An editor for Mine Safety and Health News failed to obtain a court order for information about a federal investigation into the question of whether mine safety officials covered up a coal slurry spill in Kentucky in 2000. Three hundred gallons of the toxic waste, 25 times the size of the Exxon Vaaldez oil spill, broke from a reservoir and seeped into more than 100 miles of rivers and lands.
A federal judge said the public’s interest in disclosure did not outweigh the individuals’ privacy interest and that the editor had failed to produce anything other than “unsubstantiated allegations of a government cover-up.” The judge also said the information redacted from the records which he reviewed himself did not shed any light on the issue of a coverup. -db
From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, July 27, 2011, by Aaron Mackey.