The former head of a federal mine safety school alleges that Bush administration appointees halted an investigation of a coal mine sludge spill that polluted about 100 miles of creeks and rivers along the Kentucky-West Virginia state line.

The bottom of a coal mine waste impoundment collapsed into an abandoned underground mine near Inez, Ky., in October 2000. An estimated 250 million to 300 million gallons of water, coal and rock particles poured out of the mine, killing fish and fouling drinking water supplies.

Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of the federal Mine Health and Safety Academy at Beckley and member of the team that investigated the spill, says the investigation showed Martin County Coal Corp., a Massey Energy Inc. subsidiary, knew its containment was weak.

Spadaro, who has been a frequent critic of U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration operations, told CBS' ``60 Minutes'' for a report airing Sunday that the agency interfered with the investigation.

In 2001, Spadaro resigned from the team investigating the spill in eastern Kentucky's Martin County because he felt that MSHA, a division of the Department of Labor, was trying to cover up its own role in overlooking previous violations at the impoundment.

``The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened,'' Spadaro said. ``I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career ... interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States.'' (from the Guardian)

Do you think the Bush administration knows that Earth is the only planet we can currently live on? And that not all of us have access to the Richard B. Cheney Memorial Bunker in the event of an environmental catastrophe?