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Disasters
Impoundments for storage of blackwater and other coal-related wastes have a troubled history with often severe environmental consequences.

In February 1972, three dams holding a mixture of coal slurry in Logan County, West Virginia failed in succession: 130,000,000 US gallons (490,000 m3) of toxic water were released in the Buffalo Creek Flood. As discussed in the book The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man, out of a population of 5,000 people, 125 people were killed, 1,121 were injured, and over 4,000 were left homeless. The flood caused 50 million dollars in damages. Despite evidence of negligence, the Pittston Coal Company, which owned the compromised dam, called the event an "Act of God."[4] In 2002, a 900-foot (270 m) high, 2,000-foot (610 m) long valley fill in Lyburn, West Virginia failed and slid into a sediment pond at the toe of the fill, generating a large wave of water and sediment that destroyed several cars and houses.[5] In December of 2008, a contained contaminate pond in Roan County Tennessee gave out, resulting in 1.3 million cubic meters of toxic waste to be released. Beginning at Tennesee's Kingston Fossil Plant, the waste moved North and East. This waste damaged dozens of homes, contaminated the Emory River, buried about three hundred acres of land, and separated a home from its foundation. The Emory River was tested for toxic substances, finding lead and thallium which are both notorious for leading to birth defects and issues with the nervous and reproductive systems. This disaster has cost one billion dollars, requiring another two million. While there were many efforts to clean up the coal waste, thirty of the people that contributed cleaning passed away. It was also reported that around 250 of the workers were very ill and some close to death.

Future technologies
The ultimate solution to the blackwater problem is to process coal without the use of water. Such dry-separation technologies are under development. An alternative way to dispose coal ash is to shift the responsibility of cleaning to the power plants. An alternative option in efforts to combine fine coal waste to the cleaned coarse coal product is to dewater the coal slurry product so it solidifies to a certain point, which will result in lessening the volume of waste. There are many options of eliminating fine coal waste in impoundments, such as eliminating the waste in surface fills and underground. One problem with this is that these options have limiting factors which include astopography, cost, and safety. Recently, modern designs of horizontal vibrating centrifuges are becoming more favorable across the nation. The horizontal vibrating centrifuges usually have a larger capacity, and has an improved the maintenance on the machines unlike the vertical machines. Studies conducted at Virginia Tech show that there is increasing improvement in moisture removal can be correlated with using an air pressurized centrifuge. There is a another alternative to fixing the blackwater problem is referred to as hyperbaric centrifuga-tion technology, where its soul purpose is to dewater ultrafine coal. With multiple experiments conducted, it was concluded that 20–40% and even more of the moisture was eliminated from the waste. Gasification technology shows a great amount of promise as the best candidate for coal conversion technology. It is seen as the best candidate because of its ability to utilize carbon capture technologies. Research conducted by DOE in the last several years has put their main focus on advancing the process to clean fine coal to reduce ash and sulfur product.