By David Zucchino
February 11, 2014
Jimmy Murphy of Sprigg, W.Va., holds a jar filled with well water
from his home he says was contaminated with coal slurry.
(Photo courtesy understory.ran.org)
State officials in West Virginia were trying Tuesday to contain a coal slurry spill into a creek in the same general area where a toxic chemical spill last month tainted drinking water for 300,000 people in and around the state capital of Charleston.
A state environmental official called the slurry spill “significant” but also said that public water intakes were not affected.
The early morning spill dumped an undetermined amount of coal slurry into Fields Creek, blackening waters that feed into the Kanawha River in Charleston, according to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. The Jan. 9 chemical spill released the toxic chemical 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol, or MCHM, into the Elk River, a tributary of the Kanawha.
A representative of the coal company told regulators that it uses a frothing chemical, Flomin 110-C, that contains MCHM, the environmental agency said in a statement Tuesday. The agency said it was testing the tainted water in several locations and sending samples to a laboratory in Charleston for analysis.
Enforcement action against the coal company is pending, the agency said. The company operates a coal preparation plant and a coal slurry impoundment facility.
Crews were using booms to try to contain the spill, the agency said.
West Virginia American Water, the main water utility in the region, said in a statement that the slurry spill did not affect the company’s water treatment plant in Charleston, located a mile above where the Elk River empties in the Kanawha River.
“We have been in contact with the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health, which concurs that they do not anticipate any impact to our plant on the Elk River,’’ said a water company spokeswoman, Laura Jordan. Nor is the spill expected to affect a company water plant farther west on the Ohio River in Huntington, W. Va., Jordan said.