With its top executive creating a furor over his ties to a state Supreme Court justice, Massey Energy Co. could pay as much as $30 million to settle a massive lawsuit filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, The Associated Press reports.
The leading coal producer has agreed to a $20 million fine to resolve allegations "it routinely polluted hundreds of streams and waterways in West Virginia and Kentucky with sediment-filled waste water and coal slurry," AP reports.
The settlement terms also require it to "invest millions of dollars for pollution control improvements at its 44 mines and coal facilities in the two states and in Virginia," the article said. A Massey lawyer disputes the EPA's estimate that the price tag of that term could reach $10 million.
EPA photo, "Downstream impacts from a Massey coal mining operation."
EPA photo, "Downstream impacts from a Massey coal mining operation."MetroNews and The Charleston Gazette also detail the settlement. The latter notes that "If approved by a federal judge, the settlement announced Thursday would rank as the largest civil penalty ever for Clean Water Act permit limit violations."
Citizen groups and environmental enforcement experts also told the Gazette that, "while praising the deal," also "wondered why it took regulators so long to catch up to Massey, and why the punishment wasn’t more serious."
EPA sued Massey and several of its subsidiaries in May. The proposed settlement reflects the latest of several efforts to resolve legal difficulties involving the company and Don Blankenship, its president, chairman and CEO.
Blankenship withdrew a lawsuit in October that had targeted West Virginia's Democratic Party over a 2006 TV ad.
Two months later, he ended his lawsuit against Gov. Joe Manchin. The two issued a joint statement to defuse Blankenship's allegations that the governor was singling out his company for regulatory scrutiny.
Massey also dodged a major bullet the month before, when the Supreme Court overturned a $76.3 million judgment against it in a coal contract dispute. But allegations of favoritism toward Massey and Blankenship by Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard have fueled a push to revisit that ruling.
(The latest, as AP reports, expands the pending recusal bid against Maynard to include Brent Benjamin, citing Blankenship's multimillion-dollar effort to help get him elected in 2004.)
The revelation that Maynard and Blankenship met up in Monaco while vacationing in mid-2006 also factors into yet another lawsuit -- the one filed by Massey against the Supreme Court.
Pending in federal court, that case targets the very disqualification procedure that now comes into play in the petitions targeting Maynard and Benjamin.
Another remaining litigation loose end for Massey is the $239 million (corrected figure) judgment won by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Co. in July. Unless the judge hasn't ruled on a new trial motion, that case should be headed to appeal before the state Supreme Court.
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