The environmental catastrophe caused by a spill of 250 million gallons of coal waste sludge, which has fouled rivers and streams on the Kentucky-West Virginia border and affected thousands of working people in the area, is the result of one thing: the coal bosses' relentless profit drive.

The mine slurry pond that broke October 11 is owned by Martin County Coal Corp., a subsidiary of A.T. Massey. The company has previously been cited for violations for a number of similar occurrences.

The billionaire coal bosses should be held liable and foot the entire bill for cleaning up the mess and doing whatever it takes to end the danger posed by the slurry ponds to coal miners, mining towns, and farmers and workers downstream.

More than 650 sludge ponds exist near coal mines around the country. They collect millions of tons of coal dust, clay, and poisonous heavy metals from cleaning the raw coal. In Kentucky more than 60 of these, like the one at the Martin County Coal mine, are built over underground coal mine structures.

These impoundments are a time bomb waiting to explode. Immediate action is needed to enforce whatever safety measures are necessary to protect the miners who work under or near such ponds, workers and farmers who live nearby, and the environment.

The initiative on protecting health and safety will not come from the profit-hungry coal barons or the Democratic and Republican politicians who do their bidding. Coal miners and their union--the United Mine Workers of America--have to take the lead. Farmers and other workers can be won as allies in this fight.

The bosses and their supporters try to convince working people that it's not possible to protect both the environment and the jobs of coal miners. It's a trade-off, they claim--your job or your health and well-being.

But this is true only from the warped standpoint of the bosses' interests. For them, anything that cuts into their profits--workers' safety, a decent wage, medical coverage and other social benefits, a union--is deemed "too expensive."

Working people must approach the matter from a completely different standpoint--the needs of our class. To the extent that working people have won some protection, it has been through fighting tooth and nail against the employers and the government.

A related debate is raging over "mountaintop removal mining." To extract narrow seams of coal, mine bosses in West Virginia and Kentucky are increasingly lopping off whole mountaintops without regard to environmental or social consequences because it's cheaper than traditional methods. They use ever-larger machines and explosive charges, and employ fewer and fewer miners.

The solution to the environmental hazards of "mountaintop removal mining" and coal sludge disasters is not to shut down coal mining, as some middle-class reformers propose. It's to mobilize union power to enforce safety and health protections.

Likewise, the labor movement must lead the fight for jobs. Launching a public works project to fortify or move containment ponds could provide jobs for thousands of unemployed workers at union scale. A crash program is also needed to find a safe means for disposing of wastes. Such a program should be fully funded by the coal barons, under union control with full federal backing.

There is a huge potential for creating jobs in the coalfields. Massive coal reserves exist in the Eastern as well as the Illinois basin coal fields. This resource is underutilized because of the profit-driven priorities of the energy monopolies. They have sought to dissipate the power of the United Mine Workers of America union, which is an obstacle to their drive to intensify labor, gut health and safety measures, cut wages, and break down solidarity.

The energy giants don't want to pay for "scrubbers" on electrical generation plants to burn coal more cleanly. A revival of coal production--done by UMWA members under safe conditions and converted to electrical power through environmentally sound methods--would provide both jobs and low-cost energy needed by millions.