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Winds of Change Newsletter, September 2008 See sidebar for table of contents
Mining Company to Pay $1.48 Million Selenium Pollution Fine
Excerpted from an article by Ken Ward
Jr., Charleston Gazette, July 13, 2008
Hobet Mining Inc. will pay a nearly $1.5 million fine to
resolve a lawsuit by state regulators over repeated selenium
water-quality violations from its sprawling mountaintop removal
operations along the Lincoln-Boone county line.
(Ed. Note: The only reason DEP moved to sue Hobet was
because OVEC and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy began our own
citizen enforcement actions. By law, if state regulators are diligently
pursuing their own case, environmental groups cant file citizen
lawsuits.)
Hobet also will give the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection $500,000 worth of rocks (that is,
boulder-sized rubble created when the company blasts the mountains),
perform two studies of selenium impacts, and get credit for $1.5 million
in "supplemental environmental protections," for installing selenium
treatment systems at its mines.
The DEP plans to move the boulders to Coal River and use
them for "aquatic restoration."
As part of the deal, DEP officials are giving Hobet
nearly two more years to stop those pollution violations.
A national expert on selenium has warned that the
pollution is poisoning Mud River fish, leaving some with deformities and
pushing the river ecosystem "to the brink of a major toxic event."
DEP Secretary Randy Huffman is fighting a state appeals
board ruling that ordered his agency to more closely scrutinize industry
efforts to clean up selenium pollution.
However, environmental group lawyers are hoping that
federal court lawsuits will stop the industry and the DEP from
continuing to delay compliance with West Virginias water-quality limits
for the toxic mineral.
"For six or seven years now, the operators and the DEP
have known that the coal industry has a huge problem with selenium,"
said Joe Lovett, lawyer with the Appalachian Center for the Economy and
the Environment.
"We have tried to ensure that the state actually
enforces the law, but the state is doing everything it can to allow the
industry to violate the law."
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