe. The Big Sandy is black all the way from Catlettsburg to the headwaters. There is a goo ranging from several inches to several feet thick along the entire length of the two smaller Martin County streams. Authorities are blocking the road so that no "outsiders" including the news media can have access and see the extent of the devastation.

A few observations: It would not be an overstatement to state that every living thing in the two smaller streams is now dead. Don't know about the Big Sandy, I would guess its in serious trouble A cleanup worker (vacuum truck operator) got trapped in the creek bed earlier this week and was buried up to his chest, its like quicksand. He got stuck and was yelling for help and some other workers pulled him out. He said his feet never touched the bottom and he would have sunk in the quicksand if he hadn't been rescued.

They are digging pits along the stream and vacuuming up the sludge from the creek and dumping it in these pits which are about 1-2 acres and 10 feet deep. We saw at least five of these pits. They look kind of like hog lagoons, no liner of course. They just started this on Sunday. Supposedly they will treat the sludge in the pits with emulsifiers and then pump the clean water back into the stream and haul off the sludge. Probably to another sludge pond somewhere. I would expect this cleanup to got on for at least a year at the rate they are going. It is a huge mess and their efforts aren't even making a dent.

Ohio River will be impacted for months in my opinion. We talked to one homeowner on Wolf Creek, which has less damage than Coldwater Fork (two separate watersheds affected - both creeks flow together in Inez). She stated that they had been calling the coal company for about a week and they wouldn't even talk to her, they are too busy on Coldwater Creek. About 2/3 of her backyard is coated in sludge, at least 6" deep and several feet deep in places. The sludge pulls the boots off your feet. Homeowners do not appear to be organized yet or have any idea what to do. Supposedly damage is much worse on Coldwater Fork, but they wouldn't let us back there. Martin County Judge Executive has closed the 2 roads leading to spill. We navigated around using the County Map Atlas. It is about 3 hour drive from Lexington using the Mountain Parkway.

News media from Cincinnati now covering the spill, haven't seen national coverage yet. We need to bring national attention to this spill. The cleanup operation looks just as gooey and messy as Exxon Valdez. Very dramatic photos are possible, would make great TV. One of the Cincinnati reporters was going to put on waders and climb into the creek until we told her about the quicksand effect. We need to alert people to stay out of the creek, I think it is very dangerous. The goo is slippery and slimy.

Homeowner along Wolf Creek said that they were lucky only 10 percent of the pond drained out (250 million gallons out of 2 billion). She felt they would have been killed if the whole pond had drained out. You can see the high "water" mark (black line) on the trees along the creek bank, about 3-5 feet above current level. There is a good photo on the front of this weeks Martin County "Mountain Citizen" paper showing a stretch of creek, it looks paved black and wide as an interstate.

According to Martin County paper, this is not the first spill at this particular sludge pond, it happened before in 1994. Have more details if you need them. Animal tracks in the goo leading to the creek - I imagine that a great number of raccoons, possums, etc, have gotten stuck in the goo like the La Brea tar pits in California. Any animal that drank from the creek would probably die. The water is totally black. The sludge has settled in the creek bed several feet thick and the water just makes a little channel in the muck and flows on top of the sludge.

They are Never going to get this all cleaned up. They are using booms, hay bales, and vacuum trucks, building temporary rock dams to try and create "settling ponds". Water utilities are going to have to deal with this residual sediment for months if not years. They are draining a reservoir in Inez that will only last about a month, after that where are they going to get their water?

Dave