The following is an explanation of what would happen if the blasting on coal river mountain caused the breach of the largest slurry impoundment in the United States.

Borrowed from the blog at endmtr.com. Authored by Denny Tyler

With mountaintop removal starting on Coal River Mountain, which means blasting is going to be occurring uncomfortably close to the Brushy Fork slurry impoundment, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the emergency warning plan for the Brushy Fork dam. All calculations in the plan are based on a sunny day breach. Sunny day breach obviously means no contributing adverse weather conditions just some type of failure with the dam itself.

Two different scenarios are possible with a failure to this particular impoundment. The first is a breach of the main dam which is primarily what the warning plan focuses on. The second failure would be into abandoned underlying mine works known as the Brushy Eagle mine which would be as devastating.

The following excerpts are from this document (click to download a copy, this is a 17mb .pdf file) -

The data outlined in the first few excerpts below were outlined by me just to help you understand the data.

Using Pettus as an example (click images for a larger view) -

At mile 3.64 is the distance from the dam to Pettus. Gage zero = 847.00 feet is ground level. Max elevation reached by flood wave = 919.52 feet is pretty self explanatory. 72.52 feet is the difference between ground level and max elevation of the flood wave. When added with the following time schedule, also from the plan, what it means is that if the dam were to have a major breach, 12 minutes after the breach a wave of toxic sludge over 72 feet tall would hit the small community of Pettus.

The document contains the calculations for all of the communities on the list above. I’ve decided to list all of them here.

I found it frightening that at Peytona, the community furthest from the dam, included in the plan, at over 26 miles, would still be hit by a wave nearly 40 feet tall in the event of a sunny day breach.

I have seen the number 998 used quite a bit in relation to expected casualties from a major breach of the brushy fork dam but I really believe that number is a lot smaller than what would actually occur. For instance, in the town of Whitesville there were 520 residents listed for the 2000 census. Whitesville would be hit by a wave just over 51 feet tall 18 minutes after the dam breached. I can’t imagine how any of those folks could get out in time and for those that were lucky enough it would take a run for their lives. There are only two ways out of town. One way would take you straight into the flood and in the other direction one would be trying to outrun the flood and if you are in a vehicle, you would be hoping like hell you didn’t hit the inevitable panic laden traffic jam because literally every second would count. One figure I didn’t highlight, probably should have, was max flow. As far as Whitesville is concerned the wave would be moving at a volume of 406092 cubic feet per second, that translates into 3,037,779 gallons per second. One cubic foot per second is equal to a volume of one cubic foot flowing every second. 1 cubic foot per second = 7.4805 gallons per second.

I have seen no documents from studies that should be conducted stating that it is safe to use explosives in the vicinity of the dam. I live just over 7 miles in a straight line from the nearest MTR site. I hear the explosion every time they set one off and in most cases I can feel it as well. Imagine the concussion that would ripple through the impoundment area just a couple hundred feet from the blasting. I actually think there would be more of a chance of the impoundment failing into the old Brushy Eagle mine works. Which as I stated at the beginning of this post would be just as devastating as a main dam breach. You would still have about 8 billion gallons of coal slurry on its way downstream after exiting from two suspected Brushy Eagle mine portals.

Stopping the mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain would not only preserve the mountain for a more sustainable future such as the Coal River Wind project but stopping the blasting just may save lives. How far are we willing to go, how much are we willing to destroy, what are we willing to risk for coal, a non-renewable resource?

BTW – considering the plan was drawn up under sunny day conditions I would have to assume that would leave God open to take the blame should a failure occur during adverse weather conditions.

Visit iLoveMountains.org and Get Involved!!

For more info and an interactive map visit Journey Up Coal River.