The Obama administration on Friday settled years of outstanding fines with West Virginia’s leading Democratic candidate for governor, billionaire Jim Justice, whose coal business has avoided payment for years.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it has settled with Justice’s company, Southern Coal Corp. and its many affiliates, to pay a $900,000 civil penalty, install $5 million worth of new compliance measures and put up a $4.5 million letter of credit to ensure his companies live up to their agreement to clean up mine sites in five states.
The $900,000 penalty will be divided among EPA and the four states in the settlement, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, the EPA said.
Justice’s companies have been elusive for years when asked about their mine safety violations and why Southern Coal has refused to pay the full fine. Justice, who is running for the governor of the Mountaineer State, has avoided commenting to news reporters on the violations.
National Public Radio reported in 2014 that Justice provided charities and organizations such as the Boy Scouts with about $200 million in donations, but appeared to ignore the $2 million in overdue fines he had accrued for mine violations going back as far as seven years.
“An operator that’s going to maintain a safe operation is faced with a dilemma of what gets paid and doesn’t. And the unpaid fines and citations with Southern Coal have simply been not having the available cash to settle those,” Tom Lusk, Southern Coal’s CEO, said in an interview with NPR.
EPA, of course, sees things far differently.
“Discharging pollution from coal mining into waterways is a serious threat to clean water, and that’s why EPA stepped in on behalf of communities across Appalachia,” said EPA enforcement chief Cynthia Giles Friday. “Company-wide compliance programs like the one Southern Coal Corporation will establish are critical to protecting our lakes, rivers and streams and the people who depend on them.”
