It was just a little bit less than a year ago that a coal dam in Tennessee burst, allowing the coal sludge it had been holding back to flood out across the countryside, knocking homes off their foundations, stopping trains in their tracks, and poisoning the local water supply with heavy metals. In the wake of that disaster, the state government of West Virginia decided to check on the status of the coal sludge dams in its own jurisdiction.
Last week, the results of that review were made public. They’re aren’t reassuring. Two-thirds of the dams holding back lagoons of coal sludge in West Virginia are in need of repair. Two coal sludge dams were discovered, constructed by American Electric Power, that the state of West Virginia had not even been informed about. Those dams were not constructed according to safety codes required by state law.
Keep this in mind when you hear stories about how coal is going to be made into a sustainable, environmentally-friendly source of energy. The infrastructure that exists to deal with the wastes produced by burning coal are crumbling, and anything but clean.
