LOUISVILLE — The National Academy of Sciences has removed two people from a national panel looking at the safety of coal-waste impoundments because of their ties to the coal industry.

        Dean K. Hunt, an attorney in Lexington, was notified last week that his membership on the panel posed a conflict, academy spokeswoman Tamara Dickinson told the Courier-Journal of Louisville.

        The academy also removed Barry Thacker, president and chief engineer at Geo/Environmental Associates Inc., a coal- industry consulting firm in Knoxville, Tenn. The academy, which has said it is looking for at least one environmental expert for the panel, concluded that Mr. Thacker's background on coal matters might interfere with his work on the committee.

        “We try to probe as much as we can in terms of what (committee members') biases are,” Ms. Dickinson said. “In a discussion last Monday, the staff decided that these two members were conflicted.”

        The national panel was created after an impoundment collapse in October in eastern Kentucky. The collapse in Martin County spilled 250 million gallons of coal waste into waterways and surrounding land.

        Mr. Hunt told the Louisville newspaper Tuesday that he had thought about the balance on the 13-member panel, which had included seven coal-industry consultants. But he said he considered the group “well made-up.”

        “I would have liked to see environmentalists on the committee from the beginning, so there wouldn't have been complaints,” Mr. Hunt said. “But this isn't an environmental study. It's about how to prevent failures.”

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