3 Minute Warning- West Virginia

Imagine This! Every time you drop your child at school you fear for his or her life.

Why?

1. Gang violence?
2. H1N1?
3. A Random School Shooting?
4. Risk of death by drowning in sudden toxic sludge spill of catastrophic proportions?

The answer in Sundial West Virginia where just over 200 students attend Marsh Fork Elementary School is D.

According to local residents, the school has been a proud community landmark since the 1940s. In the 1970s, just thirty-five years after it was established, that all changed when a major energy
company built a coal storage silo nearby.

Less than 300 feet away from where children learn and play, sits a leaking, 385-feet tall, coal refuse dam with nearly 3-billion gallons of toxic sludge. On record the Department of Environmental Protection classifies it as a Class-C Dam: "Class-C dams are those dams
located where failure may cause a loss of human life or serious damage to homes, commercial and public buildings, roads, and primary highways. This classification must be used if failure
would cause possible loss of human life," according to the DEP Division of Mining and Reclamation.

Coal dust has been found in the school and the drinking-water has been contaminated. The rate of sick days due to respiratory problems is extremely high. While these issues are alarming, they aren’t what concerns families, community members and organizations the most. They are more worried about what would happen if the earthen dam of the impoundment breached. It is well known that there would be less than three minutes to evacuate the Marsh Fork Elementary School before the water reached six feet.

A tragic example where this did happen is the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster in which, according to the West Virginia Division of Culture & History: "In a matter of minutes, 118 were dead and over 4,000 people were left homeless. Seven were never found."

If this dam breaks, it will destroy everyone and everything within 30 miles. So why are 200-plus children still making the trip to school every day despite the constant threat of illness and even
death?

Because they have nowhere else to go! When one effected family was interviewed about this issue a girl, Kayla, tells her Grandpa what she thinks.

"I looked over at Possum" — his nickname for his granddaughter Kayla — "and she had a weird bluish-purplish look," says Wiley a local resident and ex-employee of the dam, his face twisted with emotion. "When she looked back at me she had tears running down her face and she said, 'Gramps, that coal mine is making us kids sick.'"¹

Big Challenge:

A Class-C dam, housing nearly 3 billion gallons of toxic sludge, threatens the lives of elementary school children located less than 300 feet away.

1. Should the impoundment ever be breached, the school kids would have less than 3 minutes to evacuate.
2. Contamination of school drinking water
3. High rate of illness and respiratory problems.

Bigger Solution:

To relocate the school.

1. Find new location, and renovate building to build new school.
2. Upgraded and energy efficient. Built Green and re-focused to include and encourage healthier living alternatives (ex. Organic food garden (grown and maintained by students, used for daily lunch program, or selling at local market’s to raise funds for charity.)

References:

¹ A School in Coal’s Shadow By Kari Lydersen, January 2007 issue http://www.progressive.org/lyderson0107.html