Ken Ward Jr. reports on the wonders of coal:

Nearly two-thirds of the coal-ash dams across West Virginia might need repairs, and a quarter of them are ranked as being in poor or unsatisfactory condition, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

DEP inspectors found stability problems, seepage and erosion at some of the dams as part of a roughly 10-month “comprehensive review” launched after the failure of a coal-ash impoundment in East Tennessee brought new attention to such facilities.

Agency officials also found problems that prompted at least five enforcement actions at landfills where dry waste products from coal-fired power plants were dumped, according to the 44-page DEP report.

Here is the report:

18349_Status of WV Fly Ash Dams-Landfills –

Coal Tattoo:

A second federal judge has ordered the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to clean up the way it cleans up abandoned coal mine pollution.U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. yesterday ruled that WVDEP must obtain permits for the abandoned mine sites it maintains under the agency’s Special Reclamation program.

Essentially — and very importantly — this means that WVDEP is going to have to set pollution limits for these sites, and improve the treatment being used so that discharges from abandoned mine sites meet the state’s water pollution limits.

copenhaver_amdruling –

Coal Tattoo:

West Virginia Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman’s testimony in June at a congressional hearing on mountaintop removal has drawn a lot of comment, and even helped fuel a protest calling for his resignation.It turns out that even some folks within Huffman’s own agency were none too happy with his staunch defense of the coal industry before a hearing of a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee.

Behind the scenes, a respected biologist at the WVDEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management responded with a strongly worded memo that challenged Huffman’s statements and urged agency officials to make sure the secretary “will be better informed the next time he represents our agency’s current state of knowledge to federal authorities and elected representatives.”

Doug Wood, a biologist in the water division’s watershed assessment section, wrote his memo on June 30, less than a week after Huffman appeared in Washington at a hearing on a bipartisan bill that would end the coal industry’s practice of burying hundreds of miles of streams with waste rock and dirt (the stuff that used to be mountains).

Here is Doug Wood’s leaked memo:

Doug Wood Memo –