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Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009

Leaking dam indicates potential widespread problem in Eastern Kentucky

A leaking dam that some Letcher County residents feared could collapse and flood homes hadn't been inspected by state regulators in more than a decade.

The agency that oversees surface mining had released the earthen dam from oversight, and a separate state agency that inspects dams didn't know it existed.

"It was just sitting up there deteriorating," said Marilyn C. Thomas, an environmental engineer with the state Dam Safety Section.

After heavy rains last week, Letcher County Judge-Executive Jim Ward declared an imminent hazard at the pond in the Company Branch hollow, 3 or 4 miles from Whitesburg.

Search and rescue team members went door to door Friday in the area below the dam to conduct a voluntary evacuation, notifying more than 150 homeowners of the potential threat.

Ward used heavy equipment to dig a trench in the dam, draining water in a controlled way and easing pressure on the embankment.

The incident points up a potential problem in Eastern Kentucky, dam-safety officials said.

There are likely thousands of old sediment ponds at surface mines that the state dam-inspection office doesn't know about because it wasn't notified they existed, Thomas said.

Many are so small the agency wouldn't inspect them even if it knew where they were, and they represent little danger. But others might pose a potential hazard to people and property below them, dam-safety officials said.

"These things are all over the place," said Scott Phelps, supervisor of the state dam-inspection program. "That's what scares me the most — we're going to have one of these things turn loose."

Karen L. Wilson, chief of staff in the state Energy and Environment Cabinet, said the pond in Letcher County was not large enough to qualify for regular inspections by the Division of Water, which includes the dam-safety office.

That means the Department for Natural Resources, which oversees surface mining, would not have notified DOW about the pond when the mining agency released it from oversight in 1998, nor would DOW have inspected it, Wilson said.

The pond is called a sediment, or silt, pond.

Coal companies build sediment ponds as part of surface-mining operations. The ponds are designed to hold water draining off the mine area above, controlling the flow and allowing dirt in the runoff to settle out, instead of hurting water quality by going into creeks.

The state Division of Mine Reclamation and Enforcement inspects such ponds while a mine is active and during the time the company is reclaiming the area, which can take years.

But when mining regulators are satisfied that the coal company has properly reclaimed the land, control of the site reverts to the landowner. If there are sediment ponds left on the property, the surface-mining agency no longer inspects them.

There was a period from the 1980s until 2002 when there was no formal system for the Division of Mine Reclamation and Enforcement to notify the Division of Water that it had released the bond on a site with a permanent sediment pond that it would no longer inspect.

There was an informal process to provide that notice, Wilson said.

The surface-mining agency has been providing information on sediment ponds routinely since 2002, when it and the Division of Water signed an agreement to inspect permanent ponds together when a coal company applies for a final bond release.

Thousands of ponds might have been released from state oversight before the agreement, however.

"Whole lot of stuff out there we don't know about," Thomas said.

The sediment pond in Letcher County that caused concern last week was part of an area released from oversight in 1998 by the Division of Mine Reclamation and Enforcement.

After that, state reclamation inspectors had no jurisdiction over it.

Lyndon Jensen, who lives in the hollow about a quarter of a mile below the site, said he first started complaining about problems with the pond a year ago.

A culvert in the embankment, designed to drain water so it wouldn't flow over the top of the dam, had rusted, letting water erode the earthen dam, Jensen said.