Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302150104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
COALFIELD RESIDENTS GET ALLY IN WATER-LOSS FIGHT
Dennis Fraley's voice began to break when he told state lawmakers how his family must collect water in jugs and carry it up to their home on Hazel Mountain, where the well has run dry."It hurts me when my wife looks at me and says, `Can we wash clothes today?' " said Fraley, one of hundreds of coalfield residents who blame underground coal mining for siphoning off water supplies. "I hate to send my child to school without a bath. . . . People shouldn't have to live like this."
Nearly seven months after the pleas for help during the public hearing Fraley attended, the House of Delegates passed a bill that would require coal companies to replace water supplies lost by underground mining.
Negotiations with the coal industry had broken down in the fall, so Jason Gray of the Virginia Water Project said he had given up on the legislation and was surprised by the 100-0 vote last Tuesday.
But Del. Clarence "Bud" Phillips said there was a simple reason for their support: Everyone hates to see a grown man cry.
"People here in the General Assembly were surprised and shocked this past summer to hear how people in Southwest Virginia were living - carrying water in milk jugs and five-gallon cans," said Phillips, D-St. Paul. "Grown men were close to tears telling about the daily problems bringing water to homes. It hadn't gotten the attention of the General Assembly before."
The legislation, which Phillips expects to flow quickly through the Senate, only affects mining done after Oct. 24, 1992. Phillips and Gray said money diverted from coal severance taxes and from mined land reclamation funds would be needed to help people like Fraley with previous claims.
Phillips said that in his coalfield district alone, at least 500 families in Hazel Mountain and four other small communities have no potable water supply because of underground coal mining done before October.
But Gray, environmental program manager for the Roanoke-based nonprofit organization, said the legislation is a significant and symbolic step.
"It sends a very good signal of leadership that Virginia is going to do the right thing," he said.
Gray worked with environmentalists, citizen activists and coal industry representatives for the past two years in an attempt to find common ground on the water-loss issue.
The interim state guidelines adopted by the House would assist both water users and the coal industry to see that water replacement is fair and efficient, he said last week.
The Coal and Water Roundtable suspended activities shortly after Congress passed an energy bill in October. The federal law requires the replacement of water lost through underground mining, but Phillips and Gray said it may be two years before there are regulations that implement the law.
"We didn't want them to have to be without water for a year or two before a coal company is ordered to replace the water," Phillips said.
Throughout the mountains of the southwestern coalfields, ground water is scarce even where there is no mining, Gray said. Water often resides in or near seams of coal and tapped-in, shallow wells are susceptible to evaporation during dry years, he said.
"The determination whether water loss was caused by mining . . . is really a tough thing to do," Gray said.
Because the increased use of "longwall" mechanized mining causes more predictable subsurface rock and soil movement, coal companies can be helped by the guidelines, Gray said.
The House-passed legislation allocates $200,000, matched by the federal government, to pay hydrologists and geologists to go into the field and determine if water loss claims can be traced to underground mining.
It requires each operator of an underground coal mine to record daily progress of mining and send maps to the state Division of Mined Land Reclamation upon request of the director. It requires the operators to buy liability insurance that would cover the cost of replacing water supplies.
A few large mining companies such as Pittston Coal Co. and Island Creek Coal Co. voluntarily have replaced water lost because of mining. They've put in cisterns, dug deep wells and, in rare cases, hooked families up to public water supplies, Clintwood lawyer Gerald Gray said.
Some residents have filed lawsuits seeking damages for water losses, but Gray said a legal fight is too expensive for most claimants. The cost ranges from $1,500 to $7,500, "depending on how hard the company wants to fight it," he said.
Now that the General Assembly appears ready to let a state agency resolve water-loss disputes, "citizens of Southwest Virginia now have a positive ally they didn't have before," he said.