Judges Still Trying to Settle West Virginia Coal Slurry Lawsuit

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Two judges will try again this week to settle a long-running medical monitoring lawsuit over claims that Massey Energy Co. poisoned hundreds of southern West Virginia wells with coal slurry.

The first mediation attempt by Judges Alan Moats and Derek Swope failed to produce a deal last fall. But the judges, who will not be part of a three-judge panel set to try the case in August, summoned the lead attorneys to a two-day meeting Tuesday and Wednesday at the Charleston Town Center Marriott.

The judges were assigned to handle the case through the state’s mass litigation panel. Their order reconvening the mediation requires the discussions and any settlement that may be reached to remain confidential.

Nor can anything from the mediation be used in this case or any other litigation, the order says.

Virginia-based Massey didn’t respond to a request for comment, but plaintiffs attorney Bruce Stanley said it was the judges, not the parties, who organized the second mediation.

“Our clients would welcome a fair settlement of their claims after so many years of fighting, and one would hope that Massey would try to clean up at least a few of the messes it has made before the company name slips from the front pages to the history pages,” he said.

Alpha Natural Resources, based in Abingdon, Va., has made a $7.1 billion takeover offer for Massey. The deal is expected to close later this year, but several lawsuits have been filed to try to stop it.

More than 700 current and former residents of Rawl, Lick Creek, Sprigg and Merrimac claim their water supply was contaminated after Richmond, Va.-based Massey and a subsidiary, Rawl Sales and Processing, pumped 1.4 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry into worked-out underground mines between 1978 and 1987.

The residents believe the slurry, a byproduct of washing coal to make it burn more cleanly, then leached into their wells and poisoned the brown, red and black water that ran from their taps.

For decades, coal companies in Appalachia have injected slurry into worked-out mines as a cheap alternative to dams and other systems that can safely store or treat it. The industry claims underground injection is safe, but critics say slurry leaches into water tables through natural and man-made cracks in the earth.

The plaintiffs are now mostly served by a public water system, but they argue that chronic exposure to metals and chemicals are to blame for birth defects, developmental disabilities and a range of ailments including cancer.

In November, the judges demanded every plaintiff attend the mediation conference or risk being dropped from the lawsuit, so they piled into cars and buses and traveled from as far as Ohio and the Carolinas to Charleston.

This time, the plaintiffs’ presence is not required.