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BODY RECOVERY OPERATION
Consol Energy Plans To Use Pipe, Dive Team To Recover Body Of Bulldozer Driver

Reported by: Send eMail Associated Press
Web Producer: Jeff Morris
Reported: Dec. 5, 2012 10:44 AM EST
Updated: Dec. 5, 2012 3:08 PM EST

Eyewitness News Photo
Eyewitness News Photo
Lumberport, Harrison County , West Virginia

Consol Energy plans to use a 40-foot pipe and a Louisiana dive team to recover a bulldozer operator sucked into the Robinson Run slurry pond last week.

Vice President for Safety Lou Barletta said Wednesday the pipe will be lowered into the pond. Water jets will flush out silt as the pipe moves toward the dozer. Divers will enter through the pipe and work by touch to locate the driver.

Consol doesn't know the exact location and position of the dozer or whether the victim is inside.

If that doesn't work, a sheet-piling wall will be built around the dozer. Teams would pump out silt before divers enter to search.

No timetable was given, and Barletta didn't take questions.

An embankment collapse sent the dozer into the pond on Friday.




An engineer with the Department of Environmental Protection said Consol Energy was trying to enlarge its massive coal slurry pond when an embankment collapsed under a bulldozer.

The driver is missing and presumed drowned, five days after the accident at the Robinson Run slurry impoundment near Lumberport. Pennsylvania-based Consol plans an afternoon briefing Wednesday to explain its recovery plan.

Engineer Clarence Wright said the DEP inspected the impoundment in mid-October and found no violations.

He told the Exponent-Telegram that Consol sought an expansion permit in 2009.

All dams and impoundments are inspected annually. Wright said he's done them for 35 years and has never seen an accident like this.

He said West Virginia has about 120 slurry and reclamation ponds statewide, both smaller and larger than Robinson Run's impoundment.



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