Randy Huffman, secretary of the

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection,

has been striking a new more environmentally protective tone.

Randy Huffman, secretary of the

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection,

has been striking a new more environmentally protective tone.

Ken Ward Jr. at the Charleston Gazette has reported another spill of coal-mining waste.

According to state authorities, run-off from melting snow sent debris from sediment control ponds into a local creek in McDowell County Wednesday. No drinking water supplies were expected to be tainted by the "blackwater" spill at the Antaeus Gary former coal slurry impoundment. The site was abandoned in 2002 after a major accident, reclaimed to the tune of $7.5 million by the Department of Environmental Protection and slated to be re-mined for leftover bits of coal.

This was the third spill in coal-related operations in West Virginia in six weeks. The messes left by the spill of a coal-washing chemical by Freedom Industries and a coal-slurry spill by Patriot Coal Corp. are still being cleaned up.

The extent of the most recent spill was not announced, but state regulators indicated that they did not consider it to be major.

Over the past couple of weeks, as environmental advocates and the media have focused on the spills, regulators seem to have moved from what early on was a whatever tone in their public statements more in the direction of what they should have been saying (and doing) all along.

Please read below the fold for more on this story.