Corruption 101
The former head of a federal mine safety school alleges that Bush administration appointees halted an investigation of a coal mine sludge spill that polluted about 100 miles of creeks and rivers along the Kentucky-West Virginia state line. The bottom of a coal mine waste impoundment collapsed into an abandoned underground mine near Inez, Ky., in October 2000. An estimated 250 million to 300 million gallons of water, coal and rock particles poured out of the mine, killing fish and fouling drinking water supplies.
'' 'The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened,' said Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of the federal Mine Health and Safety Academy. 'I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career ... interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States.' ''