Tildes Monthly Writing Prompts! (April 2025)

"My name is Martin Malone. I'm a tailings engineer -- former tailings engineer at Appalachia Energy."
"Thank you for coming today, Mr. Malone. Can you describe for the committee what a tailings engineer does?"
"Well, we're supposed to prevent what happened! Keep people and wildlife safe from our prior greed and hubris and stupid-"
"Mr. Malone, this hearing is for fact finding. Please just lay out the basics for us for now."
"Sure. You know what strip mining is?"

The top of the mountain was gone, scooped and shoveled and broken down to scrape out the coal. The trucks and heavy equipment were long gone but the land was still barren, still too full of heavy metals, coal processing slurry, and exposed rock to keep much alive. The worst though were the ponds. Lifeless places where all the leftover mining material, the tailings, collected like poisonous offal that no carrion bird or fungus could break down. Ponds are a misnomer though, over the years since the mines closure hundreds of millions of gallons of rainwater collected in them, became polluted by the coal slurry, and needed to be withheld from the valleys below. Retaining walls were built up out of the same shit that poisoned it, growing larger year over year. 1000 Olympic sized swimming pools worth of death that needed tending for who knows how long, until the lead and arsenic and mercury would do something other than exist.

"That's my job, making sure the offal doesn't run off downhill and wind up in someone's tap water or kill all the frogs."
"A very evocative description Mr. Malone. I'm sure the committee members have many /questions/ but before we open for questions from the Representatives, can you describe what happened on March 28?"

When the mine closed and the water began to collect we'd made predictions about total required capacity for the ponds. Climate change has made a mockery of that-

"Are you one of those so called climate scientists? I thought you were a glorified landscaper, so we don't need-"
"Representative Massay, the floor has not been yielded to you! Mr. Malone, please, keep to the facts and events of the day in question."

The storm was relentless. Not in intensity, but duration - a steady patter coming down day after day. The forecast of more rain was a dangerous prognosis, so I woke up early to drive my truck to the former mine and keep tabs on it. The remote monitoring dashboard slapped together by the lowest common bidder which never, ever gave a warning started to flash a vague error while I was on my way there. The road to the gate was flooded but navigable, the truck only briefly hydroplaning. The storm culverts under the road had been backed up since the day before. I didn't even stop to unlock the rusted up chain link gate. Nature has a way of being more of a hindrance though and I had to abandon the truck halfway to the ponds as it bogged into the mud. I could tell immediately that the situation was FUBAR, the retaining wall - a solid thousand tons of compacted soil - was bulging, sliding, and contorting. Cattywampus as all hell. Little rivers traced down its back like sweat trickling down a sick man's face. Then it all went. An avalanche, a mudslide, a flood rolled out down into the valley below.

"Each Representative will now get a few minutes for questions. Representative Massay, your question time starts now."
"Martin, I may call you Martin, right?"
"N-"
"Martin, one thing missing from your account is - bring in the timeline board - is what you did to inform your former employer of the danger. As you can see from this timeline, these are calls you made on your corporate phone and emails you sent. I don't see any calls to Appalachia Energy on the day of this act of God."
"It wasn't an act of-"
"Martin, my question - yes or no only - is that correct."
"Yes. But only because-"
"I'm shocked - you did not feel like your employer, surely the most capable to help in this scenario, warranted being informed. Surely you've read this, your employment contract, I have it here and it states in no uncertain terms your sole responsibility to inform. Yes or no, you have read this?"
"All hundred pages?"
"Yes or no."
"No."
"Lapses in judgement like that are fatal Martin. A dereliction of one's duty, the oath you took as an engineer. Do you not feel any personal culpability in this event - yes or no only?"

The little church, a double wide with plywood cross wilted in the rain, was filled to bursting. I stood there in a corner and knew they hated me. Surely they knew it wasn't my fault, that the whole load of shit dumped in their backyards had been foregone the moment the mining permit's ink had dried. The site survey results waived by a relative of the governor. The ramshackle, slipshod work required endless change requests which piled up over the years. The emails with dire warnings about the rate of water accumulation ignored. The crowd was rightly pissed at the company and life in general since the mine had closed. They knew what the dead fish for dozens of miles around meant - that they'd be left drinking out of bottled water they couldn't afford for years to come. I let the fear and rage wash over me. I resigned from my job later that day.

"Representative Sangeetha, your question and answer time starts now."
"Just one question for you Mr. Malone. You've quit and set the work behind you. So why are you here? Why come to testify despite not being subpoenaed?"

Behind the backhoe fitfully attacking the mud, there was a little hill which survived unscathed. Among the dead fish and island which had survived the immediate catastrophe and now stood surrounded by months and yet also decades of cleanup. On that hill was a trailer of someone who now needed help. And when I trudged over to it I saw that someone had laid planks over the mud to span between the island and the road. Someone else had stacked bottles of water near the door. Even as I stood in the muck someone hauled groceries across the planks and handed them to the person who lived there. As they turned to walk back across the treacherous path they waved to me. And so I climbed up out of the mess and got to work. 

"I’m here to do the work"