Pike slide from Justice mine damages homes
Local emergency management official says nobody told him about incident for two days.
- Top mining regulator in Kentucky calls slide a "serious incident."
- Justice attorney does not immediately return a request for comment.
Kentucky environmental regulators spent the weekend and Monday investigating a mudslide at a Pike County surface mine owned by West Virginia coal baron Jim Justice that they say contributed to local, damaging flooding last week.
State officials Monday confirmed their investigation was centered on Justice's Bent Mountain mining operations, which had significant reclamation deadlines last year and are the subject of ongoing enforcement activities.
The Appalachian News-Express reports that water suddenly came rushing out of a hollow, damaging several homes in the community of Meta, late Thursday, about eight miles outside Pikeville.
“This is a serious incident,” Kentucky Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Allen Luttrell said in a written statement. “The company has been given a deadline to pursue abatement and remediation. We won’t leave until we’re satisfied the permits have been brought back into compliance."
Doug Tackett, director of the Pike County Emergency Management Agency, said he did not know much about what happened because he wasn't informed for two days. He said several homes were damaged and he was not aware of any significant injuries. Still, he said, "we should have gotten a call," and he referred a reporter to state and federal mining regulators for more information.
U.S. Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation spokesman Chris Holmes said the company contacted the federal agency Monday – in Tennessee, not Kentucky, and not to let it know about the problem but to say the company was moving people out of Tennessee to help people in Kentucky with a flooding problem.
John Mura, spokesman for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, said state regulators learned of the damaging slide and flash flood on Friday night and sent top officials and investigators.
The Justice-owned company, Kentucky Fuel Corp., was cited by state regulators for having an overflowing diversion ditch that sent mud and water down a hill, damaging six homes, officials said.
Citations included alleged violations involving sediment control, off-permit disturbance, failure to notify, failure to pass water quality and a diversion ditch failure. Multiple other homes had mud and debris on their property, and a county road was also muddied, Mura said.
He said the company would be fined by an amount to be determined later.
Billy Shelton, who represents Justice – the billionaire Democratic nominee for governor of West Virginia – did not immediately return a request for comment. But Shelton last week told Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate that Justice companies needed more time to reclaim the Bent Mountain mine and other Justice-owned surface mines under earlier enforcement orders.
Bent Mountain is in part known for its three-mile long "highwall," what is left after rock and coal have been blasted from the side of a mountain.
The Courier-Journal reported on May 27 that of nine miles of highwall in eastern Kentucky that were supposed to be reclaimed by Sept. 1, barely over a half-mile has been completed.
Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 and at jbruggers@courier-journal.com.
