Independent voices from the TWT Communities
With a driver and his bulldozer missing in a thick, dark lake of coal slurry, a mine safety expert and critic of the coal industry says regulators are ignoring stricter construction standards that could prevent more failures at hundreds of similar dam-like structures around the country.
"Well, if you build a dam on top of 80 feet of fine coal waste that's wet," Spadaro said, "that is not stable material."
"They're building on top of the existing slurry, and therein lies the problem," Spadaro said. "It's wet and it has no stability. It's creating hazards for all of us downstream."
