Some who want to clean up Appalachian creek blame grant cancellation on coal and gas interests

Elkhorn Creek, running through parts of Pike and Letcher counties in far Eastern Kentucky, is among the most polluted streams in the state, so much so that any human contact through swimming, drinking or even fishing is officially discouraged. A local nonprofit group began a cleanup effort, funded by a $600,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, but three years later the effort has been canceled, leaving locals to ask if the nonprofit Elkhorn City Area Heritage Council was in over its head or if more sinister motives undid the project, Russ Cassady reports for the Appalachian News-Express in Pikeville, starting with this front-page graphic.

Some, including a retired Kentucky Division of Water employee who worked on the project, say the project was killed intentionally because of the threat it posed to mining and natural-gas operations, Cassady reports. The project was officially shelved because the nonprofit failed to provide a Quality Assurance Project Plan required by EPA, but the organization says it was assured all necessary documentation had been turned in before it began work. An open-records request from the News-Express revealed the Council was only notified of the missing paperwork after it had commissioned a local business for over $30,000 worth of initial monitoring work. The Division of Water, which enforces EPA regulations, told the nonprofit it was taking over monitoring and any data collected without the quality-assurance plan was unusuable, Cassady reports.

The nonprofit says it submitted seven new quality-assurance plans but each was rejected by the water division with no explanation of what needed to be changed for approval. "The Division of Water did not want this project to happen," Steve Ruth, the nopnprofit's project administrator, told Cassady. "That's why it died." Division spokeswoman Allison Peck disagreed: "Despite DOW's support for the project, the applicants failed to submit an acceptable QAPP in a reasonable time and DOW was compelled to cancel the project."

Both groups agree the pollution on the creek is a result of raw sewage and surface mining operations, but the nonprofit and one former water-division staffer say the latter factor is the reason the project stalled. Ted Withrow, a since-retired division worker on the project, explained to Cassady why he thinks it was canceled: If Elkhorn Creek is "impaired, it doesn’t meet its uses. And once that stream goes on the list [of dangerously polluted waterways], you can no longer impair that stream any further for that particular pollutant."

For an excellent example of rural journalism at work, read Cassady's story here and here (the jump).