Investigative Reporting Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

How W.Va. Oil And Gas Industry Leaves Behind Radioactivity

In some places, the oil and gas industry is leaving behind industrial sites that are radioactive and dangerous — like Fairmont Brine in Fairmont, West Virginia. This abandoned site became a popular hangout spot for unsuspecting local residents. Investigative journalist Justin Nobel has written about Fairmont Brine. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Nobel to learn more.

This conversation originally aired in the Feb. 25, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

In some places, the oil and gas industry is leaving behind industrial sites that are radioactive and dangerous — like Fairmont Brine in Fairmont, West Virginia.

This abandoned site became a popular hangout spot for unsuspecting local residents. Justin Nobel has covered issues of radioactivity in the oil and gas industry for an upcoming book, Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It.

Nobel wrote about Fairmont Brine for Truthdig. The story is titled “Inside West Virginia’s Chernobyl: A highly radioactive oil and gas facility has become a party spot in Marion County.”

Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Nobel to learn more.

Investigative reporter Justin Nobel.

*Photo courtesy of Justin Nobel*

Adams: Your story describes an abandoned industrial site where locals are hanging out. That rings true to me from my teenage years a little bit. But in this case, there’s something else going on here. What did you find out?

Nobel: Over the course of my reporting into oilfield radioactivity, I’ve learned that a lot more comes to the surface with oil and gas development than just the oil and gas. The industry brings a lot of really toxic materials up from deep in the earth. Often you have heavy metals, you have carcinogens, like benzene volatile organics, and you have radioactive metals as well.

One of the most concerning ones is the radioactive metal radium, which is a known human carcinogen. You have this really big waste stream in the oilfield brine that comes up. The industry also calls that “produced water.” This is a major waste stream across the U.S. — three billion gallons of oilfield brine a day comes to the surface with oil and gas development, and the industry has to do something with that. So the industry has had an interest in trying to “treat” that brine — trying to take out the toxicity. Take out the heavy metals, take out the radioactivity, and you’ve got a lot of salt. So you can transform that into a usable product, maybe like road salts. Then with the watery component, you can use that to frack new wells. And that sounds really great to the industry. They love to promote that they can take the waste stream and repurpose it for something beneficial.

The problem with brine is it has such a complex brew of toxic elements that it’s actually really, really hard to treat. It’s really hard to remove all the different contaminants from brine and get this clean product that you can then send back out into the world. Even if you do that successfully, you collected all the toxicity, right? And if part of that toxicity is radioactivity, you’ve created a facility where you are concentrating and collecting radioactivity.

At this particular site in West Virginia, this is exactly what they were trying to do: They were trying to treat the oilfield brine. And if your plan isn’t working perfectly, you’re gonna get gunked up really quickly. And you’re building up heavy metals, you’re building up radioactivity, and you’re building up potentially all sorts of problems. And across the board, these plants fail.

The Fairmont Brine Processing site was covered with graffiti and littered with detritus such as beer cans and condoms, indicating the place has become a recurring party spot for locals. Yuri Gorby expressed particular concern about the highly elevated levels of the extremely dangerous radioactive element polonium. Anyone partying at the site is “going to be getting dosed,” says Gorby. “There are going to be long-term chronic effects from this.”

*Photo courtesy of Justin Nobel*

Adams: At Fairmont Brine, your Geiger counter reads about 7,000 counts per minute, which maxes out the unit. You later drive home the point that working at those levels of radioactivity for one week will take a worker over a yearly limit set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But yet, teenagers could wander in here without being stopped. What’s the status of this facility?

Nobel: I think anywhere in America, if you have this kind of busted up industrial site, it’s going to be a place where kids are going to want to hang out. You’ve got this site sitting there up on a hill, just outside the city limits of Fairmont — it’s an attractive place to just go and hang out. There’s grassy fields, there’s this big parking lot. There’s these weird, beat up buildings that you can wander around in. And then containers of stuff, all this different equipment.

What we realized and learned when we went there is wild. Parts of it are really, really dangerous and radioactive. But as soon as the article came out, the EPA really kicked into high gear. They had found levels of radioactivity even higher than we found. The EPA is now working with the community. They’ve set up a call center for local residents to get information on the site. I was told by an EPA official they’re in the process of fencing it off, and moving forward to see if it fits the role of a national Superfund site. So they’re in the process of — I wouldn’t say cleaning it up — but setting it up for a possible cleanup and at least making sure that people from the town can’t move around in it.

Adams: The other piece of this that’s alarming is that this is not a unique situation. You found sites like this elsewhere in Appalachia as well as the U.S. So this is not a singular phenomenon limited to Fairmont Brine.

Nobel: Some of these sites, they often don’t operate for longer than a year or two or three, because it’s a really difficult task to remove all the contaminants. To treat oilfield waste is a lot harder than these companies make it out to be. So what you find is, you have a bunch of sites that are currently operating, they’re hard to access, no one’s gonna let you in there and want to show an investigative science journalist around. And then you have these abandoned sites that aren’t operating anymore, but maybe they’re fenced off and they’re deep in the woods, and there’s still a security person guarding it.

Fairmont Brine was different. It was just right off the main road, and it was all open. Other people were hanging out there and they were entering it, and we entered it just like them. So it was really a rare window to ground truth. The concerns that had piled up over time.

Veolia’s Clearater facility in Doddridge County, West Virginia.

*Photo Credit: Ted Auch/FracTracker Alliance, 2020*

In other instances, such as the Clearwater plant, which is in Doddridge County along Highway 50 in northern West Virginia, I didn’t have access to the site and I still don’t, but there’s an equal amount of concern, in my opinion. This is another facility that was processing oilfield wastewater. This facility claimed that they could take 600 truckloads a day.

So if you go around the oilfield, you see the brine trucks. They look like these little septic tank trucks can hold maybe like 4,000 gallons. Six hundred of those trucks a day. That is a lot of oilfield wastewater, and they had grandiose language for how they were going to operate this plant. I mean, they claimed that this Clearwater plant was going to be one of the greatest environmental assets for the oil and gas industry in recent American history. The West Virginia governor was there giving a statement for the opening. There was really big money behind this plan. It cost like a quarter of a billion dollars, and involved a union between a Colorado energy company and Terra resources, which is big in northern West Virginia, and this really savvy fancy French waste and water management company called Veolia, which has operations all over the world.

It kind of represents an opposite end of the spectrum from Fairmont Brine, which was operated by a company based out of Pittsburgh. It’s pretty local. They’ve got investors, but it’s on a different scale than this company where you actually have a really major company that is known all over the world. But I was skeptical from the beginning. I visited that site with oilfield workers, and then after less than two years of operations, the site was shut down. I think what’s significant there is, the local news story was that it was shut because gas prices went down and it wasn’t economically viable any longer. But what I learned in reporting that story is the site was actually shuttered because it just wasn’t working again.

Whether it was the local capital setting up this small plant in Fairmont, or whether it was international capital setting up this major facility with a lot of gusto — both of them did not work. The difference though, is with Fairmont Brine, we go in and we saw the mess, and the mess is devastating. We were able to test to know exactly how radioactive the waste left on site was — and it’s very radioactive. Clearwater is a bit more of a black box, because I don’t have access to that site, and so I think there’s a huge concern of what is left on site there. But until I can connect maybe with a former worker who can serve as a whistleblower and lay out just what happened there, or get access to the site, or work with the state to try and enable them to get access, we still don’t know just what sort of mess is left up on that particular hillside.

Part of what strikes me, as I talk to community members as they learn about this, it’s kind of like I went down the rabbit hole as a reporter, and when I publish these stories, and a community member or worker reads what was actually happening at these facilities and what was left behind, they go down their own rabbit hole. They suddenly are learning about a part of the oil and gas industry they never knew about. And what I think has been really unfortunate is that these facilities are still getting built, they’re still getting permitted by the state, and in most cases, the community is still unaware.

You have these harms piling up, and people are not informed about them. And this is especially the case in communities where there’s a legitimate need for jobs. And so you know, it makes our mission of trying to spread awareness on this topic really important. It’s like profiting off the lack of knowledge that’s really worrisome to me. These are the things we try and get to the bottom of, and dig up. So I appreciate [that] I have a chance to expose this, because it does need to be exposed.

Investigative Reporter Looks At Fracking Near Fairmont And Wilco Has Our Song Of The Week, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, parts of Appalachia saw a natural gas boom from fracking, but as fortunes have changed, the industry has left behind dangerous industrial sites — including one near Fairmont, which became a popular hangout spot for the young. Investigative Reporter Justin Nobel has been looking into this and spoke with Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams about what he discovered.

On this West Virginia Morning, parts of Appalachia saw a natural gas boom from fracking, but as fortunes have changed, the industry has left behind dangerous industrial sites — including one near Fairmont, which became a popular hangout spot for the young. Investigative Reporter Justin Nobel has been looking into this and spoke with Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams about what he discovered.

Also, in this show, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes to us from Wilco. We listen to their performance of “Cruel Country” from their twelfth studio album of the same name.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Our Appalachia Health News project is made possible with support from Marshall Health.

West Virginia Morning is produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.

Eric Douglas is our news director and producer.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

News Investigation Reveals Missteps In Response To 2016 Smokies Fire

A newspaper investigation has revealed that National Park Service officials underestimated the severity of the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains National Park wildfire, and were slow to alert Tennessee officials about the danger. Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter at the Knoxville News Sentinel/Knox News. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Whetstone to learn more.

This conversation was originally heard on the Feb. 4, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

In November 2016, a wildfire escaped from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park into the nearby tourist towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. At least 14 people were killed and 190 injured, and more than 14,000 residents and tourists had to be evacuated out of the area.

Now, a newspaper investigation has revealed that National Park Service officials underestimated the severity of the wildfire, and were slow to alert Tennessee officials about the danger.

Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter at the Knoxville News Sentinel/Knox News. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Whetstone to learn more.

The transcript below has been edited for clarity and length. For more, listen to the full interview on Inside Appalachia or via the streaming widget above.

An aerial view shows the destruction at Westgate Smoky Mountain Resort and Spa the day after a wildfire hit Gatlinburg on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, in Sevier County.

*Credit: Knox News*

Adams: Can you refresh our memory on that 2016 fire and what happened with it?

Whetstone: You have to remember, in 2016 there was an exceptional drought, one of the worst droughts in state [Tennessee] history. The region was in a pretty severe drought in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia. So it was peak fire season, more so than normal. This wildfire just happened to be in a perfect storm of sorts.

It began Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, in November 2016. The park was severely understaffed because of the holiday. You had people who were new to management positions that didn’t want to tell people not to take off for the holiday. The fire was up high in Chimney Tops, which is a weird peak in the Smokies. I think when most people think of the Smokies, they think of rolling hills and tree-topped mountains. The Chimney Tops is pretty much the only peak in the park that’s rocky. The fire started way up top. It was in a spot that really couldn’t be taken care of or could be fought. So they let it burn out. That was the plan — except that it didn’t, obviously.

The day the fire blew out of the park into Gatlinburg had a number of things that went wrong outside of just park officials not letting Gatlinburg know what was going on. You have what’s called a “mountain wave,” which some people may be familiar with. It’s certain times of year, typically in late November in the Smokies, where you have phenomenal winds that will blow through. We had wind gusts well over 85, 90 mph. That Monday, it just blew the fire, that had been largely contained to the park, well outside of the park and through Gatlinburg. Other branches of it spotted fires up through Pigeon Forge, outside of Dollywood.

At the end of the day, 14 people died. Hundreds were injured and something like 2,000 buildings were destroyed.

Adams: You’ve been looking into the National Park Service’s initial response to this fire. What gave you the idea for this investigation, and how did you go about doing it?

Whetstone: I’d been writing about the wildfire. I was there the night that it happened, at least in Pigeon Forge. You couldn’t get into Gatlinburg. Emergency crews wouldn’t let you get into Gatlinburg, which was probably a good call. So, it’s something that I’ve been working on and off for seven years. In the last two years, I really kind of spearheaded our reporting on that and continue to follow a federal lawsuit against the park service the victims of the fire filed. I got a new set of documents — 1,500 pages of federal records that we hadn’t previously seen — from a source, and those records really spawned the effort.

Knox News investigative reporter Tyler Whetstone.

*Credit: Knox News*

Adams: Tell me a little bit about what y’all found in all those documents.

Whetstone: There’s really three findings. The first is, early on, the date that the fire broke out of the park, park officials were saying on the radio that the fire could leave the park and go as far as Ski Mountain. If you’re familiar with Gatlinburg, Ski Mountain is on the far end of town near the park, but it kind of winds its way around the city. It’s where a lot of residents live. It would have been another three or four hours before park officials let the city know that the fire could leave the park, but they never said “Ski Mountain.” City officials thought it would be in one place and were never given the heads-up that it could go to an entirely different place, and that’s where most of the deaths occurred, unfortunately.

The second story was, the man in charge of the fire — the fire management officer, the guy who’s in charge of the response, and in charge of how the fire is handled — his name is Greg Salansky. Greg texted another park official on Saturday, saying basically that the park should be prepared because “Monday might get exciting.” And Monday, of course, was not just exciting, it was awful and ended up being a lot worse than Greg was expecting. So it calls into question some of the decisions. The park service never had anyone watch the fire overnight, any of the five nights it burned, which experts in wildland fires will tell you is a no-no. You always want to have someone watching the fire just in case it blows out of the park, or grows, or just to get an idea of what’s going on.

Then lastly, we had obtained an audio recording of park superintendent Cassius Cash receiving a call early Sunday morning at 3 a.m. It’s a weird call because he answers the phone, and it’s a police dispatch telling him that the fire had grown. And Cash assumed that it hadn’t. But he didn’t check with anyone, he just downplayed it and said, it’s not a big deal to worry about it, it’s a small thing. But if you’re in charge of the park, and a fire is reported to have grown tenfold at least over a couple of hours, it’s something that you need to check out. That’s what wildland fire experts told me. It’s something that the park officials were not ready to do. They were not used to these types of events, not used to this type of fire certainly. And just one mistake after another unfortunately, led to a pretty awful, awful week.

The Gatlinburg Fire Of 2016, Inside Appalachia

This week on Inside Appalachia, a wildfire in 2016 escaped the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It killed 14 people, injured dozens more and destroyed parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. We talk with an investigative journalist who has new information on the incident. Also, four decades ago rice seeds from Laos crossed the ocean to California and made their way to a family of Hmong farmers in North Carolina. And the Appalachian trail has been exhaustively hiked, explored and written about, but it’s still got a few secrets left.

In 2016, a wildfire escaped the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It killed 14 people, injured dozens more and destroyed parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. We talk with an investigative journalist who has new information on the incident.

Also, four decades ago rice seeds from Laos crossed the ocean to California and made their way to a family of Hmong farmers in North Carolina.

And the Appalachian trail has been exhaustively hiked, explored and written about, but it’s still got a few secrets left.

You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.

In This Episode:

Investigating The Gatlinburg Fire Of 2016
The Sweet Sticky Rice Of Western North Carolina
Save The Salamanders!
An Appalachian Trail Mystery

Investigating The Gatlinburg Fire Of 2016

In 2016, a wildfire at Chimney Tops in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee spread beyond the park boundaries into the nearby tourist towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. At least 14 people were killed. Many more were injured and thousands of residents and tourists had to be evacuated.

A new investigation revealed that National Park Service officials underestimated the severity of the wildfire and were slow to alert Tennessee officials about the danger.

Tyler Whetstone, an investigative reporter, spoke with Mason Adams about his reporting.

The Sweet Sticky Rice Of Western North Carolina

Tou Lee holds sweet sticky rice stalks in his rice field in Morganton, North Carolina.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

When you think of rice, you might not think of Western North Carolina. But the area is home to several varieties of heirloom rice that made their way here from Laos nearly five decades ago. The rice was carried and cultivated by Hmong refugees.

One family now sells their rice at markets and to restaurants, and they’ve built a passionate following.

Folkways Reporter Rachel Moore has this story.

Save The Salamanders!

The West Virginia spring salamander.

*Credit: U.S. Geological Survey*

Have you ever heard of a West Virginia spring salamander? They’re a species found in the General Davis Cave in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, but there are only a few hundred left.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to put the West Virginia spring salamander on the endangered species list.

WVPB’s Curtis Tate spoke with Will Harlan, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

An Appalachian Trail Mystery

The Appalachian Trail was completed in 1927. For 25 years, hikers took to the trail and traveled along the mountains from Georgia to Maine, but then the trail was moved. And the old trail was nearly forgotten.

Historian and podcaster Mills Kelly discovered the lost trail and wrote about it in his new book, Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail.

WMRA’s Chris Boros speaks to Kelly about rediscovering the trail.

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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by David Mayfield, Chris Knight, John Blissard, John Inghram, Eric Vincent Huey and Steve Earle.

Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.

You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.

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Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

How A Reporter’s Investigation Of Appalachia’s Black Lung Epidemic Pushed Federal Officials To Respond

Miners are suffering from an advanced version of black lung disease known as progressive massive fibrosis. It’s the result of digging at increasingly thin coal seams. That means they’re also cutting into quartz, which creates silica dust. Advanced black lung results from breathing in that blend of silica and coal dust.

Updated on Oct. 10, 2023 at 11:30 a.m.

This story originally aired in the Oct. 8, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

The coal-producing regions of central Appalachia are at the center of an epidemic of advanced black lung cases among coal miners. New reporting by a retired NPR reporter has shown how federal officials underestimated the sheer number of cases across West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, and now regulators seem to be responding.

Miners are suffering from an advanced version of black lung disease known as progressive massive fibrosis.

It’s the result of digging at increasingly thin coal seams. That means they’re also cutting into quartz, which creates silica dust.

Advanced black lung results from breathing in that blend of silica and coal dust.

Retired NPR reporter Howard Berkes has been covering this story for years.

He worked with NPR and the PBS series Frontline, and spent more than a year investigating fears that federal regulators and mining companies were failing to protect coal miners from toxic dust.

He and his team obtained documents and data showing federal mine safety officials had evidence of the danger dating back more than 20 years, but never addressed it.

Howard Berkes spent 38 years as an NPR Correspondent. His investigative reporting exposed an epidemic of advanced black lung disease affecting thousands of coal miners, and decades of failure of federal regulators to take steps to prevent it.

*Credit: Wanda Gayle*

In 2018, Berkes reported that more than 2,000 miners were dying of illness related to that toxic dust. Since that story aired, at least four of the miners in it who appeared have died, and at least two have received double-lung transplants. Danny Smith, who was prominently featured, is being assessed for a double-lung transplant.

Danny Smith spent just 12 years mining coal in eastern Kentucky and was diagnosed with the advanced stage of black lung disease at 39. Both are shocking numbers because it used to take decades of mining for coal miners much older to get as sick as this.

*Credit: Elaine McMillion Sheldon/PBS Frontline*

Lately, the metallurgical coal industry has been ramping up production to meet global demand, and experts predict even more advanced black lung cases will appear. After years of inaction, though, federal officials are addressing the issue.

Over the summer, the Mine Safety and Health Administration proposed a rule intended to protect coal miners from exposure to silica dust. By the time the comment period closed in September, the draft rule had attracted 157 comments.

Now, Berkes is part of a new investigation into advanced black lung cases that was co-published by Public Health Watch, Louisville Public Media and Mountain State Spotlight. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Berkes about what his team found.

The New Beginnings Pulmonary Rehab Clinic in South Williamson, Kentucky, features photos of coal miners with advanced black lung disease, including those who have not survived.

*Credit: Elaine McMillion Sheldon/PBS Frontline*

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Adams: So your work in the past, your investigations have in the past have seemed to have resulted in some action. Now MSHA has proposed some new regulations for monitoring silica dust.

Berkes: Yeah, MSHA has taken two very significant steps in this proposed rule. One is to make the exposure limit for silica dust twice as tough as it has been. That was recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health back in 1974, and it was recommended again by the Labor Department’s own mine dust advisory committee in 1996.

It’s taken all these years for MSHA to finally adopt what has been long recommended, this tougher limit to exposure to silica dust. That’s a major, major improvement. The second thing that they did is that they decided to regulate overexposure to silica dust directly. In the past, they applied a complicated formula: If a mining company had too much silica dust, then the mining company had to lower the amount of overall mine dust, coal dust and silica dust in the air. That was supposed to bring down the silica dust exposure to an acceptable level. But it’s not a one-to-one relationship.

What we found in our previous investigation was 9,000 overexposures to silica dust, even after the mining companies responded to the regulation that was in effect at the time. So now MSHA is directly regulating silica dust. There can be citations and fines associated with exceeding the silica dust level, that has never happened in the past. So those are two very promising elements of this proposed rule.

This slogan appeared in a Department of Labor document warning about silica dust exposure in workplaces, including mines, in 1997, 26 years before the Mine Safety and Health Administration proposed tougher restrictions on exposure to silica dust.

*Credit: Mine Safety and Health Administration*

Adams: There have also been some criticisms of the proposed rule as well.

Berkes: Yeah, mostly on enforcement and oversight. There really is no regular oversight built into the rule. The rule requires mining companies to conduct an enormous amount of sampling of dust, and to record the results of those samples. If they show that there’s overexposure to silica dust, the rule requires that the mining companies then make changes in the way they’re mining so that the silica dust is reduced. There are various things that can be done: they can increase the ventilation, they can make sure that their water sprays on the mining machines are working properly. Those are two key elements in managing dust in coal mines. They can slow down the mining machines and not mine so quickly. They can stop mining a seam that has so much quartz in it. Those are all things that mining companies are required to do once there’s excessive dust. And while they’re doing those things, they’re allowed to continue to mine.

They’re allowed to let miners continue to work in what are dangerous levels of dust. But miners must wear respirators; that has its own set of problems. We’ve interviewed dozens and dozens of miners since 2016, and they all complain about the dust masks not working properly clogging up, inhibiting their breathing, getting too hot, inhibiting their ability to communicate with fellow miners in a very dangerous environment.

There are new helmets out that are very effective for protecting miners from dust, but they can block vision and can block communication in ways that can become dangerous in a coal mine. The main problem with all of this is that MSHA is not going to be watching all the time. Mine inspectors only go into coal mines four times a year, and they’ll do their own sampling when they’re in there. They can ask to see the results of the sampling the mining companies have done. But what this means is that most of the time, there will be no Mine Safety and Health Administration oversight and enforcement of this new rule. It’ll be up to the mining companies. And as coal miner after coal miner after coal miner who we’ve interviewed over the years will tell you, some mining companies have conducted fraudulent sampling over the years. As recently as last year, there was a criminal prosecution in Kentucky for fraudulent dust sampling.

A display at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, West Virginia shows how much damage results from exposure to coal and silica dust.

*Credit: Howard Berkes/NPR*

Adams: MSHA has been collecting comments on these proposed rules and they’ve been hearing from miners and advocates in the coal industry. By the time this segment airs, that comment period will have come to a close. But in the last few days, Public Health Watch has published a new investigation with Louisville Public Media and Mountain State Spotlight that calls into question some of MSHA’s projections on which it’s basing this rule. Can you tell us a little bit about that investigation and what your team found?

Berkes: Sure. One of the things that really struck me in the very extensive and dense document that MSHA has produced to justify what it wants to do, is they project how many lives will be saved, and how much disease will be avoided if this new rule is permitted to take effect. What really shocked me was that the projection for coal mines was 63 deaths avoided over 60 years — a little more than one a year — and 244 cases of black lung disease avoided over 60 years. That just doesn’t make sense, given how much disease has actually occurred, which MSHA never mentions in its document. And so we calculated how much disease has occurred by continuing our survey of black lung clinics — both independent clinics and clinics that are funded by the federal government.

What we found, which MSHA doesn’t mention, is that in just the last five years, there have been 1,500 new cases of progressive massive fibrosis, the advanced stage of black lung disease, as reported by these clinics. The total since 2010, since that’s as far back as we go in our survey of clinics, is over 4,000 cases of this horrific, fatal disease. There is no cure. We also, by the way, looked at how many excessive exposures there have been in coal mines in recent years. At the new limit — say the new limit was in place since 2016 — we found over 5,000 excessive exposures at the new limit.

So what these numbers sort of provide is a sense of how serious this situation is, how much over exposure continues to occur, and how much disease continues to occur. That’s not in this proposed rule making. In fact, the numbers presented for silica dust exposure since 2016 by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, they just have numbers from 2016 to 2021. They don’t report how many excessive exposures there were in this document. They report that there were 93 percent of exposures that were within the limit. Well, that sounds like a great number, 93 percent. It sounds like, “Oh, things aren’t so bad.” But that other 7 percent represents more than 5,000 excessive exposures. And because this is such a toxic substance, that’s a lot of potential disease and death. You got to understand that for proposed rule making that this process involves.

Federal Mine Safety Chief Christopher Williamson addresses a crowd gathered in Arlington, Virginia, on Aug. 3, 2023, for a public hearing on proposed silica dust regulations. Williamson is the first mine safety chief to directly address overexposure to toxic silica dust.

*Credit: Justin Hicks/Louisville Public Media*

So right now, it’s proposed, you mentioned that there’s this comment period that has taken place, that the industry and the public and mine safety advocates and miners get to comment on it. Before there’s a final rule, the Department of Labor has to approve whatever the final rule might be. The Office of Management and Budget has to approve this final rule. We’ve got an election year coming up. There’s often sensitivity from the White House and the Office of Management and Budget on anything that might make voters not vote for candidates that the administration supports or might not vote for the president again, if there’s something in this that offends them.

I’ve seen this happen in the past, where regulatory action was stalled in order to hold off until after an election. There may be other reasons that there could be concerns or objections, budget-wise or otherwise, from the impact on the industry. So it’s important, if you’re going to state your case, to state it as strongly as possible. This rule making does not state that case as strongly as possible. There may be lawsuits from the mining industry over this. So it’s puzzling to me why they didn’t do that. When we asked the Mine Safety Administration, they said, “The comment period exists so that people can tell us what we might need to do better. And this will be one of the things that we consider if people comment on this.

Adams: It’s mind-blowing to think that this represents thousands of people. And behind each of these numbers is a human being. You’ve interviewed dozens of these miners. What have you taken away from those interviews that’s not necessarily reflected in the data?

Berkes: I want to point out that every one of those miners had progressive massive fibrosis. We interviewed miners who had the worst stage of disease. One of the things they all talked about was what their prospects were for the future. Many of them watched fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers die of black lung disease, and so they know what they face. This is a tragedy that strikes generations and families: Fathers that won’t see their kids grow up. Fathers that won’t see their daughters at their weddings, won’t see high school graduations. And actually, it’s not just men, there are women miners with this disease as well.

The tragic nature of this is just so astounding and moving and deep. When you talk to a miner with severe disease at advanced stages, they can hardly get a sentence out without coughing or without having to pause for very deep breaths. A miner in my story, Danny Smith, who was diagnosed at 39, he’s 51. Now, he has his grave site picked out. I tried to call him in the last couple of weeks, and his breathing is so labored, he said he can’t get through a phone call. So we were communicating by text message.

Lungs riddled with fibrotic tissue from complicated black lung disease are displayed in the office of radiologist Dr. Brandon Crum in Pikeville, Kentucky.

*Credit: Elaine McMillion Sheldon/PBS Frontline*

Danny was featured in our 2018 story. We’ve been in communication since then. And he’s in terrible shape, and it’s so bad. He loved coal mining, but it’s so bad. He said now he wishes he never stepped foot in the mine. And this was a job he loved. It was a job that made a good life for him and his daughters. He’s a single parent. And there’s an enormous amount of regret, of buying into this bargain of a great life for mining coal. You know, part of what I don’t understand is, in any other workplace in our country, if you had thousands and thousands of people who were sick and dying from a disease, there would be outreach, and there would be response, and there would be response quicker than what has come.

I don’t know why people don’t seem to care about coal miners. There are 40,000 coal miners still working today. I don’t know what it takes to get a response that gets this going in a way that really protects and helps coal miners. But they are people like you and me who have done a job to make lives better for their families. They’re caught up in this whole thing and it’s killing a lot of them.

Retired coal miner Roy Keith undergoes a spirometry test at the New River Health Clinic in Oak Hill, West Virginia as part of the process of measuring lung capacity and diagnosing the onset of black lung disease.

*Credit: Allen Siegler/Mountain State Spotlight*

Adams: Howard Berkes, thank you for your important work on this topic. This is an important subject that has such a deep, deep impact here in central Appalachia. Thanks for coming on Inside Appalachia and speaking with us about it.

Berkes: Always a pleasure to be with you.

A statue at the courthouse in Grundy, Virginia, honors the coal miners of Buchanan County.

*Credit: Howard Berkes/NPR*

——

After the Public Health Watch/Louisville Public Media/Mountain State Spotlight investigation documenting thousands of advanced black lung cases was published in August, mine safety advocates and Congress members cited it in comments to MSHA about its proposed silica dust rule.

MSHA responded with a statement that said the agency was considering “suggestions that the [proposed rule] underestimates the benefit” as it develops a final version of the rule.

***Editor’s Note: The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration collected 157 comments on its proposed silica dust rule. A previous version of this story misstated the number of comments the agency received.

Lawsuit Alleges Union Carbide Failed To Report Toxic Landfill

On a recent sticky July afternoon, Diana Green stands on the muddy bank of lower Davis Creek in South Charleston, West Virginia.

As a child, she enjoyed wading in the nearly 10-mile-long stream in search of crayfish and salamanders. As an adult, Green set down roots there, purchasing a farm that backs up to the creek. Seeing the waterway choked with trash and pollution, Green helped form a small community-based watershed group in the 1990s. The Davis Creek Watershed Association has been dedicated to improving the environmental quality of the watershed, and 25 years later, she says they have largely succeeded. Several different fish species, from skipjack to bass live in the stream.

But these waters have also been shaped by the Kanawha Valley’s deep connection to the nearby chemical industry.

The creek backs up against land owned by Union Carbide Corp., a corporate monolith that has for decades provided a solid living for thousands of area residents, investing in the region and its workers.

Now, the company’s goodwill is being challenged by new information unearthed in a series of lawsuits by a corporate landowner. A lawsuit filed by the Courtland Co., a private, West Virginia-based landholding firm that owns property near Davis Creek, alleges Union Carbide has for decades knowingly leaked potentially toxic pollutants into the waters of Davis Creek.

Union Carbide, purchased by Dow Chemical Co. in 2001, insists in court filings that there is “no evidence to support that UCC is currently endangering the public and adversely impacting public resources.”

The company declined to answer a list of detailed questions. In an emailed statement it said: “Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is aware of the complaints by Courtland Company. UCC denies all claims asserted against it by Courtland and will continue to vigorously defend itself. As this is ongoing litigation, UCC will not comment further at this time.”

Michael Callaghan, the attorney representing Courtland, vehemently disagrees with the company’s assessment. Callaghan is a former assistant U.S. attorney and secretary of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

“I’ve been doing environmental law in some form or fashion for 30 years, and I have never seen anything like this,” he said. “To walk away from a liability and just leave it on the ground is outrageous.”

I've been doing environmental law in some form or fashion for 30 years, and I have never seen anything like this – Michael Callaghan, attorney

Landfill Revealed

In August 2018, Courtland filed its first lawsuit against Union Carbide. A year earlier, the company conducted some environmental sampling on its property and found elevated levels of pollutants such as arsenic, barium, cadmium, lead and selenium. In the lawsuit, the company asserts the contamination came from the nearby Tech Center, which was Carbide’s research and development hub for decades.

In the suit, Courtland asked Union Carbide and Dow to investigate and clean up the contamination.

“I would call that a garden variety environment case. Just a straightforward case of your neighbor pollutes on you and we need to solve that problem,” Callaghan said. “Well, the case took quite a strange twist.”

Near the end of an October 2019 deposition, Jerome Cibrik, remediation leader at Union Carbide, revealed that “another UCC facility” in “this general area north of the tracks” was causing contamination in some monitoring wells. The tracks are part of a rail yard, sometimes called the Massey rail yard or coal yard, also owned by Union Carbide.

A screenshot of part of Jerome Cibrik’s deposition.

When asked what was disposed of in the site Cirbik said, “We don’t have good records of what was in there.” He then identified DYNEL, a polyester fiber material, as a substance that was specifically disposed of at the Filmont site.

“We had found some limited files that deal with this facility and they mentioned disposal, mainly nonhazardous materials and DYNEL,” he said. “That’s about all we know for sure what went there from the South Charleston facility.”

DYNEL is a textile fiber with a fur-like texture and appearance that was developed in the late 1940s. It’s made from vinyl chloride and acrylonitrile. It was produced at the South Charleston plant until 1975.

Cibrik noted the landfill operated at least during the 1970s and 1980s. Other documentation shows it likely began operating in the 1950s. When asked if the site was built in compliance with federal environmental law, specifically the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, he said no.

The complicated law, passed by Congress in 1976, created a framework for the proper management of hazardous and non-hazardous waste.

“I do not believe so and it is not subject to those regulations,” he said. “There is also evidence hazardous waste went into it.”

Cibrik called the area the “Filmont Landfill.”

Documentation Search

In December 2019, Courtland filed a second lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, this time focused on the Filmont Landfill. The complaint alleges hazardous, toxic chemicals from both the rail yard and landfill are leaching into the soil, groundwater and surface water and contaminating both their property and running into Davis Creek.

That includes arsenic, 1,4- dioxane, multiple types of ethers, benzene, chloroform and vinyl chloride, which have been measured in groundwater on the site in excess of federally established screening levels, and in some cases dozens of times above federal drinking water limits set by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Sampling done in 2011 by Union Carbide in wells installed across Davis Creek from the Filmont site showed levels of 1,4-dioxane — a synthetic industrial chemical and likely human carcinogen according to EPA — at levels 177 times above the screening level.

Courtland has largely used the land to store vehicles and other materials, and argues it’s impossible it created the contamination. In court documents, the company asserts the underground channels through which groundwater from the Filmont site and rail yard flow are connected to Davis Creek. Lawyers for the company argue if pollution from the landfill has migrated onto Courtland’s property, then it could easily be migrating into other places, such as a nearby residential neighborhood.

But the full extent of what could be going on remains hidden. The bulk of the monitoring data and information about this landfill remains under a protective order asked for by Union Carbide. West Virginia Public Broadcasting has joined Green and some members of the Davis Creek Watershed Association in asking the judge to make the records public, given the possible public health and safety ramifications of the dumping. The judge is currently considering unsealing about two dozen documents.

A Mystery Landfill

The Filmont Landfill is located adjacent to the West Virginia Regional Technology Park, formerly owned by Union Carbide. Constructed in 1949, the sprawling campus was often referred to as the Tech Center. Scientists there were responsible for some of the most innovative breakthroughs in chemical technology in modern history.

“The Tech Center was a world-class place with world-class scientists,” said Gary Brown, a retired Tech Center employee who worked there from 1969 until 2001 when Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide.

The Tech Center, like Carbide’s other two facilities in the Valley — the South Charleston and Institute plants — were constructed largely before the passage of most modern environmental laws.

When Brown first arrived in the Valley in the late 1960s, he recalled, he couldn’t hang his clothes outside to dry without them being covered with soot. The passage of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Toxic Substances Control Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act fundamentally changed the way companies could dispose of waste.

“The world changed for sure,” he said. “At one time I think people and companies looked at a river and they said ‘well, that’s a good way we can dump our waste in the river and it’ll disappear.”

Beginning in 1999, Union Carbide began working with the EPA to clean up hazardous waste within the 574-acre Tech Center, due to legal obligations under RCRA.

The company identified 70 different areas that contained waste, including three inactive landfills that until 1973 accepted coal ash slurry from the power plant at the Tech Center, municipal sludge from the South Charleston wastewater treatment plant, and some waste from Carbide’s South Charleston facility.

A 2005 investigation at the Tech Center found the landfills were contaminating groundwater with levels of arsenic and barium that, if consumed, could harm human health. Under the “corrective action,” which was finalized in 2010, Carbide was required to monitor groundwater across the Tech Center property.

The West Virginia Regional Technology Park located in South Charleston, West Virginia.

The Filmont Landfill, the dump site Courtland claims in the lawsuit is contaminated with multiple toxic pollutants, does not appear in any of the Tech Center documentation. But four EPA documents from the late 1970s and early 1980s describe some of what was dumped on the site.

According to a report filed in March 1979 by EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center, Union Carbide employees reported solid waste from the company’s South Charleston facility, including “lumber, paper, scrap polymer, etc” were disposed of in the Filmont Landfill.

An EPA document from 1984 states the Filmont Landfill received industrial grit processed by the South Charleston Sewage Treatment Company, a subsidiary of Union Carbide, which operated the wastewater plant owned by the City of South Charleston. The plant treated both municipal and industrial waste, including from Carbide’s South Charleston plant.

Another document notes drums were both dumped and buried on the site, which is listed as 20 acres in size.

A search of EPA’s RCRA database shows no record that the Filmont landfill was granted a permit. A spokesperson for the agency said in an email, “To the best of our knowledge there is/was no RCRA (hazardous waste) regulated landfill named Filmont in South Charleston, WV.”

West Virginia Public Broadcasting has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the WVDEP and is awaiting a response. Record requests filed by Courtland’s lawyers to both EPA and WVDEP have not returned any information.

South Charleston Wells

While much of the information and data about the Filmont Landfill remains sealed, public records obtained from the City of South Charleston offer a window into the scope of the contamination.

In late 2009, emails show Union Carbide and a consulting firm that handles the bulk of environmental monitoring and compliance at the Tech Center site reached out to the City of South Charleston asking for an agreement to access city property to install two monitoring wells on the other side of Davis Creek from the Filmont Landfill.

In a Nov. 18, 2009 email, Paul Weber, with CH2M Hill Environmental Services, a contractor for Union Carbide, wrote to Steve DeBarr, general manager of the City of South Charleston Sanitary Board, proposing the company install temporary wells on city property.

“UCC has investigated the groundwater contamination at the Filmont Landfill up to their property boundary, which is adjacent to Davis Creek,” Weber said. “The downgradient extent of contamination has not been defined by these previous investigations. Although UCC does not expect the contamination to extend beyond Davis Creek, UCC would like to install these two temporary monitoring wells on the other side of Davis Creek to confirm this expectation.”

In July 2010, as the city was mulling over Carbide’s request, Cibrik, the head of remediation for Carbide, sent Michael Moore, attorney for the City of South Charleston, a list of figures that show “what constituents were found in groundwater at our Filmont site.”

He notes metals, semi-volatile organic compounds and volatile organic compounds were all identified within the 10 monitoring wells, adding “metals often exceed regulatory levels at natural background concentrations.”

It would take until the summer of 2011 before Union Carbide and the city would finalize an agreement for the company to drill the two wells west of Davis Creek, one on city property.

Carbide and the city also developed a background information and potential frequently asked questions document to address questions about the drilling and well monitoring.

The wells were drilled on Sept. 6, 2011. In October, Cibrik asked for a meeting with DeBarr and Moore to discuss the results of sampling conducted at the wells. The wells were sampled twice, once in September and again in October. Results showed levels of arsenic, dioxane and lead at levels above EPA standards. Arsenic is a known carcinogen. Dioxane is an ether and likely carcinogenic, according to the EPA. The data also showed 1,4-dioxane appeared to have migrated past the creek.

Following that meeting, Carbide asked the City of South Charleston for a second agreement to install a third well. On May 4, 2012, Cibrik emailed DeBarr and Moore noting the new well had been sampled twice and showed no concerning results. Cibrik characterized the bulk of the data as “good news,” noting that the groundwater flow did not appear to be going toward the nearby residential neighborhood.

When reached by phone recently, DeBarr said it was his understanding at the time, based on data provided and interpreted by Union Carbide, that the Filmont site did not pose a problem or threat to property or residents in South Charleston.

“I don’t have the expertise to say anything contrary to what they told me,” he said.

DeBarr said after 2012 the City of South Charleston did not receive any further data from the monitoring wells.

‘Significant Contamination’

Marc Glass, a principal researcher in charge of evaluation and remediation of environmental contamination in soil and water for the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies, said the limited data available in the case does seem to indicate pollution from the Filmont Landfill appears to have left the site, especially dioxane and some chlorinated solvents.

“There’s really significant contamination there of some nasty things right at the property boundary, and it’s on the other side of Davis Creek,” he said.

Even if nearby residents aren’t using the groundwater, Glass said given the levels of contamination observed in these wells it’s possible the pollutants could rise up through the surface in vapor from and collect inside buildings.

There's really significant contamination there of some nasty things right at the property boundary, and it's on the other side of Davis Creek – Marc Glass, Downstream Strategies

Bill Muno is the former head of the Superfund program for EPA’s Region 5 and at one time oversaw the region’s RCRA program. After RCRA’s passage, Muno said anyone who generated, transported or disposed of hazardous waste was required to register with EPA.

“If the landfill was operated after November of 1980, and Union Carbide wanted to continue to operate it, it would have had to file a [RCRA] Part A permit application,” he said.

Muno said if the landfill wasn’t in use when RCRA went into effect, and it poses a threat to the health and safety of the public or environment, Union Carbide would be still responsible for taking care of the problem either on its own or through the Superfund program.

Glass agrees.

“If you dispose of hazardous waste or place hazardous waste or even store hazardous waste for a period of time — over 90 days under the law — then you have obligations under RCRA because you’re responsible for that waste material,” he said.

He said more investigation by the company as well as state and federal regulators is warranted.

“We already have enough information, even in 2012, to say we should expect there to be contamination distributed either more deeply or more widely,” Glass said.

A road sign at the WV Regional Tech Park.

Callaghan, the attorney representing Courtland, has asked the judge overseeing the case to take immediate action to address the Filmont site.

“Part of what the lawsuit is looking to do is to protect, first of all the interests of my client, but secondly, the public [and] the public space exposed to these chemicals,” he said. “The public needs to know the nature and extent of this exposure so we can determine what kind of human health risk exists.”

As the cases move forward in court and more specifics come to light, Diana Green with the Davis Creek Watershed Association, hopes the Filmont site can be cleaned up.

Standing on the bank of the creek, surrounded by lush foliage, she lets out a heavy sigh.

“I think we’re all concerned about having all the truth of every situation that involves our watershed,” Green says. “You look all around and it’s beautiful, green and you can’t picture what’s going on below the surface.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide. It was 2001 not 2011.