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In the beginning is a familiar
verse to anyone who has ever read the Bible, it starts to tell the beginning of creation. And for all purposes, it would
be the way to begin the story of Middle Fork sludge dams in Buffalo Creek.
Buffalo Creeks problems began when the Lorado Mining Company opened up Mine
#5 in the head of Middle Fork hollow in 1945. The tipple, or more commonly called today, preparation plant, was completed
in 1947 and then began dumping nearly 1000 tons of coal refuse into Middle Fork hollow.
At the time that #5 mine was opened and the tipple had been completed, mine reclamation and safety laws were few. The ones
that actually did exist were rarely enforced and as for laws that would control or oversee
sediment pond construction hadn't been written into law. The dumping of mine refuse into streams seemed to be the going practice
all over the coal mining regions of the U. S. at this time.
Lorado Mining Company begin dumping their refuse into Middle Fork Hollow,
which was located one half mile below the tipple site. Refuse at this time was made up of anything that the coal company could
not sale to coal buyers, in other words, if you cant burn it, ditch it. And this is exactly what they did. Over the next few
decades this pile would grow into a massive mountain over 250 feet high hundreds of feet wide and contain over 150 million
gallons of waste water and mine refuse.
I cant say that this happened at Middle Fork, but I have seen old sediment
ponds here in the southern West Virginia counties which even contained the remains of old mine equipment.
Companies would salvage everything they could reuse from the old equipment and then shove them over the mountainside and begin
to cover them up with mine refuse. It was garbage to the mine companies. What do you do with what you no longer need? Send
it to a landfill. These ponds and slate piles become the states very first landfill sites. Hundreds of these fill sites dotted
the mining regions.
Every place that a coal company would build a preparation plant facility, a slate dump site was near-by.
After large amounts of coal slate had been accumulated in these fill areas,
they would begin to hold in the heat from the sun and eventually self combust. The fire would mostly be contained to areas
underneath the piles themselves which would smolder and burn until the surface of the slate piles would turn to a reddish
ash. The smell of sulfur permeated the atmosphere.Slate sites all across the coal fields burnt day and night, companies never
tried to extinguish the fires. A by-product of the slate fires was a material called red dog. It was, in essence,
the ash remains of the burnt out slate piles, which the coal companies used this material for road bed coverage much like
we use limestone gravels this day.
Slate fires were burning in the piles at Middle Fork when the dams broke on
February 26th. Witnesses report that as the water from the dam washed its way down the slate piles and collided with the burning
debris. This causing massive explosions which were reported to have thrown dirt, ash and rock nearly one hundred feet into
the air.
In 1954, the West Virginia Department of Water Resources Commission made a
request of Lorado Mining Company to begin and complete a study of the amount of contaminants
that the coal company was releasing into the Buffalo Creek streams. According to reports, the agency had demanded that the
waste circuits that the preparation plant used to dump waste products into the streams be closed
until a method was submitted and approved which the company could install that would allow cleaner mine refuse water to enter
into the streams.
At current, the object of allowing the mine waste-water to settle behind piles
of slate and coal waste was to allow the material in the water to settle out and the water
to slowly filter through the course fill. The result was pure, cleaner waste-water, in theory and according to the naked eye
only. This water was then allowed to enter back into the public streams without the coal
companies or government officials ever giving the pollution content of the water another thought.The only major improvement
in the used water was the coal fines had settled down into the ponds but the sulfur, magnesium,
aluminum and iron contents of the used water still remained the same.
The photo above is an ariel photo that was taken of Middle Fork hollow shortly after the collapse
of the dams. The photo is of poor quality as are many of the photos taken back then. The area at the top left-hand corner
was where the three sediment dams were constructed. As you can see, at the base or "mouth" of the hollow was where the community
of Saunders once stood.
The photo shown here gives a more detail look at the site. From point "A" to point "B", the sediment and mine refuse was piled
over 200 feet high. The smalll hollow located just right of the "B" marker,possibly Right Fork,shows what the area would have
originally looked like if refuse had not been dumped in there.The three red markers indicate the areas where the slurry dams
were constructed with pourous mine waste. All totaling 165 millon gallons of waste water and sediment.
The photo at left shows the Adkins home which was located at the mouth of Right Fork (right of marker "B").Oddly
enough, this house was not affected by the torrent of water and mud that burst loose
from the slurry dams that morning. It is not currently known whether the families that had homes in that area were moved out
by the government or decided to move on their own. The small hollow is empty now, very few indications of
homes once being there is evident.
From marker "A" going downstream 800 feet, now stands the site of a new coal company that has made old Saunders it's home.
The following photos were taken in Summer 2008. The immediate photo at the right show the mouth of
Middle Fork shortly after the disaster in 1972.
To be able to see how time has helped some people to forget, the photos that are in color show INR-WV Coal Company's new deep
mine and preparation facility that is currently being
constructed.
Directly in front of the truck in this black and white photo is Middle Fork hollow, the site of the
dams. Today, a new dump site is being constructed again which will allow mine refuse to be dumped into the hollow. It is certain
that dams, if any are to be constructed, will not be the size or poor quality of the ones in 1972.Sediment dams are necessary
to filter out any and all pollutants from the refuse before it is allowed to flow into the streams.Odd how soon we forget
isn't it?
Concrete pad for the construction of a refuse load.
Once again the site where Saunders once stood see's signs, of mining.
 
Shortly following the disaster, then West Virginia Governor Arch Moore Jr. stated in a press release,
the dams constructed on Buffalo Creek had logical and constructive purposes, and, The only real sad part is that the state
of West Virginia has taken a terrible beating that is worse than the disaster.
Governor Moore lost no relatives or personal property on that day at Buffalo Creek. His statement
should have caused the residents
of West Virginia to demand his removal from elected public office. For a state to lose 125 of its residents and cost the taxpayers
millions of dollars and time lost in coal revenue and other business,
his only concern was what face the state itself lost in the public eye. Governor Moore had a long list of damaging accusations
thrown towards him after the flood of 1972. What he was accused of and found
guilty in federal court wias explained in more detail in the book, "In The Twinkling Of An Eye" by R. I. Walker. But, of all
the key role players in this disaster, he alone came out of it, untouched by grief but made wealthy by greed and deceit.
In the summer of 1955, Lorado Coal Company completed a plan for installing disposal facilities. A
temporary permit was requested by the coal company to continue to use the existing
facilities that were already in place until the new proposed facility was up and running.
On August the nineteenth of the same year, the West Virginia Water Resources Commission did grant
Lorado Mining a six month temporary permit. It should be noted that any type of plan can be submitted to the Resource Commission,
but it is up to the Commission to either approve or deny the submitted plan. Also noted here is a common chess-type move that
coal companies through-out the years have always used, (not suggesting that the same applies here). A plan is submitted and
a
temporary continuance to use permit is asked for and generally approved by the Water Commission. This nice piece of company
barn yard diplomacy is used to stall for time with the government officials while still practicing the same type of law braking
mining practices they have gotten away with all alone. In August of 1957, the state issued the coal company a permanent permit,
without ever inspecting the site or making sure that the company was actually doing something about the waste water treatment
facilities.
Whether Lorado Mining had a completed plan to improve their waste disposal means at Buffalo Creek is unknown. For the sake
of documenting as much accurate information as possible, lets say that they had a great plan and were eager to put it into
placeyeah right!!!
But according to reports, in the summer of 1957, one year after the company was cited and ordered
to improve site conditions, Lorado Mining began to accept bids from contractors which would allow the company to begin to
have its waste-water circuits closed.
Again, another barn yard diplomatic tactic was used. The construction on the new waste facilities were halted because the
company decided to investigate the use of froth flotation cells as a means of recovering fine coal particles from its used
water.
This method of waste-water filtration is used to separate and concentrate coal fines and other metals
by altering their surface so that they are either repelled or attracted by water. Un-wetted particles, which adhere to air
that is bubbled through water,
will float in the froth, while wetted particles will sink. The process was developed on a commercial scale early in the 20th
century to remove very fine mineral particles that formerly had gone to waste in gravity concentration plants. This type
filtration system was never employed
at Lorado Mining Company prior to the disaster in 1972.
During this time in the states coal mining history, not many attempts by government officials were
actually made to enforce the mining laws. There was just to many operating coal companies in existence at this time. The large
coal companies had posed problems with compliance with the new laws but eventually gave in to enforcement. The problem was
with the smaller mom and pop operations that about out numbered the larger companies 10 to 1. The state had operating information
on these mine sites, but there were not enough site inspectors employed by the state or federal agencies to inspect the existing
sites and enforce the mine laws.
In January of 1958, Lorado Mining Company had issued a letter to the West Virginia Water Resources
Commission of their intention to use froth flotation as a means to clean up the waste-water that was being used in their preparation
facility. Again, neither state or federal agencies ever inspected or followed-up with the company to make sure that this type
of system was ever being constructed until August 1958. In August, almost four years after its initial complaint, the state
Water Commission found that Lorado Mining found that the preparation plant was still dumping the used, contaminated waste-water
into the Middle Fork stream of Buffalo Creek. This should have told the state agency that the mining company actually had
no intentions of ever complying with any laws that the state had enforced. Follow-up inspections, both in October and December
of that year, found no change in the companys waste-water dumping practices. So a letter was sent to the coal company in December
of 1958 requesting that they inform the Water Commission of their plans to comply with the permanent permit which was issued
in good faith on June 28, 1956.
It wasnt until March of 1959 that Lorado Mining responded to the Water Commissions letter, stating
that they were working closely with several companies concerning different ways to treat and clean up the waste-water that
they were still dumping into the public streams.In the early fall of that year, Lorado Mining sent a follow-up letter to the
commission informing of their supposed communications with consulting firms regarding the size needed to adequately filter
that much waste-water. They had told the Commission in their follow-up letter that once they knew the size of the filtration
system needed, they would then be able to proceed with construction.
On October 6, 1959, a letter was sent to the West Virginia Water Resource Commission by Lorado Minings
president. In this letter, he informed the Water Commission that construction of the filtration system had been delayed because
of its cost. As a result of a depressed coal market, coal sales revenue was not enough to allow the company to pay for this
costly filtration facility. He asked for understanding from the agency and allow the delay until the coal market increased
which would allow the company time to acquire the finances to complete the system.
Again, barn yard diplomacy. Diplomacy that the government agencies loved to play as well as the coal companies.
In April of 1960, Lorado Mining submitted a plan to the Water Resources Commission, almost like
an Oh we got this kind of ideal,to the proposed froth flotation system. Since the froth flotation system would cost the company
a fairly large amount of money,
money that wasnt coming in by coal sales, they had a cheaper method. The company planned or submitted a plan to contain the
waste-water in holding ponds behind the refuse piles in Middle Fork hollow.The proposal was to construct 2-3 earthen dams
upstream of the refuse piles that
would be designed to trap the coal fine solids and allow the water to self filter on its way through the dam foundation.
Apparently, government agencies approved the plan for sediment pond construction because work on the first pond began the
following month.
For more on the Buffalo Creek Disaster click the photo below.
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