Clean Discharges, Clean Streams is the Answer

Morgantown Dominion Post
Guest Commentary
3 January 2010
By  Betty Lemley Wiley

In September 2009, we had been told that it was a massive golden algae bloom, thriving in salty water, that killed 100 percent of freshwater mussels, crayfish, aquatic salamanders and all good game fish in 38-plus miles of Dunkard Creek in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Golden algae caused massive fish kills elsewhere, but this was the first occurrence in the mid-Atlantic states. This tragic event destroyed a valuable recreational resource for the inhabitants of the watershed and the wider region. Greene (Pa.) County’s Conservation District quickly assigned a value of $30 million to the loss.

Dunkard was especially popular in recent years as a renowned muskie fishery, and before that a wider range of fish, including bass. Its mussel population was rare and valuable. The mussel is one of a few organisms that actually process and clean the water, and their presence indicates the health of a stream. They were totally eradicated.

A series of poorly regulated or completely unregulated actions, such as dewatering, observed dumping of drilling waste, brine injection and high TDS discharge, by companies that have been identified and some that probably have not, produced a conductivity measured at one point at 50,000 umhos, equivalent to Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) at 35,000 mg/l, which translates to “as salty as the ocean.” That description was corroborated days after that measurement by someone who tasted it, splashed in the face by a dying fish.

There are a lot of angry people on my e-mail list, and hundreds, probably thousands, more griping throughout the region, especially those who live near Dunkard Creek and enjoyed its recreational opportunities and aesthetic qualities. Many of us feel that a member of the family was killed, when the life was taken out of Dunkard. (There are a lot of carp remaining, but they were a problem to begin with.)

In a tragedy of this magnitude, we want to place the responsibility where it belongs: Make someone fork over that $30 million and fix Dunkard Creek. Angry people are saying, “Shut down the coal mines!” “Fire the DEP people!” “Impeach the governor!” And if it makes them feel better, OK. But it doesn’t solve the problem, because none of those things are going to happen.

It’s a divisive issue. Radical vs. logical, little poison vs. lotta poison, jobs vs. unemployment, coal-fired powerplants vs. candles.

The fact is that we’re living with a mess that has been created in just a little more than 100 years of nothing but greed. If somebody couldn’t get rich from the mining of coal, coal wouldn’t be mined. If somebody couldn’t get rich by making chocolate, we wouldn’t have chocolate. If somebody couldn’t get rich by producing electricity, we wouldn’t have it. And so on, and so on. Automobiles can be added to the list. And computers.

And then we have the side effects of all those things by which somebody can get rich: We are addicted to these things. We like electricity and cars and chocolate.

By golly, if we would stop using electricity, no coal would be mined, no polluted water would be dumped into the creek. Boy, that would be so nice.

But that’s not going to happen, is it? So we have to figure out how to play the hand we’re dealt because we want to keep playing the game. We want those things, and even the fact that our gobbling them up will leave our grandchildren in a world that we cannot even imagine, we are still going to use them.

I don’t focus on the social crimes committed in the name of progress by coal companies or anyone else, because I think everybody already hates how their actions are polluting, turning ugly everything beautiful that we love. There is nothing wrong with the word “beautiful.” We all seek a beautiful life and beautiful surroundings. I have never heard a single person say that they want to live in a place with an ugly view.

So the question is, what can be done, in this instance, to allow the coal company in the Dunkard Creek watershed to discharge water from the coal mines into the stream without destroying the stream, the center of the watershed in which many of us live and all of us can relate to. Perhaps it is a distant relationship or like mine, it could be your family’s personal small river.

Gripe? Accuse? Expect miracles? We can do all these. But that does not solve the problem. There is only one answer and it has two parts. The answer is for the coal company (and drillers) to discharge clean water into the stream. How does this happen?

The two parts are:
By now, probably everybody in the mid-Atlantic states knows the meaning of TDS: Total dissolved solids. In coal seams are various minerals/salts, and mining releases them. They mix with water that seeps into the mine void from all the ruined wells, streams and groundwater sources, and the water has to be pumped out, otherwise mining cannot continue. Whether we like it or not, coal mining is a viable industry, and the people who work in the mines are glad to have the jobs.

Burning fossil fuels is a way to produce energy. Also, it is self-defeating way, since all the fossil fuel will be gone in the next century or so. Nobody really knows how long. Maybe by then there won’t even be enough human beings alive to care about it. But for now, requiring clean water to be discharged into streams does not mean the coal companies have to go out of business. It just means the TDS must be removed from water before it is discharged. Is this impossible? No, of course not.

So first we need legislation requiring clean water, and then we need to clean up the water. And when I say “we” I consider it not only the responsibility of the coal company to build the plant and clean up the water. I will be happy to pay my fair share of the cost. In other words, we, the taxpayers, must help, must partner with the coal companies, to clean up the water.

I don’t love coal companies. I wish there were no such thing as coal. I’ve decided it’s [partnering with taxpayers] the answer because they’re not going to do it alone. And you know darn well that our politicians are not going to wipe out the coal industry. Or gas. So let’s start working on the fix.

Everyone who cares should go ahead and gripe, write letters, etc., and include in the list stronger laws and clean water.

It won’t happen fast; it won’t be easy. But we vote, and there are certain people with power who care about what we do with our votes.

There’s one thing for sure: The problem can and must be solved. I can never give up on Dunkard Creek. It runs through my heart, and I know it will thrive again.

Betty Lemley Wiley is a former Monongalia County commissioner. She lives in Westover.