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Photo, Print, Drawing Aerial view of sludge dam at Elk Run, West Virginia

About this Item

Title

  • Aerial view of sludge dam at Elk Run, West Virginia

Names

  • Eiler, Lyntha Scott (Photographer)

Created / Published

  • October 26, 1995

Headings

  • -  Fall
  • -  Mountaintop removal
  • -  October
  • -  Reclamation
  • -  Elk Run (W. Va.)
  • -  Mine waste disposal
  • -  Sludge dams
  • -  Photographs
  • -  Ethnography
  • -  West Virginia -- Boone County
  • -  West Virginia -- Boone County -- Sylvester

Genre

  • Photographs
  • Ethnography

Notes

  • -  Event: Helicopter tour of Mountaintop Removal and Reclamation on Big Coal River watershed.
  • -  Through mountaintop removal and reclamation, the coal industry is introducing several new landforms to the coal fields. One of the introduced landforms is the "wet refuse impoundment," a structure designed to store the waste from coal preparation plants. At the Elk Run Preparation Plant in Sylvester, an A.T. Massey subsidiary, coal from surrounding mines is cleaned through a process called "flocculation," which separates ash from coal, making the coal lighter to ship and cleaner to burn. Federal clean air and water legislation prohibits the release of waste water from the cleaning process into streams. Coal companies therefore must store the waste water somewhere for treatment (known as "dewatering.") The solution is to store the "fine refuse" in large hollows behind impoundments made of the coarse refuse. These structures, which are hundreds of feet deep, are known locally as "sludge ponds." Sludge ponds in the project study area are located at Shumate's Branch, Marfork, and Elk Run. Elk Run is noted as a pivotal site in union history. It was at Elk Run that the A.T. Massey Coal Company established the first non-union mine in (check date), as part of a campaign to establish what E. Morgan Massey termed a "union-free climate for running coal." As we approached Elk Run, Benny Campbell commented, "This is A.T. Massey country here."

Medium

  • 35 mm Color Slide

Call Number/Physical Location

  • AFC 1999/008: CRF-LE-C038-17

Source Collection

  • Coal River Folklife Collection (AFC 1999/008)

Repository

  • American Folklife Center

Digital Id

Online Format

  • image

IIIF Presentation Manifest

Rights & Access

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Copy photographs of numerous historical still photographs owned by Woody Boggs and Rick Bradford were made and are reproduced here with permission of the owners.

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Credit line

Coal River Folklife Project collection (AFC 1999/008), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Eiler, Lyntha Scott. Aerial view of sludge dam at Elk Run, West Virginia. West Virginia Boone County Sylvester, 1995. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/cmns000120/.

APA citation style:

Eiler, L. S. (1995) Aerial view of sludge dam at Elk Run, West Virginia. West Virginia Boone County Sylvester, 1995. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/cmns000120/.

MLA citation style:

Eiler, Lyntha Scott. Aerial view of sludge dam at Elk Run, West Virginia. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/cmns000120/>.