CHARLESTON — An activist group Wednesday branded the Department of Environmental Protection as “incompetent” and called for an immediate halt to coal slurry injection, saying this disposal technique contaminates drinking water.

Joe Stanley, a veteran coal miner who has worked at both underground and surface installations, told the Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources that tests have shown water near slurry injection sites are laden with dangerous metals.

“We want or children to drink clean water and lead healthy lives,” the spokesman for Sludge Safety Project told the panel.

“It’s that simple.”

Stanley emphasized his group isn’t opposed to the mining industry but merely wants steps taken to halt the method of injecting slurry underground, or storing it in impoundments above the surface that tend to leach out impurities.

He told the legislators the DEP is misleading the public into thinking that such injection sites are few when, in fact, there are hundreds of them across the state.

In addition, he said, there are in excess of 110 above-ground impoundments that allow metals to seep into the ground, spoiling water with such contaminants as chromium, arsenic, lead, nickel, aluminum and iron.

“Coal slurry must be banned and replaced by safer methods of storage,” Stanley said.

One alternate suggested by the group is the so-called dry processing method, a sophisticated one that presses the slurry into filters to trap the contaminants and prevent them from running into ground water.

Another member of the group, Maria Lambert, who lives in Boone County, said the dry processing would save lives and eventually spare the state as much as $42 billion in health care costs.

The alternate method would mean an additional $2 per ton in the cost of producing coal but Lambert said it would be worth it to the public.

“The people of this state do not feel protected by the DEP,” she said.

Each day, at a mine site in the Raleigh County community of Eccles, she said, some 150,000 gallons of slurry are poured into the ground.

“People have a right to know where the slurry is going,” Lambert told the commission.

“Any company that can pay a PR person millions of dollars can afford to pay a few extra dollars per ton to do the dry processing.”

Another issue that prompted a response from the West Virginia Environmental Council in regard to drinking water spoilage entailed DEP rules on the drilling of new Marcellus Shale formation wells.

Some 1,700 wells are in the offing, and the council fears the drilling could lead to a greater disturbance in the surface, leading to more problems with disposal of waste.

Don Garvin, the group’s legislative coordinator, noted in a statement that no major changes have occurred in drilling rules for a quarter of a century.

“The state’s regulation of oil and gas well drilling already has many problems, and new exploration using new processes, such as horizontal drilling and large volume fracturing, is creating new kinds of problems that need to be addressed, as well as the need for additional resources to address them,” Garvin said.

The coalition called for rule changes that would call any hazard to the immediate attention to the DEP, testing water so landowners are confident no contamination occurred at drilling sites, all sites have an emergency plan to cope with a pit or impoundment failure, and a stipulation that landowners are aware of all drilling plans.

Julie Archer, speaking for West Virginia-Citizen Action Group, said the rule also should require drillers to disclose chemicals.

“It is our understanding the exact chemicals are not trade secrets, just the mixtures,” she said.

“And in any case, trade secrets should yield to the importance of public and environmental safety.”

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