Dead fish on Dunkard Creek … the saga continues
The Charleston Gazette
24 September 2009
by Ken Ward Jr.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported this morning that the
frustration is increasing for residents near Dunkard Creek, along the
Pennsylvania border, where an entire stream seems to have been killed
by pollution.
It’s understandable … residents want to know what happened. Government
investigators initially pointed to a CONSOL Energy mine, then backed
off that, and now are saying they haven’t been able to pinpoint an
exact cause for the fish kill.
The investigators are frustrated, too. Scott Mandirola, director
of water and waste management for the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection, said in a prepared statement:
We understand the frustration people are
feeling, because we feel it, too. That’s why we have large number of
people working on this and are working with other agencies to try to
determine what could be causing it.
But in trying to report on this incident, I ran into a hurdle
yesterday, when the WVDEP said it would not release any of the water
sampling data it has gathered from Dunkard Creek.
Tom Aluise, one of WVDEP’s pr folks, told me in an e-mail message that
Mike Zeto, the agency’s chief inspector, said the data wasn’t going to
be released because it was part of an ongoing investigation.
Now, West Virginia’s public records law allows certain records of
ongoing law enforcement investigations to be withheld … but there are
limits. For example, one key state Supreme Court ruling held that
such information may be withheld from the public only “to the extent”
that it would “compromise an ongoing law enforcement
investigation.”
In this instance, WVDEP officials have described the general findings
of their water sampling. Agency spokeswoman Kathy Cosco, for example,
told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
The elevated levels of TDS and chlorides in the
creek indicates oil and gas drilling wastewater.
So what’s the danger in the public and the press knowing the exact
numbers?
Despite WVDEP’s secrecy, some data is starting to make it’s way out
into the public eye. A story in the Washington (Pa.)
Observer-Reporter mentioned a “preliminary report” by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency on the fish kill. The report, the
newspaper said, “indicated a likely source may be Consol Energy’s
Blacksvlle No. 2 Mine because of high levels of chloride in its waste
water.”
The Observer-Reporter didn’t post this report online, but I’m providing
it here. EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Smith would want me to explain that
it’s not really a preliminary report, but field notes written by one of
EPA’s scientists:
These notes were written to share initial
information internally and with our state partners who were then, and
are now still, investigating the fish kill in Dunkard Creek. This
memo is very preliminary analysis.
Normally, memos such as these are internal
documents and confidential, but since it was released to a national
mining experts at West Virginia University, which is ‘outside the
government agencies’ I am also sending it to you - - emphasizing
the caveats above.
The EPA memo includes some of the data that WVDEP didn’t want made
public, as well as some data from the Pennsylvania DEP, which
interestingly enough provided that same information to me this morning
without claiming some secret squirrel “ongoing investigation” stuff.
I’d be interested in any thoughts from Coal Tattoo readers about
Dunkard Creek and about the findings outlined in this EPA memo … stay
tuned.