OAK GROVE, Ala. - Clara Riley and her family had a lot of questions. But on Monday, as they gathered around the 90-year-old’s small kitchen table, they weren’t getting many answers. Kristie Baggett, a representative of Crimson Oak Grove Resources LLC, a mining company, had come to the home after the Rileys expressed concern about a water well located in Clara’s storage room. They knew there’d been a water well at the home of their neighbor, W.M. Griffice, who died several weeks after his home above a longwall coal mine the company owned exploded on March 8. His grandson was critically injured in what was a devastating blast that left little in its wake but the scorched Alabama clay. Please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom. Griffice, 75, had presciently told his granddaughter that he felt like his home would explode, given the methane fumes he’d been living with. The explosion that would lead to Griffice’s death had rattled the windows of the Riley home, Clara Riley said, and has continued to rattle her entire community. Now, just weeks after the explosion, as they sat around Riley’s kitchen table, her family was trying to get answers from Oak Grove as its mine branches out below the town and slowly encroaches upon the earth beneath her home. They weren’t having much luck. “What do you think happened up at W.M. Griffice’s?” Riley’s daughter, Pam White, asked the mine representative during the meeting. “I can’t speak on it right now,” Baggett said, sighing. “There’s still things going on, and I can’t speak on it.” But even what Baggett did say concerned the Rileys, the family said. Baggett told them that capping their well would be the ideal solution. Venting was also a possibility, she said, but given that the well is located inside the home, venting may be more difficult. “Plugging wells,” Baggett said, is the mine company’s preference. “I’d like to plug every one of them,” she... |