[Coach_Owens87]

Sediment ponds and Slurry ponds are two completely different structures, first a sediment pond controls surface water (during a rain/snow event) and varies in size anywhere from one-tenth of acre to generally not more than one-third of a acre, the storage capacity of each sediment pond is designed for the water shed that it will control.

A Slurry pond is a much larger structure that is designed to hold coal fines. The size of Slurry Impoundments vary and are usually based on topography and the companies estimated reserve area. The slurry spill you referred to in Martin County was caused by inaccurate underground mine mapping, the roof of the un-mapped portion of the underground mine below the impoundment collapsed creating a void in the bottom of the slurry impoundment and letting the water to drain into the underground mine and out of the mine portals. Federal law now requires that underground mines maintain a certain distance from impoundments or impoundments cannot be built within a certain distance of underground mine works.

As far as the Martin County spill not getting national attention, I was in Florida the day the of the spill and I heard about it on the radio. Local and network news programs covered this for a long time.

I'm so happy that finally someone in standing up against these coal companies and their illegal practices. The people in the coal industry try to throw out false "facts" and say they are helping the people of this region. It's just not true, the environmental damage caused by MTR is immeasurable, we're just now starting to see some major effects of old abandoned undergound mines as they leak out coal waste. This is contaminating our water and killing off native fish species at an alarming rate. Imagine what this region will be like when the effects of MTR really start to show.
As far as the coverage of the martin county incident, it did get coverage , but not the mass national coverage that would be expected from such a huge environmental disaster. The spill put 300 million gallons of coal waste, which included water, coal, and the chemicals used to clean it for sell into the market, into the big sandy river. The Exxon-Valdez spill, in which 10 million gallons of oil was spilled, got way more national coverage. Just google it, the Exxon spill gives 580,000 hits, The martin county spill, which was 30 times larger, barely musters 50,000 hits. So to say the event was covered is a joke, it was just a small story mentioned between the "real" headlines.