KY Environmental Regulators: "Premature" To Discuss 28,000 Poss. Fraudulent, Missing Water Reports
Kentucky environmental regulators on Tuesday fought back against charges from four environmental groups that they missed as many as 28,000 clean-water violations at a dozen surface-mining complexes in eastern Kentucky.
State officials had already identified new clean-water violations that were described Friday in a threatened lawsuit by environmentalists against Frasure Creek Mining, said R. Bruce Scott, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection, on Tuesday.
He said it was "premature" to discuss the "scope and nature of those violations."
EDIT
The issue of faked discharge monitoring reports first came up in 2010, when the groups found their first evidence of faked test results. After they threatened to take citizen action under the Clean Water Act, state regulators brought their own enforcement case against the International Coal Group, now part of Arch Coal, and Frasure Creek. The environmental groups were allowed to be a party in that case, and in 2012, the groups and the state reached an agreement with Arch, where Arch was to pay $575,000 in penalties with money directed to environmental improvement projects.
But neither the cabinet nor the groups reached an agreement with Frasure Creek involving those claims. State officials said at the time that Frasure Creek was in financial difficulty, and that the cabinet needed to make sure it could meet its reclamation obligations.
EDIT
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2014/11/18/frasure-creek-regulation-kentucky-coal-mining/19238729/
